Posted on 04/10/2012 5:12:09 AM PDT by Kaslin
As the 40th anniversary of Watergate impends, we are to be bathed again in the great myth and morality play about the finest hour in all of American journalism.
The myth?
That two heroic young reporters at The Washington Post, guided by a secret source, a man of conscience they dubbed "Deep Throat," cracked the case and broke the scandal wide open, where the FBI, U.S. prosecutors and more experienced journalists floundered and failed.
Through their tireless investigative reporting, they compelled the agencies of government to treat Watergate as the unprecedented constitutional crisis it was. No Pulitzer Prize was ever more deserved than the one awarded the Post in 1973.
These young journalists saved our republic!
However, the myth, fabricated in "All the President's Men" and affirmed by the 1976 film of the same name, with Robert Redford as Bob Woodward and Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein, has a Hellfire missile coming its way.
"Leak: Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat" is an exhaustive study of the reporting of Woodward and Bernstein and the leaking by the FBI's Mark Felt, whose identify as Deep Throat was revealed in 2005.
"Leak" author Max Holland zeroes in on the last great unanswered question of Watergate: Why did Felt, an FBI No. 2 on the short list to succeed J. Edgar Hoover, risk reputation and career to leak secrets to the Post?
Woodward and Bernstein paint Deep Throat, writes Holland, as a "selfless high-ranking official intent on exposing the lawlessness of the Nixon White House." But this is self-serving nonsense.
The truth was right in front of Woodward. His refusal to see it made him a willing or witless collaborator in the ruin of the reputation and career of an honorable pubic servant, Patrick Gray.
Felt was consumed by anger and ambition. When Hoover died, a month before the break-in, Felt, who had toadied to Hoover, saw himself as Hoover's successor. But President Nixon went outside the bureau to name Gray from the Department of Justice acting director.
Concealing his rage and resentment, Felt wormed himself into Gray's confidence, and then set out to destroy Gray.
Felt's method: Leak discoveries of the Watergate investigation to a cub reporter at the Post, which everybody in Washington read, rather than to veteran journalists known to be FBI outlets.
This would cover Felt's tracks.
Published in the Post, the leaks of what the FBI was uncovering would enrage Nixon and make Gray appear an incompetent unable to conduct a professional investigation. This would make it unlikely that Nixon would ever send Gray's name to the Senate for confirmation as permanent director.
And if Gray, an outsider, fell because he couldn't keep the FBI from leaking, Nixon might turn to Felt, the ranking insider who could button up the bureau like Hoover did.
By ingratiating himself with Gray as he set out to discredit and destroy him, Felt expected that when Gray was passed over by Nixon, he would recommend to Nixon that he appoint his loyal deputy, Felt, as director.
Even if cynical and vicious, the scheme was clever.
Until Nixon found out Felt was the leaker in late 1972, he was considering Felt for the top job. Felt's machinations and deceptions at the apex of the FBI make Nixon's White House appear in retrospect to have been a cloistered convent of Carmelite nuns.
More revolting than the ruin of Gray's reputation was what Felt did to the good name of the bureau he professed to love. By leaking what agents were learning about Watergate, he was discrediting the FBI.
Inside the government, he made the FBI look like an agency of bumblers who could not keep secrets. Outside the government, the FBI looked like a three-toed sloth, while a fleet-footed and fearless Washington Post was unearthing the truth.
The FBI appeared beaten at every turn by the brilliant Post, when it was the FBI's homework Felt was stealing and the Post was cribbing.
Woodward and Bernstein were glorified stenographers.
And though Deep Throat was portrayed as a man sickened by the wiretaps and break-ins by the White House, Felt himself, writes Holland, "authorized illegal surreptitious entries into the homes of people associated with the Weather Underground."
In 1979, Felt was prosecuted and convicted and then pardoned by Reagan.
In "The Secret Man," Woodward calls Felt "a truth-teller." That's quite a tribute to an FBI man who lied to Pat Gray, lied to all of his FBI colleagues and lied to every journalist who asked him for 30 years whether he was Deep Throat.
If Felt was a hero, why did he not come forward to tell the country what he had done and why?
Because he was no hero.
Mark Felt was a snake. He used the Post to destroy his rivals and advance his ambitions, and the Post didn't care what his motives were because Felt was assisting them in destroying their old enemy.
The truth can't be a Hellfire missile until it becomes a best-selling non-fiction book upon which an Academy Award-winning film is produced. Until then, almost nobody will have heard about this or been affected by it. It's more like a Bic lighter than a Hellfire missile.
And don't forget 'The Washington Post' - Woodward & Bernstein's Employer and paper the broke the Watergate Story. Of which, lo these many years; much still remains; a 'story'.
And neither; post that endeavor and Pulitzer Prize received for their efforts; did much of anything to shine a light of truth in their political home town.
It's now certain that the second break-in was a set up. The DC police detective who arrested the Cubans at the scene later admitted that he had been tipped off about it two weeks in advance.
Katherine Graham and Ben Bradlee took two "reporters" to use as the lead men on a 3rd rate story and blow it all out of proportion with innuendo and supposition, but most importantly with untraceable and unverifiable "secret source" fabrication.
If it all blew up in the face of The Post, the only ones in jeopardy were the, heretofore, two, obscure, unknown, office lackeys/reporters known as Woodward and Bernstein. Who served as stenographers for the story and found fame and fortune as they went undiscovered, unchallenged, and unchecked in their and The Post's deceit.
Then in 1980, as assistant managing editor of The Post, Bob Woodward, a truly fast learner, borrowed a page from Ben Bradlee's playbook and submitted a story for another Pulitzer Prize written by another obscure office lackey/Affirmative Action hired reporter named Janet Cooke. Who, incidentally lied about her journalistic and educational background on her job application to the Post. What better stooge for Woodward to have than one so easily discredited in the event of the story blowing up in the face of the venerable Post!
And, unlike the Watergate adventure into journalistic mendacity where the "evil" Richard Nixon was portrayed as a paranoid president whom nobody liked was the target, "Jimmy's World" did indeed turn out to be a figment of the fevered imaginations of The Post newsroom and Janet did tumble for the deceit. Who would possibly believe her over the great reporter who destroyed Nixon? And whom Ben Bradlee kept around as an insurance policy and buffer between himself and discovery of the Watergate fairy tale.
JMHO as one who lived through it all from the "You won't have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore," to Dita Beard and the ITT, Republican convention front page news, non-scandal, to the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, John Mitchell, Martha Mitchell, etc., etc., etc. and finally realized: Who after living through all of that would NOT have an enemies list? Paranoid??!!?? Hell's Belles they WERE out to destroy him.
Who, or what, is this guy? A former junior Naval Intelligence operative (ONI) with some kind of access to every intel guy with an axe to grind? Every disappointed office seeker? Deep, deep roots to somewhere; to something no one can quite figure out.
To top it off, in his books, one of the gudamdist liars ever to come down the Pike to Hell. Bernstein had an excuse. He is just plain stupid as only an uneducated Leftist can be. Woodward? That's the story.
No doubt Dean again - slipperiest Bast__d ever to occupy a position of trust. Well, maybe up til the Clintons.
But I digress. Nixon was a fine guy and one of our best Presidents - the Left successfully overthrew him with the help of the "Silent Majority" who just sort of let things happen.
I love how only Woodward can get those rare deathbed interviews. They are just precious.
I think he was deep cover KGB.
So, IMNSVHO, was Dick Holbrooke ... and they were very close pals.
“According to my sources at the time - a senior FBI officer on the morning after the discovery of the second break in - it was an FBI op coordinated by John Dean. Nixon didn’t know anything about it.”
You’ll find this worthwhile:
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