New Book Says Bob Woodward Burned Hillary Clinton’s Ghostwriter – Washingtonian.com
Bob Woodwardburned the writer Barbara Feinman Todd, she writes in a new memoir about her career as a researcher and ghostwriter. Woodward, she writes, pressed her to reveal an anecdote about her time working on Hillary Clintons It Takes a Village, promised not to use it, then went ahead and reported it out for his book The Choice. The charge is contained in Feinman Todds new memoir,Pretend Im Not Here, which officially goes on sale Tuesday.
Washingtonian ran anexcerpt fromPretend Im Not Here in its February issue, but the Woodwardstory isnt inthe portion weran. I read afinishedcopy of the book.
Feinman Todd and Woodward have a long professional history. As a copy aide at the Washington Post the early 80s, she campaigned to join the investigative team the Watergate star reporterwas leading, which she did in fall 1983. He later hired her as the researcher for his bestsellerVeil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987.
Feinman Todd went on to a successful career as a researcher for Carl Bernstein, Bob Kerrey, and Ben Bradlee, and a ghostwriter for Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, fringe Republican presidential candidate Morry Taylor, and Clinton.
After she finished her work on Clintons book in late 1995, she writes, Woodward invited her to have coffee and catch up. They went for a walk, during which he bent down and tied her shoes. And then, she writes, he began working her. He was working on a book about the Clintons and said he wanted to understand Mrs. Clintons general state of mind. She recognized the technique: He was pressing me like a source. The invitation to catch up, I now realized, had been a ruse because Woodward knew I was leaving town for nearly a month, and he intended to empty my pockets while my memory was still fresh.
Feinman Todd says she folded and gave Woodward what she calls the pearl: She told Woodward about a meetingshe sat in on withHillary Clinton, Mary Catherine Bateson, and the New Age authorJean Houston in the White House Solarium, where Houston guided Clinton through an exercise of imagining she was talking to Eleanor Roosevelt, then inhabiting Roosevelts persona and reversing the conversation. Clinton also spoke to Mahatma Gandhi during the exercise.
Feinman Todd says she revealed this under the condition Woodward didnt use it, but after returning to the US after traveling in Europe, she found herself strangely frozen out by Hillary Clinton and uncredited in the book, a minor Clinton scandal that became known as Thankyougate.
Not long afterward, Feinman Todd writes, Woodward contacted her to say he needed to give her a heads-up about an excerpt of his new book that was to run in the Washington Post. In words I cant remember precisely because I went into a state of shock, he admitted that even though he promised not to, he had taken what I told him in confidence and gone to the other participants to confirm the story.
Reached by phone, Woodward saysFeinman Todds account is not correct at all.
Woodward, she writes, likely began reporting it out the moment my plane took off for Italy. Woodwards reporting of theSolariumincidentresulted in huge headlines and publicity for his bookand, she says she realized,may have accounted for Clintons otherwise-inexplicable frostiness toward her. Woodward tells WashingtonianFeinman Toddwasnt named in the book, and that none of the people in the Solarium story contested his account.
Reached by phone, Feinman Todd, who is the founding Journalism Director at Georgetown University and teaches in the English department, says she and Woodward maintained a cordial relationship after the purportedly betrayed confidence. She has told the story to others in confidence over the years. While acknowledging the newsworthiness of this thread in the book, she emphasizes that For me, this is a book about me.
The incident, she says, has weighed on her for years. After this whole thing happened I really lost my confidence in my writing, and I think its part of the reason I kept ghostwriting and why I kind of hid in academia. Woodward is only one focus of her dismay: I did a bad thing, as you may have noticed, so its not just feeling betrayed but also feeling disappointed by myself, but certainly not intending for my mistake to go any further than it went.
Feinman Todd says she did not giveWoodwarda heads-upabout this book.
In 2011, a bizarre coda to the talefurther twisted her relationship with Woodward. After working with him on Veil, Feinman Todd helped legendary Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee with research thateventually became part of his memoir A Good Life. Part of Feinman Todds contribution was a series of interviews with Bradlee that she recorded and transcribed. In one of them that didnt make his memoir, he talked about some unease he had with Woodward and Bernsteins Watergate reporting, especially with regard to their source Deep Throat.
Bradlee told her he had a residual fear in my soul that that isnt quite straight. But he said, You cant argue with success. I mean, one way or another they were right. Whether theyve embellished that or not.
Bradlee biographer Jeff Himmelman read the transcript and included it in his book Yours in Truth. The release of the material predictably caused a sensation; Woodward strongly criticizedthe excerpt of the bookthat ran inNew York magazine, sayingBradlees words about Watergate were taken out of context and that the transcript Himmelman gave him showedBradlee hadsaid Woodward and Bernsteinhadnt embellished.
Woodwardmade a similar argumentto Himmelman before publication, Feinman Todd writes, setting in motion a phone call fromHimmelman to herto inquire about how certain she was about thetranscript. Feinman Todd suggested he check it againstthe tape, which should have beenpreserved with Bradlees archives in the Post building. Thats the weird thing, she writes that Himmelman told her. All the tapes of all your interviews are there, in a box. Except that one.
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New Book Says Bob Woodward Burned Hillary Clinton's Ghostwriter - Washingtonian.com