W. Mark Felt (who?) admits that he’s “Deep Throat,” a government official who supposedly fed former Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward inside information that brought down President Richard Nixon during Watergate. I hope this means A&E or one of the movie channels will reshuffle the line-up to run “All the President’s Men” this week.
From MSNBC:
Felt said he was “only doing his duty” and did not seek to bring down Nixon over the cover-up of a break-in at Democratic Party offices in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C.Carl Bernstein, who with Bob Woodward broke the story as Washington Post reporters, issued a statement neither denying nor confirming Felt’s claim. Bernstein stated he and Woodward would be keeping their pledge to reveal the source only once that person dies.
NBC News commentator Chris Matthews, who wrote a book about Watergate, said he wasn’t surprised, adding that Felt “has always been the leading suspect.”
After watching actor Hal Holbrook as Deep Throat in the movie, knowing the identity of the real guy is kind of anti-climatic, isn’t it? I always thought Deep Throat was Alexander Haig, Nixon’s Chief of Staff during Watergate and President Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of State for about 5 minutes.
I’ll have more to say later. Maybe. Let’s go to the videotape!
Related post: Watergate: Mother Of All Scandals (So Far)
Sources: Deep Throat: Uncovered (Journalism students at the University of Illinois conducted a four-year study on this. They guessed wrong, but I highly recommend it, although the site seems to be loaded down with heavy traffic at the moment.), Revisiting Watergate, Watergate Revisited, FOX News, Washington Post…
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La Shawn,
You’re definitely right about this being anti-climatic. I don’t even know who this guy is. I suppose this is just an instance where I wanted it to be someone it wasn’t. I guess it’s good to finally know, though.
I love All The King’s Men. I think I’ll have to pop it in tonight.
All the King’s Men.
Anti-climatic indeed, except to TV media that rushed to pre-empt Bush’s live news conference with the “Deep Throat” speculation. And this right after Bush responded to a question on North Korea by saying something to the effect of, “With Korea, there are only two options, diplomacy & war and so far diplomacy hasn’t been working”. There was a audible gasp and someone tried to interrupt Bush and Bush told them to let him finish.
Yes, the fate of the world hung in balance unless we could resolve Deep Throat.
After 30 years, Watergate is just a footnote to me, pffft.
Breathless journalists = Yawn!!!
Check out Powerline’s take entitled Deep Epstein. Rather than the MSM (David) taking down the government (Goliath). It was bureaucratic in-fighting that did Nixon in and Epstein’s charge back in 1974 that the MSM was clueless, but sometimes lucky remains true today. IOW Bernstein & Woodward got played by Felt.
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/010603.php
Ugh, what a slip, La Shawn. All the King’s Men. I do that all the time. Rather, I think I’ll be putting in my All the PRESIDENT’S Men DVD tonight.
Mike M. I actually thot your slip was on purpose. After all, they couldn’t put Nixon back together again.
I knew it wasn’t John Mitchell.
I thought it was JONI Mitchell!
heh…
At this point, I don’t think it really matters.
La Shawn
The media is, as usual, hysterical about anything anti-Republican. The media coverage of the “Deep Throat” non-story is greater thant that of the war on terror.
A historian on Special Report with Brih Hume summarized the truth. The information Felt added had NO impact on Nixon’s resignation.
Yet the media feeds on itself – they just can’t resist further praise of their darling storyteller Bob Woodward.
Woodward and Woodward wannabe Seymour Hirsh are just great storytellers using anonymous sources that can’t be verified. And the media continues their delusional thinking that these two had ANY influence on history.
This guy’s a criminal, by the way. Not only was he convicted of breaking the Fourth Amendment while in office, but his finking on Nixon led to the Deathocrats’ slaughter of thousands of Vietnamese. Watergate should have been left alone, as wicked as it was.
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