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WASHINGTON (AP) - Bob Woodward's version of when and where he learned the identity of a CIA operative contradicts a special prosecutor's contention that Vice President Dick Cheney's top aide was the first to make the disclosure to reporters. Attorneys for the aide, I. Lewis ``Scooter'' Libby, described Wednesday's statement by the Washington Post's assistant managing editor as helpful for their...

Bob Woodward apologized to The Washington Post yesterday for failing to reveal for more than two years that a senior Bush administration official had told him about CIA operative Valerie Plame, even as an investigation of who disclosed her identity mushroomed into a national scandal. Woodward, an assistant managing editor and best-selling author, said he told Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Word came Wednesday that Washington Post assistant managing editor Bob Woodward, of Watergate fame, knew the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame before it was published in a July 2003 column. The attorney for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff and the only person indicted during the CIA leak investigation, quickly asserted that Woodward...

WASHINGTON -- Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward testified under oath Monday in the CIA leak case that a senior administration official told him about CIA operative Valerie Plame and her position at the agency nearly a month before her identity was disclosed. In a more than two-hour deposition, Woodward told Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald that the official casually told...

NEW YORK Watergate legend Carl Bernstein warned critics to back off their attacks on his former partner Bob Woodward following this week’s disclosures that Woodward had testified in the Valerie Plame case, and had failed to inform Washington Post editors for two years about a confidential conversation he’d had with a White House official. "I think there is an awful lot of piling on," Bernstein...

On Monday, November 14, I testified under oath in a sworn deposition to Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald for more than two hours about small portions of interviews I conducted with three current or former Bush administration officials that relate to the investigation of the public disclosure of the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame. The interviews were mostly confidential...

ONE of the troubles with political journalism, especially American political journalism, is that its attention span is so short. A story is front-page news today, but by tomorrow the media spotlight has moved on and the story disappears. Or some minor aspect of it catches the journalists’ imagination and the main thrust of the story is overlooked and then forgotten. Take as an example what has...

NEW YORK: The Wall Street Journal 's parent company is seeking to expose sensitive material relating to Judith Miller of The New York Times in court. The Journal's editorial page revealed today that Dow Jones & Co., this newspaper's parent company, filed a motion late Wednesday requesting that the federal district court unseal the infamous eight pages of redacted information that the special...

The old joke asks what do you do when the only way to save an endangered species is to feed the animal endangered plants. The serious question is what do you do when the only way to protect freedom of the press is to kill the biggest story of your career. This Solomonic stumper arose last weekend when an independent US prosecutor charged the top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney with perjury. The...

The most intriguing revelation of Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald's news conference last week was his assertion that he would have presented his indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby a year ago if not for the intransigence of reporters who refused to testify before the grand jury. He said that without that delay, "we would have been here in October 2004 instead of October 2005." Had that...