BTW, I found yet another Watergate connection to the 9-11 Commission:
Fred F. Fielding
Legends in the Law: A Conversation with Fred F. Fielding
TWL: In 1970 you came down to Washington to work in the White House as an assistant to John Dean, who later became known for his role in the coverup of the Watergate matter and for testifying against the Nixon administration. What led you to apply to work in President Nixon’s counsel’s office with John Dean?
FFF: “Apply” is not quite the right word. It was known in Washington circles that the White House was looking for an attorney to work with Dean as his chief deputy. The large D.C. law firms all had candidates. The partners at Morgan, Lewis did not think that they had a suitable candidate in their Washington office, so they recommended me from Philadelphia. I came down for an interview and got the job. In hindsight, I was probably perfect because John Dean was a “Washington” lawyer, and I had no Washington experience. I was a litigator, but I was not a threat to him in political circles.
[SNIP]
TWL: Dean described what the two of you did as building the “law firm in the White House.” Was that a good description?
FFF: It was. We tried to get as many clients as we could and handle as many different problems as we could. We were willing to act as attorneys for anybody who worked for the White House. We even counseled staff people on divorce issues and 10 Filipino stewards on their immigration status. We also broke new ground. It sounds odd to say this now, but at that time there was no clearance process for presidential appointees who needed Senate confirmation. We devised questionnaires and set up a system, which is the system now in place with some evolution.
TWL: The Committee to Re-Elect the President authorized the break-in of the Watergate apartments where the Democratic party had offices—an action that ultimately led to the resignation of President Nixon. Did Dean consider you for the position of general counsel to the Committee to Re-Elect the President?
FFF: I learned afterward in Dean’s testimony that the committee had asked him to give me up to be its general counsel. But Dean declined, saying that he needed me to run his office. The position went to G. Gordon Liddy, who is currently famous as a right-wing talk show host, and who had a notoriously cavalier attitude toward the law.
[SNIP]
TWL: Were you the person who told Dean about the Watergate break-in?
FFF: Yes, I told him of the news accounts that the break-in had occurred when he called me from the Philippines. I did not know what it portended, but he said he was coming right back and seemed very concerned. In hindsight, I guess he was!
TWL: Afterward you two went through Howard Hunt’s safe, the contents of which became infamous because of all the details of “dirty tricks” operations contained there. Were you surprised at the things you found in there?
FFF: I sure was. At that point we were trying to find out as much as we could about Mr. Hunt. I did not even know who Howard Hunt was, but we discovered that he had a safe in the White House basement. We went through the safe to see what was in there. There were a lot of things, including a gun.
[SNIP]
TWL: Is it true that Dean would sometimes use your house when he was being staked out by the press?
FFF: My town house in Old Town, Alexandria, was at the corner of Queen and Union Street across the street from Founders Park. Dean had the corner town house right behind my house at Quay and Union. There were wooden fences and an alley between us. When the press was staking Dean out, the whole Founders Park would be full of press, sitting around, smoking, throwing footballs around. The thing that amazed me was the reporters could never figure out how John got in and out of his house. They never caught on that he would come to my house and walk through.
[SNIP]
TWL: Are you still friendly with Dean?
FFF: He still calls me on the phone from time to time. John Dean was fired and later ended up spending some time in prison for his role in Watergate.
Was Fred Fielding Deep Throat?
The beauty of the Fred Fielding theory is that it can accommodate the most forceful part of Mann's argument—that Deep Throat, whoever he was, had ready access to FBI files. Both Dean and Fielding (who was Dean's deputy) did have an appallingly vast knowledge of what the FBI knew, and Gaines' class has painstakingly matched records from the Nixon White House showing that Dean and Fielding knew about particular incidents with passages in All the President's Men in which Deep Throat tips off Woodward about those same incidents. "I think they really have added new information," says Ron Rosenbaum, who during the period of Watergate revelations wrote a Village Voice column titled "Wallowing in Watergate." Gaines and Co. also found intriguing evidence suggesting that Woodward and Bernstein strained to keep Fielding out of their Post stories, which is just how one would pamper a highly valuable source. And it's hard to dismiss the stated opinion of H.R. Haldeman—who was in an excellent position to know—that Fielding was Deep Throat.
Let me mention that I'm not claiming one way or the other whether Fielding was Deep Throat--I haven't made up my mind on that issue yet. However, whether or not he was Deep Throat, his connection to Watergate and to John Dean in particular is noteworthy in relation to what we're discussing.