THIS ISSUE: Janet Cooke Deja Vu Woodward's Tangled Web Casey Could Not Converse Not Woodward's First Big Lie Hatcheting the Supreme Court Casey, the Fall Guy Notes

"It's a lie. Woodward never saw my husband. He never got in to speak to him. He couldn't speak to him if he wanted to." That was how Sophia Casey, widow of William J. Casey, the late director of Central Intelligence, reacted to Robert Woodward's claim in his book, Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981-1987, that he had interviewed Casey on his deathbed and extracted a sensational confession from him. Woodward's claim that Casey admitted to him that he had known of the diversion of profits from the Iranian arms sales to the Nicaraguan freedom fighters was big news on the television evening and morning news programs beginning as early as Friday, September 25. That was the day before The Washington Post ran as its lead story a long article on Woodward's book.

The story broke on the NBC Nightly News. Correspondent Garrick Utley said without qualification, "The late CIA director admitted in his dying days that he knew about the diversion of Iran arms sales to the contras from the very beginning of the operation. Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward in a new book said Casey admitted knowledge of the diversion. When Woodward asked the dying Casey why, Casey answered, 'I believed,' but said nothing more." NBC had obtained that information from U.S. News & World Report, which had released a story that after- noon based on galley proofs of the book.

Two days later, NBC on its Sunday news program aired Mrs. Casey's categorical charge that Wood- ward was lying, as did CNN. In the meantime the story that Casey had given a deathbed confession to a reporter widely regarded as a dangerous enemy of the CIA had made big headlines. On September 26, The New York Post in two-inch-high letters screamed: "CIA CHIEF'S DEATHBED SHOCKER." Subheads read: "Casey knew contras got Iranscam $$$" and "CASEY'S DEATHBED CONFESSION." The Washington Post itself was more circumspect in its handling of the alleged confession. Its front-page headline read: "Casey Circumvented the CIA in '85 Assassination Attempt." That was about a carbombing aimed at a Shiite leader, Sheik Fadlallah, in Beirut. Not until the 17th paragraph of reporter Haynes Johnson's story did the reader learn of the conversation Woodward claimed he had with Casey in the hospital.

Janet Cooke Deja Vu

There is strong evidence that Woodward's story of interviewing Bill Casey in the hospital is fiction comparable to Janet Cooke's 1980 Washington Post story about a child heroin addict named "Jimmy." Woodward was the Post's metropolitan editor in 1980 when the Janet Cooke story about little Jimmy ran, and the story was his responsibility. Several of his subordinates had good reason to believe the story was a fake, and those reasons had been conveyed to Woodward. But Woodward, who has created the myth that he is a meticulous checker of facts, brushed their objections aside and promoted the story. It won a Pulitzer Prize, which had to be returned after the Associated Press discovered that Janet Cooke had lied about her academic back- ground, forcing the Post's editors to query her for the first time to check the story's accuracy. That fiasco cost Woodward his job as metropolitan editor and sank his hopes of succeeding Ben Bradlee as executive editor of The Washington Post. He was put in charge of an investigative reporting team, but he has concentrated mainly on writing his best- selling books, working at home.

It was Woodward's team that got the Post involved in a libel suit filed by William Tavoulareas, the former president of Mobil Oil. In a 1985 opinion reinstating a $2 million award to Tavoulareas, the Court of Appeals took special note of Woodward's urging his staff to produce what he called "holy s--t" journalism, meaning stories that would provoke readers to exclaim, "Holy s--t? when they picked up the morning paper. (This decision by a three-judge panel was subsequently reversed by the full Court of Appeals.)

Woodward held back his story about Casey's alleged complicity in the attempted car-bombing of Sheik Fadlallah in order to have a sensational story that would help him sell his book. There is overwhelming evidence that this same desire led him to invent a sensational story about the alleged deathbed interview of Bill Casey.

Mrs. Casey and her daughter, Bernadette Casey Smith, have both stated forcefully and repeatedly that during the period Mr. Casey was in Georgetown University Hospital they kept a constant 24 hour a day vigil at his bedside. Mrs. Casey spent the nights there, and Bernadette was there during the day. They have said that they didn't leave the room. Their meals were sent in, and it was not necessary to leave the room to go to the bathroom. Both have said that it would have been impossible for Woodward to enter the room and try to talk to their father without their knowing it.

Woodward did make an effort to do just that on January 22. He says in his book that he was repulsed by the CIA guard at Casey's door, having gotten past other guards who were in the security room opposite the elevator on the 8th floor. Mrs. Casey gave the story of this attempt by Woodward to see Casey to The Washington Times, which reported it. Woodward was subsequently quoted in Washingtonian magazine as saying that he showed the guards his press pass. He said, "Casey's security people were upset that I got in, so they put out a story that I wouldn't identify myself." This refers to his claim that he got as far as Casey's door, a claim that Mrs. Casey denies. Wood- ward says in the book that he got into the room "several days later." He says, "The door was open." He makes no mention of how he eluded the two CIA guards who were on duty 24 hours a day.

Woodward's Tangled Web

There are two things besides the fact that Mrs. Casey and her daughter kept a constant vigil at Mr. Casey's bedside that prove that Woodward's story is a fabrication. The first is the conflicting statements he has made about how he got in. The second is the evidence that Mr. Casey was physically unable to carry on the kind of conversation Woodward claims he had with him.

Admiral Startsfield Turner, the director of the CIA in the Carter administration, said on ABC's "Good Morning America" on September 30th that he thought it was possible for Woodward to have penetrated CIA security at the hospital. Adm. Turner said: "I happen to have talked to Bob Woodward about this several months ago. He claims the morning he arrived there, there just was nobody on the corridor of the hospital, and he walked down, got to Casey's room, Casey waved him to come on in. I don't know for a fact that the CIA was guarding Mr. Casey around-the-clock. I don't think that ordinarily would be necessary under those circumstances. If they were, it certainly was a bad show."

That conflicted with what Woodward had said on CBS's "60 Minutes" on September 27, when he re- fused to tell Mike Wallace what time of day the alleged interview took place and claimed to have got- ten into the room with someone's help. He said, "I'm not going to say when. Obviously somebody helped me, and I'm protecting that person."

Wallace asked how he got past the guards. Woodward replied: "CIA security is nothing difficult to get around, and earlier this week some very senior person at the CIA said, 'Look, after all this is over, we have to talk about security. Obviously yours is better than ours.'" Mike Wallace commented, "And apparently it was."

Interviewed last August by Ryan Murphy of the Knight-Ridder chain, Woodward explained his entry saying that he "just showed his press pass and walked in." Murphy was unaware of Woodward's unsuccessful effort to gain admittance to Casey's room and interpreted that to refer to the alleged successful entry, an impression Woodward did nothing to dispel.

On ABC's "Nightline" on October 1, Woodward went to a ridiculous extreme in refusing to answer questions about his alleged deathbed interview. He again used the excuse of protecting his alleged helpers. The following dialogue took place between Woodward and Ted Koppel.

KOPPEL: Now that last meeting, and I draw your attention and also our viewer's attention in particular, to a picture which we took from Newsweek of Director Casey sitting in a chair and you sitting in a chair hunched over and listening. Is that, in fact, the way it was? Is that an accurate representation?

WOODWARD: That is some artist at Newsweek that did that. What I have decided on that is to not So beyond what is in the book. That is the best account. The time I wrote it and edited it, and that's what happened.

KOPPEL: Well, the reason I draw your attention and the viewers' attention to it is precisely because in almost every other respect you are a very descriptive writer, but when it comes to that particular scene, which, after all, Is a very dramatic scene and the one with which you close your book, there was no description at aft, none. None about the way he looked really. None about where he was. Was he in bed? Was he in a chair? No description of the room at all. It is almost totally devoid of anything other than this brief dialogue, which you held--a dialogue in which body language plays almost as much of a role as what was said. Why did you leave out any other kind of description?

WOODWARD: Because the 19 words he said to me, the nod, the smile kind of a half-smile at one point--were what was Important.

KOPPEL: And whether he was in bed or sitting up? To me it's fascinating, and I'm told that the News- week artist got this indirectly, not from you directly, but from someone who worked for you a description of what the setting was like. If the man was well enough to be sitting up, that clearly says some- thing. If he was lying in bed, that says something else. If he was on a life support system, that says one thing. If he is completely without a life support system, as he is in that sketch that also says something else. Which was it?

WOODWARD: I am not going to go beyond the book and I need to give you the reason why. There are people who want to find out who assisted me, who gave me the opportunity to talk to Mr. Casey. Those people have to be protected, and I have heard stories that people are being interrogated and affidavits are being sought and so forth. And I, as is, I think, well demonstrated over the years, want to protect sources. Those sources are my connection to the best version of the truth, and if there is some sort of hunt going on, it is my job to thwart it.

KOPPEL: Well, I'm not exactly sure I understand why a description of the director's condition at that point would point a finger in anyone's direction, but after all, we do have another eyewitness to that, Mrs. Casey.

Mrs. Casey, where was your husband at that time? Was he able to sit up in those days? Or was he in bed? Was he on a life support system? Or oxygen? Or intravenous?

MRS. CASEY: He was mostly in bed. He would get up for a short period of time.

KOPPEL: So he was capable of sitting up in a chair at that time?

MRS. CASEY: He could not sit up. He sort of reclined.

KOPPEL: .... Would he as, for example, that picture depicted, would he have been capable at that time of sitting up in a chair?

MRS. CASEY: No. Not that way. I saw the picture. He never sat up that straight. He was sort of half lying down, and they would just put him in a chair to change his position, and he really didn't sit up.

Adm. Turner confirmed to AIM that Woodward had told him several months ago that he was invited by Bill Casey's wave of his arm to come into his hospital room when no guard or anyone else was present. He was at a loss to explain the discrepancy between that account and Woodward's evasions on "60 Minutes" and "Nightline."

A spokesman for Newsweek confirmed that their artist's sketch on page 47 of their October 5 issue was drawn according to a description of what Woodward had allegedly seen. It shows Casey sitting bolt upright in an armchair, his paralyzed right arm grasping the arm of the chair and his left hand gripping his thigh. His mouth is open as if talking, with no indication that his entire right side was paralyzed.

Mrs. Casey found the idea that her husband would be sitting alone in a chair in his hospital room utterly absurd. He had to be assisted by at least two men to get out of bed, and be slumped in his chair. He couldn't stand by himself, and his entire right side was paralyzed. While his left arm was not paralyzed, he didn't even use it to feed himself, much less to wave at people. Casey was in a large room with a separate vestibule that one entered from the corridor. Mrs. Casey said he would not have been able to see anyone in the corridor from where he was pictured sitting by the window. This shows that Woodward did not have an accurate perception of the layout of the rooms.

Woodward's refusal to confirm on "Nightline" that Casey was sitting up during the alleged interview makes no sense in view of what he wrote. He said that when he accused Casey of knowing all along of "the contra diversion," "his head jerked, up hard." That is not a motion that he would make lying down.

Casey Could Not Converse

Here are the nineteen words that Woodward says Casey spoke during the "interview." "Okay... better ... no. You finished yet? It hurts. Oh. What you don't know. I'm gone. I believed. I believed." In addition there was a grunt and a nod that Woodward said meant "yes," when he accused Casey of knowing of the fund diversion.

Those who saw Casey during this period agree that Woodward could not have carried on this kind of conversation. Mrs. Casey said he spoke only in monosyllables and then with difficulty. Casey's secretary, Betty Murphy, said she couldn't understand what he was trying to say. She said, "He could say a few words, but, boy, they were hard to under stand." One of the doctors familiar with his condition said Casey had developed aphasia by late January, a condition that left him unable to understand or reply to questions. He said he could only be heard by putting your ear to his lips.

Woodward was obviously unaware of all this. He was evidently misled by rosy reports put out about Casey's condition. On January 27, the CIA spokesman said Casey was requesting briefing materials. True, but his daughter said he only went through the motions of looking at them, not even able to turn the pages him- self. On January 28, an unnamed official was quoted by The New York Times as saying Casey's speech was returning to normal, just at the time when the doctor now says it was getting worse. Robert Gates, deputy director of the CIA, visited Casey that day. He reported that he was "lucid... clear" but "couldn't talk well." Betty Murphy commented, "He could no more carry on a conversation than the man in the moon." Mrs. Casey said that when Gates visited on January 28 to suggest that Casey resign, Casey listened and understood but was unable to discuss the matter. She said he didn't even nod. Two days later, Gates, Donald Regan, White House chief of staff, and Attorney General Edwin Meese came with a prepared letter to the president for Casey to sign. Mrs. Casey said he tried to sign it with his left hand but couldn't do it. She signed it for him. Woodward's description of his final interview with Bill Casey was a figment of his imagination.

Not Woodward's First Big Lie

It's odd that Woodward's fabrication was given such credence despite all the evidence against it and Woodward's previous record. His first book, All the President's Men, written with Carl Bernstein, recounted a string of deceptions and lies by the authors. Sisela Bok, a teacher of ethics at Harvard, cited it in her book Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life. She said: "In pursuing their investigation, the two journalists came to tell more than one lie; a whole fabric of deception arose. Persons being interviewed were falsely told that others had already given certain bits of information or had said something about them.... what is more troubling in the book than the lies themselves is the absence of any acknowledgment of a moral dilemma. No one seems to have stopped to think that there was a problem in using deceptive means.... The absence of such reflection may well result in countless young reporters unthinkingly adopting some of these methods. And those who used them suc- cessfully at a time of national crisis may do so again with lesser provocation."

Woodward and Bernstein used their creative imaginations abundantly in writing their next book, The Final Days, which dealt with the last days of the Nixon presidency. In a special 12-page AIM Report in October 1976, Victor Lasky described three dozen instances in which statements attributed to sources were denied by those sources or statements were declared false by those in the best position to know.

Woodward and Bernstein showed their knack for gossip-mongering in a passage that said Mrs. Nixon had confided to one of the White House physicians that she and the president had not really been close since the early 1960s. They went on to say that the White House physicians were worried about her, that "she was becoming more and more reclusive and drinking heavily." The two White House doctors, Walter Tkach and William Lukash, were horrifled and angered at the impression this gave that they may have violated professional ethics by discussing patient problems with others. Dr. Tkach told Lasky: "I am infuriated by the innuendoes in this book. And I can assure you that what they have published about Mrs. Nixon is absolute nonsense. But what can you do about irresponsible young journalists who have absolutely no regard for the truth?" Neither doctor had talked to Woodward or Bernstein, and the allegation that Mrs. Nixon was drinking was denied by people who worked closely with her, including Lucy Winchester, her secretary.

It was that kind of dishonesty that led John Osborne, who covered the White House for the liberal New Republic magazine to say of The Final Days: "It is on the whole the worst job of nationally noted reporting that I've observed during 49 years in the business."

Hatcheting the Supreme Court

Woodward's next hook, The Brethren, written with Scott Armstrong, came in for scathing criticism also. Anthony Lewis, the liberal New York Times columnist, dealt it a devastating blow in The New York Review of Books of February 7, 1980. Lewis probed the charge that Justice William J. Brennan voted to uphold the conviction of a murderer named Moore only because he was trying to curry favor with Justice Harry A. Blackmun. Blackmun had written an opinion rejecting Moore's appeal, while Justice Thurgood Marshall had written an opinion granting a new trial.

Woodward and Armstrong wrote: "Marshall needed only one more (vote) to take away Blackmun's majority. His friend Brennan would surely provide the fifth vote .... One of Brennan's clerks thought that if Brennan had seen the facts as Marshall presented them he would not have voted the other way. He went to talk to Brennan and, thirty minutes later, returned shaken. Brennan understood that Marshall's position was correct, but he was not going to switch sides now, the clerk said .... Blackmun would be personally offended. That would be unfortunate, because . . . Brennan felt that if he voted against Blackmun now. it might make it more difficult to reach him in the abortion cases or even the obscenity cases."

The charge against Brennan rested on a conversation between the justice and one of his 1971-72 law clerks, Paul R. Hoeber, the clerk who had spoken to Brennan to see if he would switch his vote. Lewis tracked Hoeber down. He confirmed that he had discussed the case with Brennan, who told him, "No, I've read the opinions, it's a factual case, and Blackmun is right." He said the conversation took two or three minutes, and he was not at all "shaken" as Woodward and Armstrong had written. Hoeber checked with three other clerks who had worked for Brennan, and all agreed that what the book said was simply false. The four of them proceeded to contact 29 of the 30 clerks who had been at the Court that year. None supported Woodward's story, and only one said he had been asked about it by Woodward and Armstrong. So much for Woodward's meticulous research.

Casey, the Fall Guy

The attribution to Bill Casey of statements and revelations in the new Woodward book has been strongly challenged. There is evidence that Wood- ward succumbed to the temptation to use the same dishonest techniques that served him so well in the past. Casey, being dead, is the perfect cover for Woodward's sources. These probably include former CIA officials who disliked Casey and who didn't mind damaging the CIA and our intelligence capabilities by feeding tidbits to Woodward. He has in the past amply demonstrated that no national security secret is safe with him.

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NOTES FROM THE EDITOR'S CUFF By Reed Irvine AIM Report October-B 1987

ROBERT WOODWARD HAS CREATED A REPUTATION AS A GREAT INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER WITH a passion for thoroughness and accuracy. That reputation is built, to a very large extent, on Woodward's personal PR, i.e., his own claims that his work is based on thorough research and written with meticulous concern for accuracy, claims that do not jibe with analysis of the final product. Other reporters who are not meticulous in their research swallow this and repeat it. For example, Jonathan Alter in the October 12 issue of Newsweek writes: "Because he is such an accurate reporter, Woodward's major scoops have mostly withstood scrutiny. Over time, similar controversies involving 'The Final Days' and 'The Brethren' have been resolved in his favor." Jonathan Alter is clearly unaware of Victor Lasky's devastating critique of "The Final Days," a 12-page AIM Report published in October 1976, which Woodward has not even tried to answer. He is evidently not familiar with Anthony Lewis's exposure of the falsity of a derogatory story about Justice William J. Brennan in "The Brethren," which showed that Woodward simply did not tell the truth about sourcing his stories with care.

SINCE WOODWARD DOES TAKE GREAT PAINS TO CONCEAL OR OBFUSCATE THE IDENTITY OF HIS sources in most cases, checking him out requires an enormous amount of work. Lasky spent months working on his analysis of "The Final Days." Lewis's exposure of the falsity of Woodward's claims about the Brennan story came about because he was able to track down one of Brennan's former law clerks who in turn collaborated with three other former law clerks to track down 29 of the 30 clerks who worked at the Supreme Court in 1971-72. No one has made a comparable investment of time and money to check out other stories in this book, but I see no reason to assume that Lewis just happened to find the one instance in which the alleged research by the authors was badly flawed. Lasky had shown that "The Final Days" was riddled with the same kind of false gossip inaccurately attributed to knowledgeable sources.

WE HAVE OBVIOUSLY NOT HAD THE TIME TO GO OVER WOODWARD'S NEW BOOK WITH A VIEW TO checking for similar specific errors. We focused on the alleged deathbed interview with William J. Casey, the late director of Central Intelligence, because it was the claim that got the lion's share of the publicity and because it was relatively easy to assemble the evidence of the falsity of Woodward's story. Virtually all of it was in the public record. Nothing was more revealing than Ted Koppel's unsuccessful effort on "Nightline" to get Woodward to provide some description of the scene in the hospital room during that alleged interview. We have reproduced the verbatim text of that ex- change in this AIM Report. It is perfectly obvious that Woodward refused to say any- thing about Casey's condition, whether he was sitting or lying down, whether or not he had any tubes stuck in him, Because he feared that anything he might say might be used to prove that he had not laid eyes on the man. His excuse that providing such information might be used to discover the identities of those who helped him gain ad- mission to the hospital room is patent nonsense. He had previously had no such inhibitions about telling Adm. Stansfield Turner how he had allegedly gotten into the room, even telling him that it was in the morning, a detail that would make it easier to pin- point the identity of the security guards on duty at the time. Adm. Turner told me that he didn't have any indication from Woodward that this information was supposed to be held in confidence, but on "Nightline" and "60 Minutes" Woodward insisted that saying anything at all about how and when he got in and what he saw inside the room would endanger those who helped him. Koppel's rejoinder to that was, "Well, I'm not exactly sure I understand why a description of the director's condition at that point would point a finger in anyone's direction...," and with that he let Woodward off the hook.

WE LIST IN THIS REPORT THE 19 WORDS WOODWARD CLAIMS CASEY UTTERED DURING THAT alleged interview, but those words alone don't give the full flavor of this work of fiction. For the record, here is how Woodward tells it, minus the paragraphing to save space. "Several days later I returned to Casey's hospital room. The door was open. Scars from the craniotomy were still healing. I asked Casey how he was getting along. Hope and realism flashed in his eyes. 'Okay...better...no.' I took his hand to shake it in greeting. [Which hand?] He grabbed my hand and squeezed, peace and sunlight in the room for a moment. [Squeezed with his right paralyzed hand or with the left hand that couldn't even hold a glass of water?] 'You finished yet?' he asked, referring to the book. I said I'd never finish, never get it all, there were so many questions. I'd never find out everything he'd done. The left side of his mouth hooked up in a smile, and he grunted. 'Look at all the trouble you've caused,' I said, 'the whole Administration under investigation.' He didn't seem to hear. So I repeated it and for a moment he looked proud, raising his head. 'It hurts,' he said, and I thought he was in physical pain. 'What hurts, sir?' 'Oh,' he said, stopping. He seemed to be saying that it was being out of it, out of the action, I thought. But he suddenly spoke up, apparently on the same track about the hurt. 'What you don't know,' he said. In the end, I realized, what was hidden was greater. The unknown had the power, he seemed to be saying, or at least that's what I thought. He was so frail, at life's edge, and he knew, making a comment about death. 'I'm gone,' he said. I said no. 'You knew, didn't you,' I said. The contra diversion had to be the first question: you knew all along. His head jerked up hard. He stared, and finally nodded yes. 'Why?' I asked. 'I believed.' 'What?' 'I believed.' Then he was asleep, and I didn't get another question."

WHILE NO SYSTEMATIC EFFORT HAS YET BEEN MADE TO DETAIL PUBLICLY THE MISSTATEMENTS in Woodward's new book, it has been the target of several specific criticisms. On October 7, Bill Gertz of The Washington Times reported that senior intelligence officials had disputed Woodward's claim that Casey had engineered the car-bombing directed against Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah in Beirut on March 8, 1985. That was the story that Woodward had held back from publication in The Washington Post in order to have something that would grab headlines for his book. He had reported in The Post on May 12, 1985 that the bombing had been carried out by a counter-terrorist unit trained by the CIA. He said the bombing was a "runaway mission" carried out without CIA authorization. The sheik was not injured, but 80 people were killed, and it became known as the Bir al Abed massacre, when TWA Flight 847 was hijacked a month after this Woodward story was published, one of the passengers, Navy diver Robert Stethem, was killed by the hijackers. Someone in the control tower at the Beirut airport chided the killers about killing an innocent man, and one of them replied, "Did you forget about the Bir al Abed massacre?"

THAT STORY CHARGING AN INDIRECT TIE BETWEEN THE CIA AND THE BOMBING BROUGHT WOODWARD a warning from the CIA before it was published that it was irresponsible and would be "an invitation to murder." Woodward says that after it was published Casey called him and said that it would have "lethal consequences" and that Woodward would probably have blood on his hands before it was over. It would appear that Robert Stethem was killed to avenge the Bir al Abed bombing, which until Woodward's May 12 story appeared had not been tied to the CIA, directly or indirectly. In his book, Woodward mentions Stethem, but he does not discuss the possible connection between his story and Stethem's murder.

THE BLOOD ALREADY ON HIS HANDS DID NOT DETER WOODWARD FROM GOING FURTHER IN HIS BOOK. He alleges that Casey personally engineered the bombing, getting the Saudis to put up the money. In view of Casey's reaction to the May 12 story, it is absurd to think that Casey would have given Woodward information portraying the CIA link as even stronger, even if it were true. The Washington Times story says senior intelligence officials say that Casey opposed taking covert actions in Lebanon at the time of the car-bombing because it could have jeopardized efforts to free William Buckley, the CIA's station chief in Beirut who was being held hostage by Fadlallah's Hezbollah group. He is said to have warned the Israelis not to take any action that might result in harm to the hostages.

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