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Published online 10/23/2007 12:13 AM

No more secrets

Reporter who helped expose Watergate, has written books on Bush

By Amy Bickel - The Hutchinson News - abickel@hutchnews.com

Global warming and health care may top some Americans' list of concerns, but a famed U.S. journalist says it's a secret government about which citizens should be worried.

Bob Woodward, one of the Washington Post reporters responsible for breaking the Nixon Watergate scandal, said President Bush didn't even ask former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld or former Secretary of State Colin Powell if they thought going to war with Iraq was a good decision.

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Moreover, Bush alluded to Woodward that he didn't even talk to his father, the former wartime president, about it, Woodward told an audience Monday, wrapping up the 2007 Ray and Stella Dillon Lecture Series.

" 'Well in terms of strength, I appeal to a higher father,' " Woodward said Bush told him. "And I never got an answer to what the lower father's recommendation was."

"How much of what government is doing, particularly in government, particularly in wartime, do we know?" Woodward later asked.

Woodward, who also spoke at a press conference and a noon meal, began his lecture talking about how he had a conversation with former Vice President Al Gore about what the public knew about the Clinton administration.

Only one percent, Gore said, and he only knew 2 percent.

"He was exaggerating ... He was poking his finger at me," Woodward said, but added, "There is a lot that goes on that we don't know about."

Woodward said after the U.S. invaded Iraq, The Post gave him a year to find out why Bush decided to go to war. Woodward has written three books about the subject and is working on a fourth.

He spent nearly eight hours interviewing the president, logging the most interview time with a sitting president than any other reporter.

He asked more than 500 questions. Everything was on the record.

" 'We have a zeal to free and liberate people,' " Bush told Woodward.

Woodward includes some of these questions in his latest book, "State of Denial," a narrative about the administration's mismanagement of the Iraq war.

The book shows Bush's idealism, Woodward said, and his steadfast belief that America needed to protect itself from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

So far, none have been found.

Bush also would report that the war was going well, giving the nation an upbeat forecast.

Yet secret reports showed the violence was escalating.

"The president and others in his administration were regularly going out and saying we have turned the corner," Woodward said. "The secret reports said just the exact opposite."

However, how the public perceives this war may someday change, Woodward said.

For instance, he said, a month after Gerald Ford took over the office of president from Richard Nixon, Ford gave Nixon a full pardon.

Woodward learned the news from fellow Watergate collaborator Carl Bernstein - who expressed outrage over the decision.

Woodward said he thought a deal had been made, "and it smelled."

Now he thinks differently.

In an interview 25 years later, Ford told Woodward he wanted to have his own presidency, not one where the public still reflected on the Watergate scandal. Nixon also was depressed to the point some worried he might take his own life.

During his interviews, Woodward posed the question to Bush about how history would perceive his presidency.

Bush said. "History, we don't know, we will all be dead."

Watergate, Deep throat and a movie

Woodward also answered other questions about American politics and his career.

On the Watergate scandal: "Some days, the White House press secretary would denounce us for an hour, nonstop," Woodward said of he and Carl Bernstein's Watergate reporting, which eventually led to Nixon's resignation and a Pulitzer for the reporters.

"I was 29 years old. And the spokesman for the leader of the free world is calling you a liar. And that gets your attention. But the attitude of the editors: 'We're on the right track, keep going.' "

On how he votes: I voted for Nixon in 1968. ... What I do now is have my young daughter go into the voting booth with me. Since 2000, since she was 4, I explained to her what we were doing, that I had to be neutral, but we wanted to vote and that she could come with me. She felt incredibly empowered. She thought about it, she voted, and she voted in 2004, also."

On the movie "All the President's Men": I took (my daughter) to see the movie on our book covering Watergate. She was 9, and she squirmed the whole time. I said, 'Diana, what did you think?' She went 'A, the guy playing you doesn't look like you. B, boring, boring, boring.' "

Woodward, laughed, and said he liked the movie.

"It was an accurate depiction of what happened. Fellow journalists really say it tells you what it is like. On a tough story like that, you're not sure so you go home with a lump in your stomach."