The IBA is delighted to announce that Bob Woodward, the foremost journalist of his generation, will be the keynote speaker at the opening ceremony of the Annual Conference in Vancouver in October 2010. From his defining role in revealing the full extent of the Watergate scandal, to the Supreme Court, the CIA, the Pentagon, President Clinton, the Federal Reserve, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, four books on the wars of President George W. Bush, and now the Obama administration, Woodward has consistently found the inside, hidden story of Washington institutions and the American Presidency.

On Tuesday 22 September 2009, Politico reported this story: ‘Bob Woodward's Monday-morning exclusive on a 66-page report from Gen. Stanley McChrystal to President Barack Obama about Afghanistan policy was a rite of passage for the new administration: the first major national security leak and a sure sign that the celebrated Washington Post reporter has penetrated yet another administration.’

Woodward has worked for The Washington Post since 1971; he is currently the Associate Editor. He has won almost every American journalism award, and The Washington Post won the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for his work with Carl Bernstein on the Watergate scandal. In addition, Woodward was the main reporter for The Washington Post’s articles on the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks that won the National Affairs Pulitzer Prize in 2002. Woodward won the Gerald R Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency in 2003. In 2003, Albert Hunt of The Wall Street Journal called Woodward ‘the most celebrated journalist of our age’. In 2004, Bob Schieffer of CBS News said, ‘Woodward has established himself as the best reporter of our time. He may be the best reporter of all time.’

Woodward has authored or co-authored 15 books – all national bestsellers – and 11 of the 15 have been number one non-fiction national bestsellers. Woodward has more number one non-fiction bestsellers than any contemporary American author. They are:

• All the President’s Men (1974) and The Final Days (1976), both Watergate books, co-authored with Bernstein
• The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court (1979), co-authored with Scott Armstrong
• Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi (1984)
• Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981-1987 (1987)
• The Commanders (1991) on the first Bush administration and the Gulf War
• The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White House (1994) • Shadow: Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate (1999)
• Bush at War (2002)
• Plan of Attack (2004)
• State of Denial: Bush at War Part III (2006)

Woodward’s other three books, The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate’s Deep Throat (2005), The Choice (1996) - on the presidential election - and Maestro: Greenspan’s Fed and the American Boom (2000), were national bestsellers for months.

Woodward's latest national bestseller, The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006–2008, is the final book in his series about the Bush administration.He is currently working on a book about President Obama.

Newsweek magazine has used excerpts of six of Woodward’s books in headline-making cover stories; 60 Minutes has done pieces on seven of his books; three have been made into films.

Woodward was born on 26 March 1943 in Illinois. He graduated from Yale University in 1965 and served five years as a communications officer in the US Navy before beginning his journalism career at the Montgomery County (Maryland) Sentinel, where he was a reporter for one year before joining The Washington Post.