WOODWARD VS. BERNSTEIN
Watergate journos clash over Trump dossier
Is the explosive dossier about Donald Trump’s alleged Russian shenanigans bogus news or journalistic gold? It depends on which Pulitzer-winning Watergate reporter you ask. Bob Woodward yesterday blasted it as “ga r ba ge,” d ays after Carl Bernstein flat out declared, “It’s not fake news.”
Even the legendary Watergate reporting team of Woodward and Bernstein disagree over Donald Trump and the importance of the scandalous, unverified opposition research handed to him by US intelligence officials.
“I’ve lived in this world for 45 years where you get things and people make allegations,” Bob Woodward told “Fox News Sunday.” “That is a garbage document. It never should have been presented in — as part of an intelligence briefing.”
Woodward also argued that “Trump’s point of view” was being “underreported” and said the matter could have been handled through other channels, noting that outgoing White House Counsel Neil Eggleston could have given the briefing to incoming Counsel Don McGahn.
“So Trump’s right to be upset about that,” Woodward said.
“And I think if you look at the real chronology and the nature of the battle here, those intelligence chiefs — who were the best we’ve had, who were terrific and have done great work — made a mistake here. And when people make mistakes, they should apologize.”
Carl Bernstein — who with Woodward won The Washington Post a Pulitzer Prize for exposing the Watergate scandal that led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation — last week endorsed inclusion of the blockbuster claims in the briefing.
“The best obtainable version of the truth is that the chief intelligence officials of the United States of America saw this material, thought that it deserved investigation, thought that it ought to be brought to the attention of the president of the United States and to the president-elect,” he said during a Wednesday panel discussion on CNN’s “AC 360.”
Bernstein, who helped CNN break the story that Trump and President Obama were both given a two-page summary of the research compiled by a former British MI6 agent, made the remarks after Trump denounced CNN’s reporting as “fake news.”
During a Wednesday appearance on SiriusXM radio, Bernstein also said, “It’s not fake news, otherwise senior most intelligence chiefs would not have done this,” according to a tweet from host Michael Smerconish.
The claims in the so-called dossier — which Trump has denied and which have been shown to contain several factual errors — were part of a classified presentation on alleged Russian meddling in last year’s election, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper confirmed last week.
Trump on Sunday praised Woodward for his comments.
“Thank you to Bob Woodward,” he tweeted, with a recap of Woodward’s comments with the word “apologize” in capital letters.
Also on “Fox News Sunday,” outgoing CIA Director John Brennan blasted Trump’s allegation that “the intelligence agencies” leaked the dossier, calling it “something that Nazi Germany would have done and did do.”
“I do take great umbrage at that, and there is no basis for Mr. Trump to point fingers at the intelligence community for leaking information that was already available publicly,” Brennan said.
Later, Trump blamed Brennan for flawed US policy in Syria while hinting he may have leaked the explosive dossier.
“Oh really,” Trump tweeted in response to Brennan’s claim that he doesn’t understand Russia, “couldn’t do much worse - just look at Syria (red line), Crimea, Ukraine and the build-up of Russian nukes. Not good! Was this the leaker of Fake News?”