Here's what's bugging the Confidence Man most about Buffalo Bob Woodward's revelation that he was the first known (nod to Fitz' precise language; tip o' the hat to Keith Olbermann) Plame leakee: given Woodward's demonstrated history of misleading-to-mendacious false trails on Deep Throat (tip o' the hat to Slate's Tim Noah, who has dogged and catalogued Buffalo Bob's spoor trail for several years), why, indeed, should we believe a single word he says regarding the (non-)identity of his current Deep Roy Background source?
The issue is not, as several commentators have put it, that we can't trust Woodward because he's a stooge of the Bush administration; rather, it's that we can't trust Buffalo Bob because he has a clear and demonstrated history of dissembling to his readers and other reporters regarding the identity and nature of his sources. Buffalo Bob's much-ballyhooed recent Larry King "no bombshell" appearance is the latest example.
(Note, dear readers, our thematic linkage of "Buffalo Bob" with both the "Calamity Judy Miller"/"Wild Bill Chalabi" Wild, Wild WMD theme as well as to every Boomer's favorite puppet-on-a-string, Howdy Doody. Question is, who's Clarabelle? Len Downie, or Walter Pincus?)
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