Jim DiEugenio spanks The Post

[Jim DiEugenio]

I had to see the film twice, because I could barely believe some of the scenes I was witnessing.

And I wanted to note the double standard in all this without actually pointing it out.

Namely, one for Oliver Stone and one for everyone else.

After my second viewing, I kind of felt sorry for Ellsberg. I mean, to dispose of him in about 14-15 minutes, when he was the guy who got the PP and supplied them to about 19 newspaper outlets, and then was the person who was criminally indicted, along with his friend Russo. I mean to marginalize Ellsberg and to make heroes and heroines out of Graham and Bradlee?

What is wrong with this picture? Just about everything.

[Joseph McBride]

[FONT=&amp]As for that even more fictitious movie about The Post, ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, at the time Alan Pakula was directing it, I had a brief meeting with him at his home. He was a very nice man, and that Saturday a publicist had sent me to [/FONT][FONT=&amp]his home to do an interview but hadn't told him. So he apologized and said he was too busy to talk. I had time for just one question. A friend who was an historian studying the RFK assassination had told me Bob Woodward was CIA I didn't realize at the time that Woodward actually was/is an ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence) operative. After serving in Vietnam on a ship handling intelligence, Woodward had the job of giving the official top-secret Naval Intelligence briefing to Alexander Haig every day for a year in the White House (Woodward still denies this, but it's all accurate).

Anyway, I asked Pakula if he had heard the story about Woodward being CIA, and he said he had heard it, "But I can't think about it while making the film, or I'll go crazy."[/FONT]