Title, print run announced for new Woodward book

NEW YORK -- The suspense didn't quite compare to the identity of "Deep Throat," but we now know the name of Bob Woodward's fourth investigative work on the Bush administration, just three weeks before the book's release.

"The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008" will be published Sept. 8 by Simon & Schuster with an announced first printing of 900,000 copies. Simon & Schuster is keeping the book under strict embargo -- although such embargoes are often broken -- and had even held back the title.

"There has not been such an authoritative and intimate account of presidential decision making since the Nixon tapes and the Pentagon Papers," Woodward's longtime editor, Alice Mayhew, said Tuesday in a statement. "This is the declassification of what went on in secret, behind the scenes."

According to Simon & Schuster, Woodward's book "takes readers deep inside the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, the intelligence agencies and the U.S. military headquarters in Iraq.

"Based on extensive interviews with participants, contemporaneous notes and secret documents, the book traces the internal debates, tensions and critical turning points in the Iraq War during an extraordinary two-year period."

The Washington Post, where Woodward currently serves as an associate editor, will run excerpts on Sept. 7. That night, Woodward will be interviewed on CBS television's "60 Minutes." (Both CBS and Simon & Schuster are owned by Viacom Inc.)

Woodward's three previous works on the Bush years have been No. 1 best sellers on The New York Times hardcover nonfiction list and their tone, like the president's approval ratings, has evolved from the essentially positive take of the first book, "Bush at War" to the far more critical "State of Denial," which came out in 2006.

Woodward's literary representative, Washington attorney Robert Barnett, declined comment when asked whether President Bush, who spoke with Woodward for the first two volumes, had been interviewed for the current book. According to Barnett, Woodward only finished "The War Within" three weeks ago.

-- AP