Woodwardgate: Deep Throat or Shallow Reporting?

Original FReeper research | 12/06/2005 | Fedora

[Sacajaweau]

While Woodward identified Felt as a player, from what Woodward said, I gathered that Deep Throat was a compilation of people.

I keep thinking about Henry Grunwald. He was the Chief OpEd reporter at Time, Inc. during Watergate and the first to say that Nixon should step down. Henry died Feb 26, 2005. Henry is/was the father of Mandy Grunwald. Mandy is the wife of Matt Cooper!! Such a small world!!

Vanity Fair got the exclusive on Felt's coming out on May 31, 2005. And then there is the exclusive Valerie and Joe spread.

There's a lot of hidden players in this and I think the big player is Hillary.....to whom the gift of "outing Rove" would flow.

[Fedora]

Interesting thoughts. I have gotten the impression Hillary thinks of Watergate as her "glory days" and tends to use it as a playbook. Kennedy and Kerry also give me that impression.

[The Right Stuff]

Very interesting. Also, Colby's death was quite suspicious. It might be interesting to see where that investigation leads!

[freema]

Bookmark for when my brain can focus.

[the gillman@blacklagoon.com]

Deadwood and Bumstain are just that.

[Fedora]

Colby's departure was kind of "Paisley II", IIRC. Another thing about Colby that interests me is that he got rid of James Angleton with the help of a leak to Seymour Hersh. I tend to view Colby as contributing to the developments outlined in this article:

W. Raymond Wannall, "Undermining Counterintelligence Capability"

SNIP

The June 1972 burglary at the Democratic National Committee's headquarters in Washington's Watergate complex gave impetus to a series of policy changes instituted or supported by the anti-intelligence lobby. These changes resulted in the elimination of certain committees and initiatives established to contribute to the effective functioning of intelligence and counterintelligence missions.

SNIP

This drastic reduction in the caseload led to the abolition of the internal security branch of the FBI's intelligence division in 1976.

A comparable de-emphasis on Communist matters took place in the CIA. In 1977 President Jimmy Carter appointed Admiral Stansfield Turner as the new Director of Central Intelligence (DCI). He soon dismissed several hundred of the Agency's experts on Communism. Turner, in his memoirs, justified the reduction in staff by pointing to a previous study, conducted in mid-1976 under DCI, later President, George H. W. Bush, which recommended the abolition of 1,350 positions in the Agency's espionage branch. Turner claimed that, of the final total of 820 positions vacated largely by attrition, only 17 people were actually dismissed, while 147 took an early forced retirement.10 But the CIA has never fully recovered from the Turner-era reductions in this critical area.

SNIP

[Fedora]

ROFL! :-)

[chb]

Nixon is usually referred to as being paranoid.

Obviously, this runs counter to the old saw that you're not paranoid if everyone really is out to get you.

[Fedora]

It seems to me that in this case the old saw and the other aren't mutually incompatible: Nixon's enemies saw a weak point in his psyche and hammered on it.

[BurbankErnie]

Let us not forget that Maureen Orth, Tim Russert's wife, is a contributing Editor with Vanity Fair.

[Sacajaweau]

I did a long dissertation on all the husbands and wives involved on the Dem side of the track. Just amazing!!

[Fedora]

Hmmm. . .I may have to dig into that. Sacajaweau, what's the link to your dissertation?

The VF/TIME nexus becomes even more interesting when you add Newsweek to the mix: Evan Thomas is Norman Thomas' grandson. I posted a bit on that and some other stuff about Newsweek on this thread:

Faulty Sources Isikoff & MSM previously used: Karen Kwiatkowski & Patrick Lang

The names mentioned in this part of the present thread are also interesting to look into:

Sources in the Department of Justice and FBI leaked information pointing towards Nixon to DNC Chairman O’Brien, who worked with Sandy Smith and Hugh Sidey at TIME and Peter Lisagor at the Chicago Daily News.

Watergate and the Two Lives of Mark Felt

The tip about Felt had come to the White House via a roundabout route. According to comments by Haldeman and other Nixon aides captured on White House tapes, the original source was Sandy Smith of Time magazine, widely considered to be the best-informed reporter covering the FBI. A Time lawyer had passed the information to Assistant Attorney General Henry Peterson, who in turn passed it on to the White House, according to the tapes.

Smith, who has Alzheimer's disease, has consistently declined to talk about his Watergate sources.

Athan Theoharis, The Boss, 450:

Johnson likewise requested Hoover's help in monitoring the press. Periodically after 1965 the White House requested FBI name checks on its more prominent media critics, including NBC commentator David Brinkley, AP reporter and Vietnam correspondent Peter Arnett, New York Times reporter Harrison Salisbury, syndicated columnist Joseph Kraft, Life magazine Washington bureau chief Richard Stolley, Chicago Daily News Washington Bureau chief Peter Lisagor, and Washington Post executive Ben Gilbert.

In the case of Lisagor, the president also insisted on learning the journalist's sources of "classified Air Force material." Complaining that Lisagor was "tearing" him apart and "getting information from someplace," Johnson asked Hoover to "find out what he is doing and where he is getting his information." The FBI "could not do that," Hoover objected, for "if it were found out it would bring considerable discredit not only on the FBI, but the President himself." Since the FBI had given the White House "everything we have" on Lisagor, Hoover recommended to his aides that they "stand pat for a few days and not make any positive emphasis on investigating Lisagor" but just advise White House officials "we have various lines out to get a line on Lisagor."

Hoover did not sit idly by, however. Quite the contrary, through the Bureau's contacts in the Washington press corps, the Director attempted to identify Lisagor's sources. But the only information uncovered, through a U.S. News and World Report reporter, was that Lisagor was "probably among one of the most able 'diggers' for news among Washington press corps," attended all background briefing conferences at the State Department and Capitol Hill, had "a knack for picking out significant remarks made at such briefings," and had "excellent contacts high up in the State Department."

I believe when I looked into this a while back, I learned the Bureau actually had a more specific suspect for Lisagor's source than Theoharis indicates, as in my copy of his book I've handwritten down the name "Marguerite Higgins". I believe I got that from a different book discussing some files released through FOIA after Theoharis' book was written. IIRC correctly Higgins was Hoover's top suspect but he could not definitively name her as the leak source because there were about 100 sources with access to the information and he was only able to narrow the list down to about 7 possibilities.

[Fedora]

I just checked; it looks like my source on Higgins is an FBI file quoted in Anthony Summers' book on Hoover (which is a generally unreliable book, but in this specific passage it's a direct quote). Here's a bit on Higgins:

Marguerite Higgins

Higgins was sent to Vietnam in 1953 where she reported the defeat of the French Army at Dien Bein Phu. During the fighting she narrowly escaped injury when while walking alongside the photographer, Robert Capra, he was killed when he stepped on a land mine.

In 1955 she travelled extensively in the Soviet Union and afterwards published her book Red Plush and Black Bread (1955). This was followed by another book on journalism, News is a Singular Thing (1955). Higgins also covered the civil war in the Congo.

Higgins made many visits to Vietnam and her book Our Vietnam Nightmare (1965), documented her concerns about United States military involvement in the region.

[christie]

Bookmark to read after I've had some sleep.

[Sacajaweau]

In speaking of Felt, Woodward inferred that Deep Throat was more than just Felt, it was a compilation of people.

One of the things I caught along the Plamegate path was that Henry Grunwald was the first to write that Nixon should resign. Henry was Chief OpEd for Time, Inc. during Watergate.

After listening to Woodward and the "death clause" regarding "revelation" of Deep Throat, I discovered that Henry died February 26, 2005....3 months before Felt came out.

Add the fact that Henry is/was the father of Mandy Grunwald to the equation and the fact that Mandy is Hillary's best friend, MEDIA advisor and Bubba's former campaign manager.......and lo and behold....Mandy is married to Matt Cooper!!

[Fedora]

I just reviewed what Halberstam's Powers That Be says on that, and from his account it sounds like TIME editor-in-chief Hedley Donovan was behind the decision to call for Nixon's resignation, but Grunwald agreed with the decision, largely based on the revelation of the White House taping system; and prior to this John Dean had developed a close relationship with TIME through Hays Gorey.

[geopyg]

At a glance I thought the title said "swallow"!?

Tired - will read later.

[Fedora]

LOL. Reading when tired can do that :-)

[The Right Stuff]

Fed, you really need to write a book about this - you could blow the whole establishment sky high, especially just by betraying the whole incestuous cabal!