Woodward vs. Fitzgerald: On Lies that Trivialize the Truth

On CNN's Larry King last night, Woodward seemed to go out of his way to emphasize that the CIA's assessment that the Plame leak had only very minimal adverse impact on the CIA's intelligence operations, mostly just some inconvenience in relocating some agenets. He made it clear that we should regard the leak as relatively inconsequential, indeed trivial.

At the very least, that seems to contradict several judges' formal findings of serious threat, or harm, to national security from the Plame leak, based on the showings that Fitzgerald made to them.

Let's hope Fitzgerald makes clear today what the adverse consequences of the Plame leak were. If they were non-trivial, then Woodward is either a serious liar or a phony investigative journalist, i.e. one who does not investigate. Alternatively, the damage to CIA operations was minimal, but the serious threat to national security was from some other adverse consequence of the leak. In that case, Woodward's emphasis on the trivial impact on CIA operations was a disgraceful distortion of the truth about overall harm to national security.

Update: Jane Hamsher (See her Update 7) has the relevant quotation from Woodward, even worse than I remembered it.

Either way, unless the judges were wrong, Woodward looks extremely suspicious. The only question is whether his lying is intentional (for favor and for profit) of ignorant (for lack of doing his homework).