Bob Woodward’s specialty is reporting stories for which he’s guaranteed anonymity to those who talked to him. He now violates that promise.
By Tunku Varadarajan Nov. 9, 2026 2:05 pm ET
Starting with “All the President’s Men” (1974), for which Carl Bernstein was his co-author, Bob Woodward has cranked out, on average, one book every other year. Now, like clockwork, two years after “War” (2024), comes Mr. Woodward’s “Secrets: A Reporter’s Memoir.”
He should have called the book “Betrayals,” as its overriding purpose is to tell us who his unnamed sources have been over the long and lauded arc of his journalistic life. Co-written with Claire McMullen, a young writer from Australia, Mr. Woodward’s book exposes, hangs out to dry, stabs in the back, snitches on—pick your disdainful phrase—many of the people who had agreed to talk to him on condition that he keep their names secret.
Over the years Mr. Woodward has assembled a vast menagerie of undisclosed sources. His stock in trade— famously, and controversially—is the private or anonymous conversation, conducted on what journalists call “deep background.” In “Secrets,” he explains this phrase. It is, he writes, “newspaper terminology meaning I could use the information but not reveal where it came from.” As part of the deal, he also must blur their institutional affiliation in a way that makes it hard to track them down, even as he discloses that his interlocutors have been at the heart of the White House, say, or the FBI.