The Source of Whose Troubles? Up to Our Ears in Deep Throats, Parsing the Lessons of the Leak

On its face, the question seems absurd. The drama of two young metro reporters for The Washington Post helping to topple a corrupt president cast a golden glow over the news business in the mid-1970s.

Newspapermen became cinematic heroes, determined diggers who advanced the cause of truth by meeting shadowy sources in parking garages, and journalism schools were flooded with aspiring sleuths and crusaders.

But the media's reputation since then has sunk like a stone, and one reason is that some in the next generation of reporters pumped up many modest flaps into scandals ending in "gate," sometimes using anonymous sources who turned out to be less than reliable. Journalism became a more confrontational, even prosecutorial business, with some of its practitioners automatically assuming that politicians in the post-Nixon era must be lying, dissembling or covering up.

The disclosure last week that Deep Throat, Bob Woodward's secret Watergate source, was former FBI official Mark Felt provided a needed reminder that sometimes reporters have no other way to ferret out vital information than by promising anonymity. In the war-against-its-enemies atmosphere of the Nixon administration, Felt not only would have lost his job had he gone public about White House skulduggery -- he was threatened with firing just as a suspected leaker -- but might well have been prosecuted for breaking the law.

He was mean and vindictive

If Nixon was mean and vindictive, Felt would have been revealed Just after the election in 1972 for haveing a history of doing illegal bugging and breakins. Felt had authorized illegal break ins for other Demcratic Presidents. He would have been painted by Nixon as the master mind of illegal breakins. Felt could have been fired and prosecuted by Attorney General Mitchell for being the handmaiden of J. Edgar Hoover. Imagine if Nixon gone public in 1972 revealing the Homo-sexual life style of J. Edgar Hoover and his bugging of Martin Luther King. Nixon could have turned watergate into an investigation of his own and previous Democratic administrations. He would have had Democrats in congress covering up for FDR, Truman, JFK and LBJ.

A mean and vindictive Nixon would have burned the tapes and crucified Deep Throat and 4 of his Democratic predicessors.

There is No evidence that Nixon authorized the break in. There is evidence he tried to cover it up. >A mean and vindictive man would have taken out some fall guys the day after the 1972 election and then went after Democrats guilty of the same thing. The main bad guy would have been Felt.

There ia a lot of coverage in the media about an October 19, 1972 converstation between Nixon and Haldeman talking about Felt. At that time Watergate was not even a blip on the media radar. At that time I was doing 4 five minute and 2 fifteen minute newscasts a day. From June when the break in occured until after the following November election, there was a total of just 5 stories about the Watergate Break In on AP newscasts that were written to be aired between 8AM and 1PM Monday through Fridays. It was not a story in the 1972 election. Only after the big Nixon win did it become a story. But a mean and vindictive Nixon could have made the Democats and there COMPOST pay big time for even mentioning it.

The only media covering it to any real extent at the time was the Washington Post and they were not covering it on the front pages.

But if you think Nixon was mean and vindictive, you don't understand mean and vindictive. How did Nixon know that Felt was the leaker on Oct. 19, 1972. If you are bright enough to figure that out, then you can figure out that John Mitchell's justice Department could have indicted and convicted Felt of illegal activities committed long before Nixon became President.

It was months before special prosecutor was hired and Felt turned States evidence. If Nixon had used Mitchell and the Justice Department to indict Felt, Felt would have gone belly up to Nixon to keep from spending a decade in Prison. In return for keeping all his freedom but a year or two, Felt would not have talked to any media at any time. And Democrats would have been too busy defending the illegal breakins and wire tappings of FDR, HST, JFK, and LBJ to hold hearings on watergate.

Felt was as guilty as sin and at that time the Attorney General would have been happy to destroy Felt. At that time there was no special prosecutor to save his life.

Nixon tried to defend and cover for his employees. It cost him his presidency. A truly mean and vindictive president would never have defended he would have attacked and won.

Mean and vindictive men attack. Gentle men defend.

Nixon did nothing connected to Watergate. He did not plan the break in. He did not approve the break in. He did not know about it until it was over.

You will note that none of the players in the Watergate game were connected to the Nixon Campaign. Everyone in the campaign knew by June of 1972 that Nixon was going to win in a huge landslide. There was zero real reason to break into the Democratic headquarters. The internal polls showed a huge Nixon win. Only Roosevelt got a larger percentage of the votes when running for president.. In 1936 Roosevelt got 60.8 percent of the votes. That was Roosevelts biggest win. In 1972 Nixon got 60.7 percent of the votes for the second biggest win of the 20th century.

There was just no reason to break into the DNC. But Nixon's people did it. Nixon's crime was he tried to cover for his people. The obstruction of justice was not to protect Nixon. It was to protect John Mitchell, and other members of his administration. Had Nixon thrown his underlings to the wolves he would not have been guilty of any crime or misdemeaner.

Nixon's crime was trying to protect members of his own administration. An other president would have thrown them to the wolves in a heart beat.

Consider that in 1964 a Democrat operative broke into Republican candidate Barry Goldwaters offices and stole lists of Barrys local campaign officials. The Democrats then used that list to send commands that screwed up Barry's campaign.

Using the list the Democrats knew who was the local Goldwater people in every Ohio county. They knew who the national Goldwater campaign contact was for a local area. The Democrats would pretend to be Goldwater's staff and call fake orders to the local campaign people. For example if Goldwater was to speak from a train from 12:00PM To 12:30PM the democrats posting as Goldwater people would have the train conductor pull out at 12:15PM in the middle of Barry's speech. They thought that was very funny.

The Democrat operative who broke in and stole the records wrote a book about breaking into Goldwater headquarters and pulling his practical jokes. The media thought it was very funny... ha ha ha. His punishment.. writing a New York Times best seller and being a featured guest on the today show talking about how he screwed Barry Goldwater.

Perhaps you can see why Nixon tried to protect his staff from the obvious double standard.

But rest assured had Nixon done what Ike did when his chief of staff got in minor trouble and fired all conserned the day after the break in, Nixon would have been home free.

Nixon is presented as a cold and cruel man.. but a cruel man does not risk his job and reputation in an effort to save his staff. Howard Baker, Barry Goldwater and other Republicans with the help of the media stuck their knives in Nixon's back. Nixon never retaliated even when he could have.

If you think Dan Rather tried control the winner in the 2004 campaign, he must know he is an amatuer. Walter Cronkite was the master manipulator of publie opinion. Dan was a poor student and got caught. Rather and the rest brought Nixon down.

Nixon had committed the unpardonable sin. He had defeated a communist loving Democrat for the Senate seat from California. Her name was Helen Gahagan Douglass. Nixon said she was pink (a term for communist sympathiser) down to her panties. Then once elected he helped bring Alger Hiss to justice. The left loved Hiss. They refused to believe he was a Russian spy when Boris Yeltsin released KGB files proving he was.

The left did not like Nixon. They convinced the Amerian people he was a bad guy.

The media told you Nixon was a brooding evil man and we believed them.

The media told you Ford was a supid awkward man and we believed them. Even though Jerry Ford has a Phi Beta Kappa key from Yale and was a starter for the Michigan foot ball team that easily defeated Ohio State.

The media told you Reagan was a dumb actor that could only read lines wrtten by brilliant speach writers and we believed them. It does not matter that history proves that many of those speeches were written in long hand on 8 by 11 tablets in Reagans handwriting. NO one notices that Reagans speech writers have never been able to write as well since they stopped writing for Reagan.

The media told you Bush 41 was a wimp even though he flew 27 missions as pilot of torpedo bombers in the Pacific during WWII. It was said during WWII that torpedo bomber pilots had trouble waking do to the size of their testicles.

The media tells us George w. Bush is a dummy who can be outsmarted by anyone with a brain. I guess the logical conclusion is that Gore and Kerry don;t have any brains at all.

The media lied about Nixon. They lied about every Republican president.

Just because they did it 40 years ago is no reason to believe them.

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