Posted on 06/03/2005 2:01:00 PM PDT by CHARLITE
History professor Joan Hoff of Montana State University, an expert on the Watergate scandal, finds it interesting that Bob Woodward is claiming that he had a close relationship with former FBI official Mark Felt, now identified as Deep Throat, when Felt suffers from serious health problems, including dementia, and can't deny it. "It's just like when he said he interviewed [former CIA director Bill] Casey when Casey was comatose," she says.
Len Colodny, co-author of Silent Coup, about the "removal" of President Nixon, finds the identification of Mark Felt as Deep Throat to be rather remarkable: "A Deep Throat who can't talk."
The fact is, as AIM founder Reed Irvine documented, Woodward has been known to make things up. Woodward's Casey "interview" is a case in point. As Reed noted, "In his 1987 book, Veil, Woodward claimed he had interviewed William J. Casey, the CIA director, after Casey had brain surgery and could not speak intelligibly. Woodward didn't know that, and he made up an interview in which Casey is supposed to have spoken 19 intelligible words. It was clear that this was a falsification not only because of Casey's condition, but because his hospital room was guarded and Woodward was never admitted to it."
(Excerpt) Read more at aim.org ...
I just have to wonder, after all these years, how many really care - other than the media? I vividly remember Watergate but don't care at all who Deep Throat was.
Conspiracies are far more interesting than the mundane truth, so I'm going to stick with this one for a while :-)
You're right. Only the media cares because Woodward and Bernstein are their raison d'etre.
All journalists want to be just like them and want to have the power they had.
It's all about ego and power.
I can't get terribly excited about the attempted revival of Watergate, either.
But I must say that this is a persuasive argument. My own assumption at the time was that Deep Throat was a fiction, made up to cover things that Woodward got from various sources or simply made up.
Woodward and Bernstien still care!!! There are a lot of bucks to be made yet milking this story!!!!
Sorry, but if I have to choose between believing Bob Woodward or John Dean, Woodward wins easily.
Woodward is going ape trying to rush his book out now.
Long story short, if you don't think Mark Felt was deep throat, or deep throat never existed, you have to base that pretty much on faith (and the fact that these guys have bad credibility now), but all the folks who would know say its this guy.
I.E. the media is going to consider anyone who says there is no deep throat or says its not this guy to be a sour grapes kook.
Woodward and Bernstein were praised as Investigative reporters, now we learn they didnt investigate anything , they had an FBI pimp doing all their work for them all they had to do was write the copy.
Colodny and Gettlin both famously claimed that Al Haig was Deep Throat - a less convincing assertion than their case for John Dean as the mastermind of the Watergate breakins.
But I think this does raise excellent questions about Deep Throat. It's possible to think that both Felt and Haig were sources for Woodward - but perhaps not in the ways that are generally now accepted - or represented by Woodward.
Woodward credits Deep Throat as giving him the info. How would Felt have access to that? He wouldn't. Why would Woodward even be getting new dirt from Felt at that point when Felt was out of the loop.
Woodward had somebody else at the White House, somebody we know, and Woodward is protecting him, by laying it all off on a senile man.
Fyi.
It wasn't a case of taking Dean's word. He laid out the facts as he knew them and made a compelling case
Has anybody heard how Deep Throat (Mark Felt) could have been the source for the famous "gap in Nixon's WH tapes" when Felt had left the FBI several months prior? Also, who was doing all the legwork to monitor Woodwards signalling system?
The only explanation that I can come up with was that Felt had his own little ring within the FBI -- some of them remained active even after Felt's retirement (pipelining him the info on the tape-gap). If I'm right then there were others who knew Deep Throat's identity & kept quiet.
I totally agree....how did Felt know about the taping system..
I've watched Woodward many times on TV. Have never trusted him--he's out for his own glory. Time will prove him a consummate liar.
Several of us on FR have come to the same conclusion......
Haig would NEVER have betrayed the troops in SEA or country of South Vietnam.
I was surprised to hear a couple of days ago that he had been a lieutentant in the U.S. Navy. I'd never heard before that he had been in the military at all.
That wasn't all that private an issue. Alex told friends (including other WH staffers) long before Thompson popped the question that if asked he'd tell the truth.
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