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"In my limited experiences with Woodward, he's been accurate," says the Weekly Standard's William Kristol, a source for Woodward's book on Dan Quayle's vice presidency. "He's a good reporter."

Woodward says that people talk to him because they know he has the time to get it right -- which is also part of the reason these seemingly unattainable sources show him a little leg. "I have the significant luxury of time, which enables me to really look at something in depth," he says. "I can go to people and then go to other people, and then go back and track and try to develop a documentary trail. I have time; most reporters don't have time. Like you, for instance," he said to me, "when you called me you said you had a tight deadline [for this story]. I don't have that."

That hasn't stopped the same old anti-Woodward arguments from being resurrected. Timothy Noah, in Tuesday's Chatterbox column for Slate, noted that "based on Woodward's own accounting of his sourcing methods, this reportage could never have found its way into the New York Times." While Slate docks Woodward for his methods, however, it doesn't once question the accuracy of his work.

The criticisms have dogged Woodward since Watergate. Take, for example, the story of President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger praying on their knees as recounted in "The Final Days," which Woodward penned with his Watergate partner, Carl Bernstein. The night before Nixon resigned, the Washington Post's then-wunderkinder wrote,

The President broke down and sobbed ... He was hysterical. "Henry," he said, "you are not a very Orthodox Jew, and I am not an orthodox Quaker, but we need to pray." Nixon got down on his knees. Kissinger felt he had no alternative but to kneel down, too. The President prayed out loud, asking for help, rest, peace and love ... And then, still sobbing, Nixon leaned over, striking his fist on the carpet, crying: "What have I done? What has happened?" Kissinger touched the President, and then held him, tried to console him, to bring rest and peace to the man who was curled on the carpet like a child.

The passage was highlighted for ridicule in an accusatory U.S. News & World Report article in April 1976. "There is dispute about the truth of these reporters' allegations -- and the way they are written," assailed the U.S. News story. "The authors relate, in eyewitness fashion, events which occurred behind closed doors. They give what appear to be direct quotations from talks that were not recorded or heard by outsiders. Often, even unspoken thoughts of participants are described. The result is a book that reads more like a novel than a news report."

Absolution came when both Kissinger's and Nixon's memoirs later recounted the same story. Of course, U.S. News & World Report failed to give the verification similar play.

Woodward's most controversial retelling, however, was penned for "Veil," when he interviewed former CIA Director William Casey on his deathbed, in room C6316 at Georgetown University Hospital, and asked him whether he knew about the diversion of funds to the Contras:

His head jerked up hard. He stared, and finally nodded yes.

"Why?" I asked.

"I believed."

"What?"

"I believed."

Then he was asleep, and I didn't get to ask another question.

Again, Woodward came under attack. "Did a Dead Man Tell No Tales? A furor erupts over the disclosures in a book about Bill Casey's CIA," wrote Richard Zoglin in the Oct. 12, 1987, Time magazine. "Not since Charles Foster Kane's immortal 'Rosebud' has a deathbed utterance caused such a stir ... It was the perfect ending for Woodward's dramatic spy saga. Too perfect, in the view of some." Time quoted then-President Reagan as calling the book an "awful lot of fiction."

The fact that Casey had died made verification of the story impossible. But as is often the case when you concentrate on the sizzle instead of the steak, much of the media missed the meat. The debate over Woodward's access to the hospital room, Casey's widow's denial that Woodward had been there and the melodrama of the "X-Files"-ish "I believe," overshadowed much bigger, far more alarming, information in "Veil." Namely, that Casey had helped set up the failed assassination attempt of Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah in a 1985 car bombing that killed 80 innocent Beirut suburbanites. Or, more importantly, that this nation has few checks and balances for wildly out-of-control CIA directors.

The fact is, strange shit happens in the world, and Woodward has an uncanny ability to get sources to dish the goods. His major source on "The Brethren" was Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, Woodward revealed after Stewart's death. Members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told tales out of school for "The Commanders." And Woodward augments his off-the-record interviews with plenty of verifications, document-checking and shoe-leather reporting. None of the charges against his reporting have ever stuck.

Regardless of his batting average, readers are alerted as to the special Woodward rules. When Woodward's books are excerpted by the Post, a special box accompanies each piece informing the reader that sourcing for the excerpt is different than for other stories. Not that Washington Post Outlook editor Steve Luxenburg -- a colleague and former deputy of Woodward's, who worked on two of these excerpts -- has any doubts about whether or not to trust the man once portrayed in film by Robert Redford.

"I know firsthand that these sources are all real," Luxenburg says. "I've seen the notes from his interviews which are extensive. And I believe, for most sophisticated readers of his books, you pretty much know who he was talking to."

"My problem is not with Woodward," says Kristol. "It's with the people who have genuinely confidential conversations with their bosses who seemed to have blabbed about them to Woodward."

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