As New York Times columnist Flora Lewis wrote in yesterday's editions, echoing the key question of Watergate: 'What did the editors of The Washington Post know and when did they know it?'Īmong the revelations in the book that were not published earlier in the newspaper is a dramatic hospital scene last winter when Casey seemed to acknowledge that he knew about the diversion of funds from U.S. Nevertheless, when the book was excerpted in The Post, Newsweek and other newspapers starting Sunday, there were enough new details to raise the issue among journalists and some politicians of why some items were not published in the paper as Woodward learned them. In the three years he was investigating Casey's tenure at the CIA, Woodward wrote newspaper stories that included scoops on the Reagan administration's disinformation campaign designed to rattle Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, new information about Pakistan's nuclear capabilities and detail about the CIA's view of Gadhafi's mental state.

The result was that Woodward produced 75 stories in The Post since January 1986 while writing his book, 'VEIL: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987,' which arrived in Washington bookstores Monday afternoon. Casey and his directorship of the Central Intelligence Agency, Woodward and his editors at The Post have tried to divide his findings in such a way that would satisfy the needs of the paper and his publisher. When does his research go into the newspaper and when can it be held until publication of the book? When does the obligation to newspaper readers for a daily story outweigh the writer's desire to get more information for a future story?Įver since Washington Post assistant managing editor Bob Woodward began his research in late 1984 on William J. What happens when a newspaper's star investigative reporter decides to write a book about the man in charge of the nation's darkest secrets?

Veil by Bob Woodward