Deep Throat Revealed

I don't know why but I'm always amazed at the lack of historical perspective that journalists show during moments of great historical precedent. Or how, in their rush to render images to black and white, they gloss over small details or warp them to fit "the story". Mostly, as long as the hero of the hour is deemed as having brought down a great evil, he or she can be forgiven of all kinds of base motivations or past crimes. There are so many things being distorted. First, let's put Nixon in perspective.

Nixon was no conservative republican. So, Watergate was no blow to the great evil of conservative politics. Nixon is probably the worst free-market president we've ever had, possibly tied with Johnson. He expanded the government into areas that it doesn't belong, created entitlements left and right, introduced reams of regulation, damaged the US economy with price and wage caps, and undermined the military. He was an awful president and the worst kind of politician.

He was a scumbag in an age of scumbags. And Mark Felt was one of those scumbags. Watergate was basically a battle of the scumbags. Bernstein and Woodward have tried to enoble Felt's motivations but let's not buy the marble stone just yet. Let's remember that this was a Hoover man, through and through. This is the guy who oversaw a lot of illegal activity back when the FBI worked like an organized crime unit. I think some reporter ought to ask Felt if he had anything to do with the peddling of Martin Luther King's secrets. As number two under Hoover, you don't think he did? If, as Woodward would have us believe, Felt didn't want to let misdeeds go unpunished, why didn't he ever leak any of the shenanigans of his boss? Or why didn't he insist on something being done about the Mafia as they were growing? Or perhaps, he could have leaked his own crimes. Yes, that's right, Mark Felt was prosecuted for doing the very same thing that brought Nixon down. Read an interesting take on the FBI.

Felt was a Hoover man and as a Hoover man his motivations were purely revenge and power grabbing. By taking out Nixon on the sly, he saw his chance to grab power. He came from a time when the FBI was almost feudal in structure. Later, when Felt was under indictment for his own misdeeds, Reagan pardoned him, and, like any knave, switched parties and sang the praises of his new protector.

I agree with many agents at the FBI, that Felt should have brought the evidence to a prosecutor or even Haldeman. At the time, we know that Nixon was unaware of the break-in. Once exposed, Nixon would have written the culprits off. Instead, Felt lay back and waited for Nixon to cover up his underlings' stupidity...like he knew Nixon had a predilection to do.

How did he know this? Well, Felt knew about more misdeeds that he neglected to expose to Washington Post reporters. In 1970, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were caught spying on President Nixon. One of the people caught up in the mess but too low to be implicated was....wait for it....Ensign Robert Woodward. The military was upset at how Nixon was leaving them out of negotiations in Viet Nam, so they spied on him. Woodward was in Navy Intel just prior to being assigned to the Whitehouse. Coincidence? Perhaps. We know that it was during this time that Woodward says he struck up a friendship with Felt, like FBI deputy directors have time to hang out with whitehouse couriers. Nixon, ever the diplomat to avoid confrontations, thought he would buy loyalty by covering up the whole affair up. By leaving potential enemies in place, like members of JCOS and Felt, he left himself open to attack.

Woodward took his inside knowledge of the Whitehouse and got a job, with no experience, as a reporter with the most prestigious newspaper in the country. You don't think he had a bargaining chip? And when Watergate broke, who gets the assignment? A cub reporter with 9 months experience or someone with inside information. When you watched All the President's Men, did you see Woodward in his dress whites? Was it mentioned? Woodward, like Felt, was an opportunist, pure and simple.

Worst of all, it seems like we'll never get to the bottom of the why the Watergate breakin occurred. The best scenario, in my opinion, is that of Len Colodny's Silent Coup. John Dean was dating a prostitute called Mo Biner (Maureen). The CIA had probably found out about a call girl ring at the Watergate building, DNC headquarters. When this information made its way to Dean, he orchestrated a breakin to erase his girlfriend from potential blackmail. When the operation went to hell, Dean, as the epitome of a scumbag, set about getting other people involved and setting up hush money. Just when he had spread the crap around enough to unsuspecting participants, he broke for the special prosecutor's office and spilled his guts, implicating everyone else. He then quickly married Mo Biner so that she could not testify against him. Dean's plea put him in jail but the mess was so big that his leadership role was hidden behind the morass of coverup. A lot of people have tried to say that there wasn't anything to the prostitution ring, but there is no denying that Mo Biner lived and hung out with a known pimp and prostitute and covorted with some unsavory characters. Dean himself had a history of duplicitous behavior. He was fired from his first job for helping a TV station obtain a license while being employed by a competitor to do the same thing for them. Dean was also the chief of operations for Nixon's IRS hit teams. He was a man of low moral character.

Interestingly enough, Dean switched loyalties like Felt did. It is likely, that Dean owes his slim escape for his felonious activity to some very powerful people and he, like any good knave, knows how to pay off.