Lucianne writes funny blurbs. Under a link to a USA Today story about Mark Felt, she wrote: “Last gasp of Geezergate due next week as book mistakenly displayed in Fairfax store.”
A bookstore in Fairfax County, Virginia, displayed Bob Woodward’s new book, The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate’s Deep Throat, too early, but that’s not what the story is about.
People suspect that Woodward and Carl Bernstein are lying about who Deep Throat is, including University of Illinois professor Bill Gaines, who led a four-year investigation with his journalism students. But Woodward stands his ground and clears up some apparent discrepancies.
Woodward addresses the points that led some to decide Felt hadn’t been Deep Throat:
- In November 1973, Felt gave Woodward one of the most important scoops of the time: that there were gaps in an Oval Office recording of President Nixon, indicating someone may have erased incriminating information. Felt knew about the gaps, even though he retired from the FBI several months earlier, because he was still “in touch with many friends” at the bureau, Woodward writes.
- Felt may not have been a “regular smoker,” Woodward writes, but he could have been the type of person who lights up a cigarette “in times of immense stress.” Regardless, Woodward repeats that Felt did smoke during some of their clandestine meetings. (Source)
The Deep Throat story has been overblown for years. I think Woodward and Bernstein exaggerated and dramatized a bit to keep things interesting. Bringing down a president and exposing a scandal that reverberates through the halls of power may sound intriguing, but to jaded Americans, a football game is more exciting. Besides, who still cares after all these years?
I do.
My weekend starts…now. See you Monday or Tuesday.
Related posts: Deep Throat and the Great Stenographers, Trailer for All the President’s Men, and Former FBI Man Is Deep Throat.
Addendum: One more item. The friend I mentioned in this post has an article on National Review Online. Check it out.
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Like the smiley!
I don’t know enough about Deep Throat to know if it’s this guy or not, but I still don’t think it was Ben Stein.
La Shawn’s weekend starts – I’ll miss you!
I’m sure there is much you’ll want to write about the vacancy on the Supreme Court and what the left will try to do.
La Shawn:
Woodward is great at storytelling, poor at reporting. Does any more need saying?
Does any sane person really believe what Woodward says?
How many times are we going to hear about the Watergate story from Woodward and Bernstein?Are they going to write a follow up book next year due to popular demand?It reminds me of a 50 year old baseball player that had one good year and wants to get back in the game. Can anyone sing Glory Days for me?
About as many times as FOX News is going to run stories of missing BLONDE WHITE women.
Ditto Frank Z regarding Woodward – great first name too – and way to go La Shawn. Geezergate is exactly what this is and we have been saying that the entire DT issue has been overblown from the beginning. We up a comment about your post, our views about the issue and linked to your site. Great stuff and have a good rest while you are away from the web.
This “Deep Throat” revealed business is just the MSM, after scandal after scandal recently, trying to go back to the glory days when they credit themselves with taking down a President.
Someone other than Deep Throat brought down Nixon. Gary North explains here and
here.
Sorry, here are the addresses:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north383.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north384.html
I think the deep throat story is highly interesting too… But don’t knock my Green Bay Packers!!!!!!! I know you didn’t mention any team by name, but still. Some people (myself included) take their football very seriously. Take it from this die hard Cheesehead.
Baklava wrote “I’m sure there is much you’ll want to write about the vacancy on the Supreme Court and what the left will try to do.”
My prediction is that President Bush and the Senate “Republicans” will cave to liberal Democrat pressure and in effect let the Democrats pick the next Supreme Court Justice.
It will not be anyone on the list the media keeps harping about, but the next Supreme Court nominee will most probably be an unknown, past summer intern of the San Francisco ACLU offices,
wheelchair bound, Hispanic, muslim hermaphrodite, taken from a Chinese orphanage by an interracial (Black and White) couple.
Bush is going to cave like a sand castle on Banda Aceh. I am afraid this president’s legacy may have to be bearing his father’s stereotype that he is a wimp.
We shall see.
“trying to go back to the glory days when they credit themselves with taking down a President.”
A few problems: the president did a lot of the work himself, and the washington post wasn’t very much of a flagship (perhaps that’s what you mean by MSM) paper until watergate put it on the map.
Forget about Watergate. It is over. We have one week to blog the Supreme Court issue. After that, it will be too late. Click on my name for more.
Watergate=Geezergate. Sweeeet!!
Um, Actus, what part of “they credit themselves” didn’t you understand?
You’re basically restating Evon’s point. I certainly don’t think most here credit MSM with taking down the prez. That rightfully belongs to the grand jury process. IOW, the system was working and doing it with or without MSM participation on the fringes
“. IOW, the system was working and doing it with or without MSM participation on the fringes”
what started the grand jury?
“…the non-journalistic version of how Watergate was uncovered is not exactly a secret-,the government prosecutors (Earl Silbert, Seymour Glanzer, and Donald E. Campbell) are more than willing to give a documented account of the investigation to anyone who desires it. According to one of the prosecutors, however, “No one really wants to know.” Thus the government’s investigation of itself has become a missing link in the story of the Watergate scandal, and the actual role that journalists played remains ill understood.”
Jay Epstein, writing in July 1974:
http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/archived/watergate.htm
As for what started the grand jury, read up on it.
Watergate was the “golden age” of the MSM. However, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. As heads and egos began to swell in the MSM, TV audiences and newspaper readership began to shrink.
Because of cable and the Internet, I think this trend will continue. To the MSM, choice and the freedom that it brings may as well be poison.
“As for what started the grand jury, read up on it.”
No please. tell me. If the WP investigations and revelations weren’t turning up anything that the grand jury didn’t get, tell me how so. As well as the timing. who got this stuff first?
IOW, you didn’t read the article. Talk about static in your attic!
Can’t say that it make much difference to anyone anymore. It probably wraps up some loose ends for the old folks, but for the rest of us, who really cares? Deep Throat will be Deep Six pretty soon.
“IOW, you didn’t read the article. Talk about static in your attic! ”
I read your quote. I would imagine you would provide me a good one.
But its interesting, it appears that woodie & bernstein were then reporting on things that were known, not unknown? then why were people so surprised to hear them from them? why the need to protect sources, if the information was available to the police?
Swap Blog,
I only wrote the first sentence that you posted. A poster named Raymond I believe wrote the rest. I wouldn’t quote anything from him as he seems to be a leftist plant.
Check out Googles Forth of July banner. This is just as good as their Memorial Day banner.
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