Deep Throat, Nixon and Hoover

Wow! After 30-some years, the man who gave reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein inside information as to what exactly was going in the Nixon White House has unmasked himself. The Lone Ranger has been revealed.

It seems the Oracle of the Underground Parking Lot was a man by the name of W. Mark Felt, an FBI high mucky-muck who was, it seems, unhappy with the way that Nixon tried to use the FBI to cover-up the Watergate burglary. Nixon also tried to use the CIA to cover it up, in both cases under the guise of “National Security.”

Anyway, the media’s reported this event, you’d think the Holy Grail was discovered.

In fact, the revelation of Deep Throat’s identity is of no real concern to anyone except perhaps historians and those fascinated by Richard Nixon and his penchant for secrecy, enemies, plotting and paranoia.

Nixon himself got into the secrecy-enemies-plotting business back in the 1940s, when he was a member of the House of Un-American Activities Committee. The committee at the time was investigating Alger Hiss, a former State Department employee, on charges that he was a Soviet spy. Evidence was dug up (quite literally) which seemed to link Hiss to Soviet spy activities in the United States. Hiss later when to jail for lying to a congressional committee.

What is really interesting is not the identity of Deep Throat, but thought processes of Richard Nixon himself.

Why he thought such a pathetic scheme (burglary) would work,  is not clear. Perhaps he figured that the FBI of the 1970s was the FBI of the 1950s, where J. Edgar Hoover could be relied upon to leak information to friendly politicians like Richard Nixon and other professional Commie-hunters whenever it suited him.

Nixon was probably well aware of Hoover’s illegal and unconstitutional methods of gathering information. Mr Hoover invented the black-bag jobs, where his agents would simply  break into peoples’ homes and businesses in order to find out who happened to be members of the Communist Party (or any other organization J. Edgar Hoover disliked).  Such information was then leaked to employers and others, in an attempt to destroy that people Mr Hoover didn't like,  economically and politically.

There’s no doubt that Hoover helped Nixon clinch the prosecution of Alger Hiss on the issue of lying before Congress.

FBI black-bag jobs of the 1940s and 50s, not only helped convict Alger Hiss, but led to other things like loyalty oaths, blacklists and university firings.  The FBI's activities  hurt a lot of people, but  tended to benefit Richard Nixon, as he continued his anti-Communist crusade throughout the 1950s.

But what goes around, comes around. It turned out that his habits of political paranoia and his penchant for secrecy, came back to haunt him in the days prior to his reelection for a second term.

In June of 1972, in an insane effort to discredit the Democrats, Nixon’s supporters (the plumbers),  an odd crew of political crazies and anti-Castro Cuban exiles, broke into the offices of the Democratic National Committee which was located at the Watergate apartment complex. The act itself was nuts, but in the minds of Nixon and his supporters it was just another “black-bag” job. They were out hunting Commies and their supporters, so a burglary, usually a serious felony, was no big deal.

It’s interesting to note that the burglars, while being apprehended, were in the act of repairing wiretapping equipment and, according to some, taking pictures of documentation.

Hoovering around, you might say in a classic 1950s way. 

Not all that unusual.  Such activities were always justified in the name of national security back in the 1950s  and were all violations of law. Nevertheless they went on.

Hoover never lost his job over illegal break-ins and perhaps Mr Nixon thought he was just as good as Hoover and could have felt when Watergate broke, that he’d never lose his job over it.

In fact , in the months following the break-in, Mr Nixon and his supporters constantly belittled the Watergate break-in. Nothing more than a  two-bit burglary, they said. Nothing for anyone to get all upset about, they repeated to the media. 

For months, a  favorite term the Nixon White House used in referring to the Watergate matter was “third-rate burglary” in an attempt to minimize what happened.

But Nixon  wasn’t as lucky as Hoover; The 1950s had come and gone.  Hoover himself died a month prior to Watergate and the Watergate burglars then had to contend with U.S. District Chief Judge John J. Sirica , a man with the  reputation, of being a hanging judge.

Ultimately everyone connected with the Watergate matter got what was coming to them.

And what of W. Mark Felt? Is he some sort of hero?

Not really.

If he was aware of any illegalities going on in the Nixon White House, he should have simply resigned his position with the FBI and gone to the media publicly. Yet he chose to “leak” and then  to remain silent about what he told Woodward and Bernstein for over 30 years.

Anyway, as it turned out Richard Nixon was his own worst enemy;  his paranoid style of politics finally defeated him for good.

But he had a lot of help from his old mentor,  J. Edgar Hoover. Nixon was paranoid and loved secrecy; Hoover loved secrecy and black-bag burglary.

Put them together and you have Watergate.

Punditwalla--