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I don't doubt that Felt leaked classified files to Woodward. Old-line liberals in the federal bureaucracy hated Nixon. I imagine there were many other leakers as well.

But the deep truth of Watergate is that there was not really much to leak. It all amounted to a second class burglary, in which Republican operatives used questionable methods to ferret out questionable activities performed by equally corrupt Democrats. Plus discussion on Nixon's part of making use of one FBI file against his enemies, which he decided not to use after all.

The real essence of Watergate was to take these not so stunning bits of fact and make them into the biggest propaganda campaign ever mounted by the American press. Nixon was destroyed by sheer vitriol and lies, with only a small admixture of facts to leaven it. The real Deep Throat was Woodward himself, with Graham and Sulzberger and the rest of the lying MSM behind him.

The name Deep Throat was nothing but a bit of clever disinformation to take the heat off the real perpetrators, Woodward and Berstein, and to give people the impression that deep secrets were somehow being brought to light by these heroic "investigative reporters."

The fact is that most of Watergate would have been nothing more than political "gotcha" Washington style, had we not had Nixon's voice on his own White House recording system ordering Haldeman et. al. over how to get the CIA to stop the FBI investigation of the break-in and it's White House connection by threatening Helms with an exposure of the Agency's past relating to the Bay of Pigs. This cryptic comment always brought a furrowed brow to Watergate investigators, until Haldeman stated in his book, The Ends of Power that when Nixon refers to the "Bay of Pigs", he was referring to the JFK assassination. Unfortunately, Haldeman does not explain this cryptic comment further...and passed on in 1993.

Exactly. Watergate was basically low-hanging fruit.

But the deep truth of Watergate is that there was not really much to leak. It all amounted to a second class burglary, in which Republican operatives used questionable methods to ferret out questionable activities performed by equally corrupt Democrats. Plus discussion on Nixon's part of making use of one FBI file against his enemies, which he decided not to use after all.

Absolutely correct, and had it been the Kennedy machine caught red-handed (or the Clintons), it would have been brushed aside.

But the deep truth of Watergate is that there was not really much to leak. It all amounted to a second class burglary, in which Republican operatives used questionable methods to ferret out questionable activities performed by equally corrupt Democrats. Plus discussion on Nixon's part of making use of one FBI file against his enemies, which he decided not to use after all.

The real essence of Watergate was to take these not so stunning bits of fact and make them into the biggest propaganda campaign ever mounted by the American press

I absolutely agree. In the intervening years we witnessed many a story that should have been given half the journalistic coverage and outrage---I refer to the Riady/Huang/Lippo/Clinton business for one excellent example---that more than exceeded any malfeasance represented by Watergate.

Democrat presidents elicit studied indifference from reporters when evidence emerges that warrants further investigation. Republican presidents result in unending digging and hyping the least bit of information into some kind of "scandal".

"Nixon was destroyed by sheer vitriol and lies, with only a small admixture of facts to leaven it."

Watergate didn't take Nixon down, it was Nixon's reaction to it and the attempted cover up. Nixon drew a line in the sand and that was his mistake, that is what people could not forgive. At that point, he lost public support.