From W.N.Y.C. in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.

And I'm Brooke Gladstone. Just as Miss Runamuck exits the stage, having given up her anonymous source, enter Mr. Runamuck,

chased by a bear, or at least a wolf.

A well-known name has unexpectedly popped up in the CIA League case.

The journalist Bob Woodward of the Washington Post and Watergate fame.

Bob Woodward, arguably the nation's most famous reporter, is the current obsession of news

outlets at a loss for a story since New York Times reporter Judith Miller lost her wrestling

match with a special prosecutor investigating who leaked the name of a CIA operative.

Woodward took sides in that struggle last July on MSNBC's

hardball. There's going to be nothing to it, and it's a shame, and the special prosecutor in that

case, his behavior, in my view, has been disgraceful. This week, Woodward testified before that

same special prosecutor.

It turns out he may have received the first relevant leak.

He, like Miller, has loudly defended the rights of all reporters to protect their sources,

but at the same time, he was very quietly protecting his own,

even from his boss, Washington Post editor Len Downey, a journalistic felony.

Here's Woodward last month with CNN's Larry King.

Finally, Len Downey called me and said, I hear you have a bombshell.

Would you let me in on that? So not the rumors are about you.

And I said, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I don't.

But Downey declines to slam his in-house icon.

In Bob's case, he told the Wall Street Journal,

...