Bob Woodward's reporting on the Watergate story made him a journalistic legend, but his reliance on secret sources troubles Richard Blow. "Among journalists who care about nagging details like accuracy, there will also be the inevitable handwringing over Woodward's dubious reporting methods, the fact that he writes from a fly-on-the-wall perspective yet never identifies his sources," Blow writes. "Speaking anonymously allows people to say things that they don't have to be held accountable for, and without accountability there is no impediment to spinning, manipulating and just plain using the reporter." This is particularly evident, Blow says, in Woodward's recent book about President Bush [3], which paints Bush as "a wise, determined executive, a master at manipulating and motivating the world-weary Washington insiders around him, a visionary leader who wants to use the war on terrorism to effect world peace and the end of human suffering. ... You have to give George Bush credit for one thing. He was smart enough to figure out how to play Bob Woodward like a maestro, and now he has the hagiography to show for it."