Now it seems that Walter Pincus at the Washington Post is claiming that Bob Woodward asked him not to pursue any reporting on Woodward’s involvement with the Valerie Wilson story:

Walter Pincus, the longtime Washington Post reporter and one of several journalists who testified in the Valerie Plame case, said he believed as far back as 2003 that Bob Woodward had some involvement in the case but he did not pursue the information because Woodward asked him not to.

“He asked me to keep him out of the reporting and I agreed to do that,” Pincus said today. His comments followed a Post story today about Woodward’s testimony on Monday before special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, in which Woodward reportedly disclosed that a senior White House official told him about Plame’s identity as a CIA operative a month before her identity was disclosed publicly.

“In October, I think he did come by after I had written about being called and said I wasn’t the only one who would be called,” Pincus said, adding that he believed Woodward was talking about himself, but did not press him on it. “Bob and I have an odd relationship because he is doing books and I am writing about the same subject.”

. . . Pincus declined to comment on the other revelation in today’s story, namely that Woodward had waited until last month before revealing his conversation with the White House official to Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. “I don’t talk about what other people do, other reporters,” he said. “Everybody does in this business what they think is the right thing to do.”

Pincus also declined to comment on what reaction there has been in the Post newsroom to Woodward’s testimony. “I’m not listening,” he said.

Can anything be more damning to the state of the media today? The Bush administration has essentially made news reporters at the NY Times, NBC and now the Washington Post the hot story, intentionally or otherwise. Now we in the blogosphere are all pursuing the issue of why journalists keep covering for Dubya, Cheney & Associates rather than focusing on the real issues of concern:

One, the increasing mountain of evidence that the Bush Gang of Nine knowingly cherry picked the intelligence and willfully ignored other evidence and analyses from the CIA and the State Department that dissented from their preconceived agenda in order to mislead the country into invading and occupying Iraq; and

Two, that they outed the identity of a covert CIA operative as part of a smear campaign against a critic of their misuse of that intelligence, specifically the ridiculous story that Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy 500 tons of yellowcake uranium (ridiculous because, as Bush and Cheney knew, Saddam already had a cache of yellowcake in his possession that was more than sufficient for bomb making; what he lacked was any means to process that yellowcake into bomb grade material).

Yet here we are, once more, discussing the failures of reporters to keep themselves from being the story. It seems preposterous, but true. The so-called liberal media is firmly embedded with the Bushies (pun intended). What a cast of characters: Judy Miller at the Times, Woodward at WaPo, Novak at CNN, Russert and Matthews at MsNBC. Breaking all the scoops Republicans want us to hear, and keeping quiet about what they don’t think we need to know.

I can’t wait for the movie. Maybe they can get Terry Gilliam to direct. I hear he’s very good at black comedies and farces.