Woodward: You have to go to Moscow to get to bottom of Russian collusion story

Veteran journalist Bob Woodward says in a new interview he believes those wanting to get to the bottom of Russia’s 2016 election meddling would have to travel to Moscow.

Woodward told New York Magazine for a story published Saturday that a reporter wishing to uncover whether Trump campaign associates attempted to collude with Russia’s government would need to visit Moscow.

“Turning over all these witness interviews, corroborating documents and so forth, [former Trump lawyer John Dowd] concludes that [special counsel Robert] Mueller may have something,” Woodward says in the interview.

{mosads}

“I don’t know that, but I believe very strongly that the answer to the Russian collusion story is in Russia. Moscow,” he continued. “If somebody who is really going to get to the bottom of the root Russian collusion issue, the answer is in Moscow.”

“If I were to go there, I don’t think I would ever come back.”

Asked if he thought he would be “killed” if he visited Russia, the Watergate journalist responded, “Yeah. It would be preposterous, given the nature of their regime and how they look at the press and so forth.”

“Maybe if I was 30 and somebody in the CIA was undercover said come and I can help you,” Woodward added. “Why do you go to the scene, why do you talk to people that were first hand witnesses, why do you try to get documents? Because that where the best version or the best obtainable version of the truth is. In the case of this, I am not going to Moscow.”

The special counsel investigation headed by Mueller hit another milestone this week with news Friday that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort had agreed to cooperate with the probe as part of a guilty plea.

Manafort was previously found guilty during a trial in Alexandria, Va., last month on charges of tax and bank fraud related to his lobbying work for pro-Russia political parties in Ukraine before the 2016 election.

Woodward’s latest book, “Fear: Trump in the White House,” went on sale Tuesday. The book depicts infighting and White House strife with various officials working to rein in the president’s worst impulses.

The book rocked the White House when excerpts were released earlier this month. Various Trump administration officials have since pushed back on the book’s characterization of the president and his senior officials.