Media warriors talk of source battle

CAMBRIDGE -- The Watergate-era reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein offered a spirited defense yesterday of anonymous journalistic sources, at a Harvard forum that explored the parallels between the Nixon administration they covered as young reporters and the current Bush presidency.

The two journalists extensively used anonymous sources to expose various efforts that eventually brought down the Nixon administration.

Both now work at a time when reporters are regularly threatened with jail to force them to name sources, and when media critics say such sources are used too frequently.

''Particularly in the current atmosphere of war, a secretive administration . . . those sources are our lifeline," Woodward said of anonymous sources who have disclosed information without being named by reporters.

Bernstein said he would consider going to jail to protect the identity of an anonymous source. ''As a last resort, I think there is no alternative," he said.

Their discussion yesterday at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government drew almost 500 people, including many high school students who were not born when Woodward and Bernstein covered the Nixon Watergate scandal for The Washington Post in the early 1970s.

During yesterday's session, the two traded barbs and asides about their days covering the Watergate scandal.

But their address came against a backdrop of a CIA leak investigation into the alleged public uncovering of a covert agent, Valerie Plame Wilson, allegedly by at least one Bush administration official. Woodward said recently that he had gotten information about the CIA agent earlier than other journalists, but had disclosed it only recently to his bosses at The Washington Post and to federal prosecutors.

Woodward, who is now an assistant managing editor at the newspaper, said he had not been fazed by the criticism. ''I can deal with it," he said. ''I am going about my business."

Woodward added that overly aggressive pressure from prosecutors on journalists to give the names of sources could ultimately hinder reporters in their efforts to scrutinize public officials.

''You will dry up the real story of what's going on in government," he said.

In May, Woodward and Bernstein acknowledged the identity of their most famous anonymous source, retired FBI agent W. Mark Felt, who had been referred to as Deep Throat. Felt had come forward at the urging of his family. Woodward wondered yesterday if Felt's deteriorating mental condition might have limited his judgment in coming forward.

''I don't know how much Mark Felt participated in that decision," he said.

But much of yesterday's discussion of more than 90 minutes, including audience questions, focused on coverage of the Bush administration's decision to go to war in Iraq.

Here, Bernstein was much more openly critical of Bush, while Woodward said his books, which he described as ''neutral," offered a sufficiently detailed glimpse into the White House without being overly didactic.

But Bernstein, a contributing editor for Vanity Fair magazine, said the Bush administration's penchant for secrecy resembles the presidency that the two reporters helped topple more than three decades ago. He suggested that the Bush administration's scrutiny in the CIA leak case also was similar to the problems faced by Nixon as the Watergate scandal unraveled.

''I think it is, in a little different way, happening again," Bernstein said.

Though the two journalists have not worked together since Watergate, save for the Felt revelation this year, they seemed like old friends yesterday, finishing each other's sentences, Bernstein defending Woodward, Woodward recounting details about their time working together.

''Over the years, the friendship between us has deepened," Woodward said.