Posted on 06/26/2002 7:25:42 AM PDT by Stand Watch Listen
Over the past week, the media has been full of all sorts of stories about the thirtieth anniversary of the Watergate break in, the Nixon administration's bungled attempt to break into the Democratic Party's national offices at the Watergate Hotel in Washington and steal confidential documents.
The revelation of illegal activities ordered from the Oval Office eventually forced President Nixon to resign and undermined Americans' faith in their government.
Most of the stories center around the identity of "Deep Throat" the anonymous source who gave two Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein the information they needed to break the Watergate story.
Deep Throat's identity has still not been revealed and the media is treating the debates over Deep Throat's identity as a sort of game. Unfortunately the liberal media is not raising or discussing deep and troubling moral and historical questions about Deep Throat and his activities.
We still don't know who Deep Throat was, what his or her motives were or why Deep Throat was so insistent on secrecy. Deep Throat changed our nation's history and we know little about Deep Throat or his activities. That seems terribly wrong to me.
The popular mythology promoted by the left wing media is that Deep Throat was a civic-minded person who did what he did because he was disgusted by Nixon's despicable activities and wanted Tricky Dick stopped.
The problem is that we have only Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward's word on this. Since we don't know Deep Throat's true identity we can't check Deep Throat out and verify this story. We don't even know if there really was such a person as "Deep Throat."
At least one Watergate insider, Chuck Colson, told CNN news that he thinks there is no such person as Deep Throat. Colson said that information Woodward and Bernstein attributed to one person they labeled Deep Throat in their book "All the President's Men" came from several different sources.
In other words, Deep Throat may not exist and Woodward and Bernstein may have been lying to us for all these years. In other words, Woodward and Bernstein may be far from ethical journalists who deliberately lie to their readers.
Yet the liberal media has made these characters into folk heroes? Why?
More importantly, why would Woodward and Bernstein manufacture a false source and hide the true source of their information for thirty years? There are of course many places that Woodward and Bernstein could have gotten detailed information about what was going on inside the Nixon White House but a very disturbing possibility comes to mind.
Could Woodward and Bernstein's real source have been the KGB or the Russian Embassy?
Think about it for a moment. What group of people in the early outside the US government would have the most detailed information about the inner workings of the U.S. administration than the KGB in the early 1970s? At the time of Watergate, the USA and the USSR were locked in an all out ideological and political struggle for global domination called the Cold War? Would Russian intelligence agencies or their masters in the Kremlin have passed up an opportunity to embarrass the United States, weaken American leadership and smear the US government in the early 1970s? Of course not.
The Soviet Union had good reason to loathe Richard Nixon, his opening to China helped change the balance of power in the Cold War and opened the door to the possibility of a US-Chinese alliance to contain Soviet Communism.
Getting rid of Nixon or embarrassing him would have made a lot of sense for the Soviets because it would have derailed attempts to build such an American-Chinese alliance. The Soviets couldn't have used their own media, which was recognized by the world as Communist propaganda organs, or left-wing European media outlets, which were well known for their allegiance to Moscow to spread the Watergate story.
So they would have had to "expose" the Watergate Scandal through an impeccable and respectable American media outlet such as the Washington Post.
Woodward and Bernstein and their bosses at the Post couldn't have told the readers that their real source was the KGB because it would have destroyed their credibility. Nobody would have paid attention to such reports and the Washington Post would have been reviled as a Communist propaganda rag. Woodward, Bernstein, Ben Bradlee and the rest would have probably ended up working at the National Enquirer and Nixon would have finished out his term.
Left-wing media types don't like to think about this because they still operate under the delusion that the Soviet Union was a humanitarian enterprise dedicated to the betterment of mankind and the belief that the Communist Party bosses in the Kremlin were Boy Scouts who didn't engage in dirty tricks.
More importantly, left-wing media types don't like to admit that they and their idols were ever taken in by the charlatans of the Communist world and fooled into thinking that vicious dictatorships were working for the good of humanity. Nor do left-wing media types like to admit that two of their own might value the fame and fortune they get from the popular version of the story more than the truth.
Perhaps it's time to check the KGB and Communist Party files about Watergate, which probably still exist in some dusty archive in Moscow, and to talk to the KGB and Russian Embassy personnel posted to Washington at the time of the Watergate debacle and get their take on this whole mess.
I imagine there would be some very interesting revelations from such investigations, revelations that might embarrass quite a few American media icons including Woodward and Bernstein.
Hopefully, some brave historian or reporter will realize that the truth about Watergate and Deep Throat lies not in the Washington Post building or two beat reporters' notebooks but in Moscow and go there to find answers.
My guess is that one day in the next few years some obscure scholar will publish a book based on documents dug up in some old Russian archive and interviews with retired Russian intelligence personnel that will reveal Deep Throat's true identity and the truth about Watergate. The media will either ignore this book and try to bury it or disparage it. Or it will receive some publicity and the talking heads of the media will be shocked by the truth about Watergate even they shouldn't be.
It is time for the truth about Deep Throat and Watergate to come out because the American people deserve to know the truth about their own history.
The millions of Americans who voted for Richard Nixon deserve to know why Nixon was driven from office and who was behind it. The Nixon family and all the people who worked so hard to advance Nixon's career deserve to know why Nixon was destroyed and by who. The men who were sent to prison as a result of the Watergate mess deserve to know what set the chain of events that brought about their imprisonment. The American people deserve to know the whole truth about this embarrassing scandal.
It's time for Woodward and Bernstein to come clean and tell the American people the truth about Deep Throat. Unfortunately, Bernstein and Woodward will probably take the truth about Deep Throat to the grave with them and they will continue to sit among the saints of American journalism even though they probably don't deserve this honor.
Nor will we get a good discussion of a larger ethical issue that comes out of the whole Watergate scandal - the use of anonymous sources such as Deep Throat by journalists.
How is the public supposed to believe what they see in the media or trust journalists if they don't even know where the news come from? How reliable and accurate is investigative journalism if the sources of that reporting can't be investigated and evaluated by other journalists?
How can journalists be held accountable if we can't verify the sources of their information?
It is time for Americans to demand that the media stop promoting the simplistic myths about Watergate of brave heroic reporters and brave Deep Throat standing up to a corrupt President and start demanding the whole story. This must be done because there is no way that a free society can function if important parts of that society's history are kept secret.
(Daniel G. Jennings is a freelance writer and journalist who lives and works in Denver, Colo. He has worked as a reporter and editor for daily and weekly newspapers in five states.)
These guys all need to get a life!
Besides, Deep Throat was Al Haig, who was a friend of Bob Woodward, who had briefed Haig, when Woodward was in Naval Intelligence. The author does make a good point as not being able to check on Deep Throat and what his motives were.
Looking at what Deep Throat didnt' know is revealing too. Deep Throat didn't know things that everyone in the White House knew.
What Deep Throat revealed were things that would hurt one White House empoyee and help another. Almost all leaks from a White House are to help someone that works there defeat some one else who works there.
Everyone who worked in the White House knew Nixon was taping all converstations in the oval office. Everyone including low level people knew it. Nixon made no secret that he was doing it. Nixon was not the first president to do it. FDR was. When wire recording (before tape) was invented FDR had a system put in. Other presidents upgraded it. But either Deep Throat knew Nixon had taped and didn't tell or Deep Throat did not know taping was going on, ecause when a low level white house employee revealed the taping in testimony before the Erwin Committee, the Washington Post went balistic. Surely if Deep Throat had told the Washington Post they would have used it.
The conclusion is that Deep Throat did not tell the Washington Post about the taping. The existance of the tapes was the one fact that brought Nixon down. The first thing a person in the White House who wanted to take Nixon down would have done is tell Woodward and Burnstein about the tapes.
There are two good rules in leaking. First leak stuff lots of people know, so they can't trace it back to you. Secondly leak stuff that will hurt the person you are wanting to destroy.
If you are Deep Throat what do you do say,"Hey Woodard. I heard that Nixon told Haldeman to tell Mitchell to get some money to pay some of guys the special prosecuter is questioning." Or " He Burnstein, Nixon tapes everything he says or does. The Secret Service has tape recordings of every thing said in the oval office since Nixon's first day on the job."
Taping meets both requirements. It destroys nixon yet protects the leaker. Yet Deep Throat did not leak the taping. The conclusion is Deep Throat did not know about the taping.
Who did not know? Every possible suspect knew... except Woodward and Bernstein and the rest of the media.
The only possibility is that Woodward and Burnstein made him up.
While the source's info (i.e. the White House has a secret fund from which it has paid Watergate defendants' expenses)can be said to be accurate for the most part, that is not the same as saying Deep Throat was revealing the "Truth."
The leaker or leakers known as Deep Throat were out to bring down Nixon AND TO COVER HIS OWN *SS. John Dean was never fingered as the Watergate "Bad Guy", made a real sweet deal with the prosecutors, and is treated royally even today by the Compost and other elite media.
No, Deep Throat did not tell the "Truth", but he told a version of it that suited his own interests.
Actually, John Dean's wife Mo had a reputation for, uh, well, let's just say she had a reputation.
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