Posted on 06/09/2005 12:37:12 PM PDT by cainin04
I don't by that 'insecurity' story about the reason for the Watergate break-in. I don't know what it could be, but no spooks are stupid enough to mount a black bag op. for 'a political edge'.
I think that the FBI and CIA suspected the DNC of collaborating with Chinese or Russian spies in the call girl business the DNC hosted for visiting Senators, congressmen, dignataries, etc. Once the break-in went tits-up, Nixon would have been bound by national security and law not to reveal it's purpose. Leaving the press free to make up what ever other stories they like.
As to this issue, the last three office buildings/towers I worked in, all had papers left in the lobby, with address tags affixed. Primarily WSJ, a very expensive paper. Me thinks if they leave them now in the lobby, they left them then in the lobby as well, 30 plus years ago I would think theft was less likely to occur.
Nixon didn't order the breakin. John Dean did.
thanks good point. But my friend cited an AJC story inwhich it says that the people's names were written on their paper. Is that true?
...the apartment was visible from (just estimating) something like four other apartment buildings and numerous rooftops
Your friend is kidding right? He wants us to believe Felt, on his own, rented out an apartment in a nearby building so he could see Woodward's balcony? Or that the Assistant Director of the FBI went up on a roof several times a week to see if a red flag was showing? Now that wouldn't raise any suspicions.
You think there was just a pile of newspapers on the floor? People pay for subscriptions. If there was a pile, people's newspapers would go missing and they would be upset.
More liberal think. I've been several places where they leave a stack of newspapers out for subscribers. You don't take one unless you've paid for it. Hard for a liberal to understand. It's called honesty.
It would help to have the coulter article.... if you haven't read it, this doesn't make a lot of sense.
His stock in trade was black bags and dirty tricks.
Its not out of the realm of thinking he had some other traitors helping him or some dupes.
"He may have done some wrong but compared to some of the stuff slick willie got away with he was an amateur."
Or Ted Kennedy. Read this and pass it on:
http://www.ytedk.com/chappindex.htm
I think he actually transported them.
The SOB was like a liason between the white house and bureau.
Good points. I think he is wrong. But I just came to the FR to ask some of you who might know more about this than me. Thanks for the info. Keep it coming.
"Yeah, that is true, but it is my understanding that David Obst never knew the ID of Deep Throat. And I have read that in the beginning the book was a much different type of book, one that didn't tell Felt's story."
The Deep Throat character was added after the first draft of the book. It was clear that W & B had several sources including people like John Dean, who knew of the tapes. Deep Throat became a composite, single character.
Ann's article is right on the money. I don't think Felt in his right mind would have come forth because he knew he was one of several informers. His daughter is pushing this, because of money.
nick
nick
As to the newspaper, why would the apartment numbers be written on them? I'm thinking that the apartment staff would just deliver the papers without going through the extra hassle of writing on them....?
or Ted Kennedy. Read this, it will make you sick:
http://www.ytedk.com/chappindex.htm
Dean ordered the break-in, according to Liddy. There is Liddy's summary of his version here.
Here you are:
Woodward Does Washington
By: Ann Coulter
My only regret is that Mark Felt did not rat out Nixon because he was ticked off about rapprochement with China or detente with the Soviets.
Rather more prosaically, Felt leaked details of the Watergate investigation to The Washington Post only because he had lost a job promotion — making him the Richard Clarke of the Watergate era. This will come as small consolation to the Cambodians and Vietnamese tortured and slaughtered as a direct result of Nixon's fall. Oh, well. At least we got a good movie and Jimmy Carter out of it.
Still, it must pain liberals to be praising an FBI man who ordered illegal searches of their old pals in the Weather Underground in the early '70s. For those searches, Felt was later prosecuted by the Carter administration.
Ironically, only because of Watergate — which Felt helped instigate — could a nitwit like Jimmy Carter ever become president — a perch from which Carter pardoned draft dodgers and prosecuted Mark Felt. No wonder Felt kept denying he was "Deep Throat."
Also ironic is that Felt's free-love, flower-girl daughter was estranged from her father for decades on account of her rejection of conventional bourgeois institutions like marriage. Now she is broke — because of her rejection of conventional bourgeois institutions like marriage. (Too bad she didn't follow Pop's advice to "follow the money.")
She lives in a house bought for her by her father (evidently skirting the standard "as long as you live in my house you'll live by my rules" lecture) and said she decided to reveal her father as Deep Throat to try to make some more money. "I'm still a single mom," she explained, "I am not ashamed of this." She ought to be. See, the idea of marriage is to get a man other than your own father to support you while you raise children. (Guess what she does? That's right! She's a teacher!)
At Felt's trial, Nixon gave powerful testimony in Felt's defense. He was convicted anyway. About six months later, Reagan pardoned Felt. Nixon sent Felt a bottle of champagne (which Nixon selected from his now-infamous "Wine List") to celebrate his pardon with a note saying, "Justice ultimately prevails."
All this time, Nixon had suspicions about Felt being Deep Throat. Others may attribute Nixon's kindness toward Felt to Nixon's high principle and class. I prefer to think of it as sadism.
Of course, in Felt's defense, he wasn't Deep Throat. There was no Deep Throat. Now we know.
As most people had generally assumed, the shadowy figure who made his first appearance in a late draft of "All The President's Men" was a composite of several sources — among them, apparently, Mark Felt. But in telling the glorious story of "How The Washington Post Saved America," it was more thrilling to portray Deep Throat as a single mysterious individual, spilling his guts to Bob Woodward.
Now that Woodward and Felt are both claiming Felt was Deep Throat, the jig is up. The fictional Deep Throat knew things Felt could not possibly have known, such as the 18 1/2-minute gap on one of the White House tapes. Only six people knew about the gap when Woodward reported it. All of them worked at the White House. Felt not only didn't work at the White House, but when the story broke, he also didn't even work at the FBI anymore.
Deep Throat was a smoker and heavy drinker, neither of which describes Mark Felt.
Woodward claimed he signaled Deep Throat by moving a red flag in a flowerpot to the back of his balcony and that Deep Throat signaled him by drawing the hands of a clock in Woodward's New York Times.
But in his 1993 book, Deep Truth: The Lives of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein Adrian Havill did something it had occurred to no one else to do: He looked at Woodward's old apartment!
Havill found that Woodward had a sixth-floor interior apartment that could not be seen from the street. Even from the back of the apartment complex, the balcony was too high for any flowerpot to be seen. So unless there was a "second flowerpot," visible from a nearby grassy knoll, the red flag in the flowerpot story is ... well, full of red flags.
In addition, newspapers were not delivered door-to-door in Woodward's apartment building but were left in a stack in the lobby. Deep Throat could not have known which newspaper Woodward would pick up.
We might have known all this before 1993 if America's ever-vigilant watchdog media had been, say, half as skeptical of Bob Woodward's claims as they were of Juanita Broaddrick's.
In another scene in "All the President's Men," Woodward's sidekick, Carl Bernstein, goes to a porno theater to avoid a subpoena — and the movie "Deep Throat" happens to be the featured film! Yeah, that's how I ended up seeing "Fahrenheit 9/11." I hate it when that happens.
Havill points out that Washington, D.C., had recently cracked down on porno theaters and "Deep Throat" was not playing in any theater in Washington at the time. (Also the story begins to break down after Bernstein repeats this evasive maneuver for the fifth or sixth time.)
Woodward and Bernstein's former literary agent, David Obst, has always said Deep Throat was a fictional device added to later drafts of "All the President's Men" to spice it up (kind of like everything in a Michael Moore film).
Obst scoffs at the notion that the No. 2 man at the FBI would have time to be skulking around parking lots spying for red flags on a reporter's balcony. "There's not a chance one person was Deep Throat," he told The New York Times.
So it's not really that amazing that the identity of Deep Throat managed to stay secret for so long. I promise you, I will go to my grave without ever disclosing the name of my pet unicorn.
Posted by redguy at June 9, 2005 12:00 AM
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1419149/posts
Yup. Nixon fell for being in on the cover-up after the fact, not for ordering the break-in.
I agree with both of your points. But the AJC did report that they did write the apt numbers on the papers.
I did have a subscription to the New York Times. A number of people in my apartment building near Dupont Circle got the Times. The copies were left in the lobby with the apartment number. Mine was No. 617 and it was written clearly on the outside of each paper in marker pen. Felt said if there was something important he could get to my New York Times — how I never knew. Page 20 would be circled and the hands of a clock in the lower part of the page would be drawn to indicate the time of the meeting that night, probably 2 a.m., in the same Rosslyn parking garage."
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/stories/0605//05woodward.html
Newspapers left in a pile in my building.
Upon reading that, it sounds awful amateurish and shoddy. Not good tradecraft at all.
Just an aside, Dupont Circle is now Gay Central in DC. Maybe it wasn't back then but.... is Bob Woodward gay? Not that there's anything wrong with that!
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