Watergate:
a right wing coup
The "revelation" that Mark Felt is supposedly the notorious
secret source "Deep Throat" is certainly not the whole story
- if it is even true.
Authentic journalists generally don't serve as cryptologic officers
on a floating version of "Mount Weather" and then go on to brief
top Pentagon officials -- that's generally NOT training to be a reporter.
When Woodward was dispatched to the Washington comPost, his writing was
so poor that they had to train him at a suburban Maryland newspaper for
a year before he could get hired at the Post.
All the Presidents' Men is a great book and a great movie. But it should
be in the "fiction" section.
It seems the CIA and others decided that Nixon had to go for the long
term interests of the empire. This is similar to what is happening to
George W. Shrub. Why is the "torture" scandal suddenly getting
lots of airtime, when this is not exactly news (it SHOULD get airtime,
but it is part of a pattern going back a LONG LONG time)?
The "burglars" in the Watergate admitted the next day to being
CIA -- which is not normal practice for CIA agents (unless they were told
to say this, they were whistleblowers and had remorse, or were incompetent
-- the first seems the most likely).
| Three
Books about Watergate: Silent Coup, Secret Agenda
and Katherine the Great |
www.namebase.org/books61.html
Scandals / Watergate
Colodny, Len and Gettlin, Robert. Silent Coup: The Removal of a President.
New York: St.Martin's Paperbacks, 1992. 580 pages.
This bestseller is a revisionist account of Watergate that Bob Woodward
and the Washington Post don't want you to read. It makes the case that
Alexander Haig was Deep Throat, and reports convincing evidence (including
taped interviews with officials) that Bob Woodward knew Haig in 1969
when Woodward worked at the Pentagon, four years before Woodward said
they met. The paperback edition includes a 24-page postscript that details
Woodward's and the Post's pathetic attempts to discredit the evidence.
Most reviews of this book gave Colodny and Gettlin above-average marks,
and the consensus among journalists seems to be that the burden of proof
rests with the Post.
The other major revisionist wrinkle is the authors' contention that
John Dean ordered the Watergate break-in because he knew that a call-girl
ring was operating out of the Democratic headquarters and wanted some
embarrassing documents. The woman who ran the ring was reportedly a
friend of Dean's, and Maureen Biner Dean was her roommate when John
and Mo were courting in 1971. Stay tuned: John and Maureen are suing
the authors, along with G. Gordon Liddy, who agrees with the book, for
$50 million. When he first heard of the suit on 1/30/92, Liddy said
it was "the second happiest day of my life. The first happiest
will be when we finally get John Dean on the witness stand under oath.
No more perjury-infested dog and pony show."
Hougan, Jim. Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat and the CIA. New
York: Random House, 1984. 347 pages.
This first "deconstructionist" account of Watergate is the
acknowledged inspiration for Colodny and Gettlin's "Silent Coup"
(1991), which finally put the Washington Post on the defensive.
"Secret Agenda" offers many firsts: 1) the first to discuss
Watergate in the context of the Moorer-Radford affair; 2) the first
to discuss the role played by attorney-pimp Phil Bailley; 3) the first
to reveal that a key taken from burglar Rolando Martinez fit the desk
of Spencer Oliver's secretary Maxie Wells (the only physical evidence
of the burglar's actual target); 4) the first to reveal that the FBI
lab concluded that the DNC was NOT bugged (McCord faked the eavesdropping
to protect a more important secret); 5) the first to reveal that Woodward
had secretly briefed Alexander Haig while Woodward presided over the
Pentagon code room of the Chief of Naval Operations; 6) the first to
make public Woodward's investigation of Bernstein's sex life; and 7)
the first to identify the mysterious John Paisley as the CIA's liaison
to the plumbers.
In all, this is a well-documented work that Norman Mailer called "a
startling mine of veins, leads, lodes and deep shafts into the ongoing
mystery of Watergate. Three cheers for Hougan's investigative reporting."
www.namebase.org/davis.html
"We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things
the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy
flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets,
and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows."
--
Katharine Graham at a 1988 speech at CIA headquarters
Book Notes:
All the Publisher's Men
A suppressed book about Washington Post publisher
Katharine Graham is on sale again.
by Daniel Brandt
From The National Reporter, Fall 1987.
Katharine the Great: Katharine Graham and the Washington Post. By Deborah
Davis. National Press, Bethesda MD, 1987, 320 pages, ISBN 0-915765-43-8.
www.silentcoup.com
Silent Coup: The removal of a president
by Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin
New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991
www.nixonera.com/etexts/silentcoup/contents.asp
www.watergate.com
Nixon Era Times: The Official Publication of the Nixon Era Center at Mountain
State University
www.counterpunch.org/colodny06092005.html
June 9, 2005
When Felt's Face Just Collapsed
Felt Was Asked Under Oath in 1975 If He Was "Deep Throat"
By LEN COLODNY
www.counterpunch.org/hougan06082005.html
June 8, 2005
Deep Throat, Bob Woodward and the CIA
Strange Bedfellows
By JIM HOUGAN
www.webcom.com/ctka/pr196-woodward.html
From the January-February, 1996 issue (Vol. 3 No. 2)
Bob Woodward
By Lisa Pease
www.webcom.com/ctka/pr196-deep.html
The Deceptions of All the President's Men
Bob Woodward was an above top secret officer on a Navy ship that was designed for directing a nuclear war if Washington was nuked - is this the normal training for investigative reporters? or for being a conduit for semi-official leaks? After serving in an ultra-sensitive position on the USS Wright, Woodward went on to be a "briefer" for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This is not a good means to learn how to be a reporter (as shown by the fact that Woodward was first posted to a small suburban Maryland newspaper for a year to learn journalism skills before the Washington Post would hire him), but it is an excellent way to learn who is at the top of the military industrial complex.
www.bobwoodward.com/Questions-And-Answers/
I was first assigned to the USS Wright, a floating emergency relocation ship for President Johnson in the case of nuclear war. I was one of two officers ordered to be present if the top secret authentication codes for nuclear war orders were handled or transferred in any way. The codes were at that time secured with two combination locks, one of which I had the combination to. I later served on the USS Fox, a guided missile frigate that was stationed off the coast of Vietnam.
More on the USS Wright:
www.coldwar.org/museum/doomsday_ships.asp
http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2005/06/what-is-watergate.html
www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/060305Chin/060305chin.html
Deep Throat: Shallow story hides deeper history
By Larry Chin
Online Journal Associate Editor
Who was Mark Felt? Felt may have leaked on Nixon, but was he at all
heroic over the course of the rest of his career?
Described as the FBI's "Fair Haired Boy," he was a J. Edgar
Hoover right hand man, immensely loyal to Hoover, and was involved in
all of the FBI's dirtiest COINTELPRO operations. In other words, Felt
was a lieutenant to one of the great political criminals in modern history
www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/6/5/145959.shtml
Watergate and Deep Throat - Shattering the Myths
Newsmax is a very right wing source, but this article is good.
www.counterpunch.org/homeland3.html
November 8, 2001
Homeland Insecurity by Douglas Valentine
Part Three
Chaos And Political Terrorism In America
Article that discusses Richard Ober's political role in the Nixon administration
(Davis's book suggests that Ober was the mythical "Deep Throat"
source).
prorev.com/graham.htm
PROGRESSIVE REVIEW
THE CANONIZATION OF KATHARINE GRAHAM
By Sam Smith
www.dailykos.com/story/2005/6/2/184048/8680
Bob Woodward...ALL smoke and mirrors?
www.namebase.org/news17.html
Journalism and the CIA: The Mighty Wurlitzer
by Daniel Brandt
From NameBase NewsLine, No. 17, April-June 1997
www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKdeepthroat.htm
several articles on the authenticity of the Felt claim
www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php
THE CIA AND THE MEDIA
How America’s Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with
the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It
Up
Rolling Stone, October 20, 1977
BY CARL BERNSTEIN
In 1953, Joseph Alsop, then one of America’s leading syndicated
columnists, went to the Philippines to cover an election. He did not go
because he was asked to do so by his syndicate. He did not go because
he was asked to do so by the newspapers that printed his column. He went
at the request of the CIA.
Alsop is one of more than 400 American journalists who in the past twenty-five
years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence
Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters. Some of these
journalists’ relationships with the Agency were tacit; some were
explicit. There was cooperation, accommodation and overlap. Journalists
provided a full range of clandestine services — from simple intelligence
gathering to serving as go-betweens with spies in Communist countries.
Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs.
Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters
who considered themselves ambassadors-without-portfolio for their country.
Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association
with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were
as interested it the derring-do of the spy business as in filing articles,
and, the smallest category, full-time CIA employees masquerading as journalists
abroad. In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged
to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements America’s
leading news organizations.
The history of the CIA’s involvement with the American press continues
to be shrouded by an official policy of obfuscation and deception . .
. .
Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were William
Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of Time Inc., Arthur
Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the Louisville
Courier-Journal and James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations
which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company,
the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Pres International,
Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual
Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post
and New York Herald-Tribune.
By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials,
have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc.
. . . . .
From the Agency’s perspective, there is nothing untoward in such
relationships, and any ethical questions are a matter for the journalistic
profession to resolve, not the intelligence community.
. . . . .
THE AGENCY’S DEALINGS WITH THE PRESS BEGAN during the earliest stages
of the Cold War. Allen Dulles, who became director of the CIA in 1953,
sought to establish a recruiting-and-cover capability within America’s
most prestigious journalistic institutions. By operating under the guise
of accredited news correspondents, Dulles believed, CIA operatives abroad
would be accorded a degree of access and freedom of movement unobtainable
under almost any other type of cover.
American publishers, like so many other corporate and institutional leaders
at the time, were willing us commit the resources of their companies to
the struggle against “global Communism.” Accordingly, the
traditional line separating the American press corps and govern ment was
often indistinguishable: rarely was a news agency used to provide cover
for CIA operatives abroad without the knowledge and consent of either
its principal owner; publisher or senior editor. Thus, contrary to the
notion that the CIA era and news executives allowed themselves and their
organizations to become handmaidens to the intelligence services. “Let’s
not pick on some poor reporters, for God’s sake,” William
Colby exclaimed at one point to the Church committee’s investigators.
“Let’s go to the manage ments. They were witting” In
all, about twenty-five news organizations (including those listed at the
beginning of this article) provided cover for the Agency.
. . . . .
Many journalists who covered World War II were close to people in the
Office of Strategic Services, the wartime predecessor of the CIA; more
important, they were all on the same side. When the war ended and many
OSS officials went into the CIA, it was only natural that these relationships
would continue. Meanwhile, the first postwar generation of journalists
entered the profession; they shared the same political and professional
values as their mentors. “You had a gang of people who worked together
during World War II and never got over it,” said one Agency official.
“They were genuinely motivated and highly suscep tible to intrigue
and being on the inside. Then in the Fifties and Sixties there was a national
consensus about a national threat. The Vietnam War tore everything to
pieces—shredded the consensus and threw it in the air.” Another
Agency official observed: “Many journalists didn’t give a
second thought to associating with the Agency. But there was a point when
the ethical issues which most people had submerged finally surfaced. Today,
a lot of these guys vehemently deny that they had any relationship with
the Agency.”
. . . . .
The CIA even ran a formal training program in the 1950s to teach its agents
to be journalists. Intelligence officers were “taught to make noises
like reporters,” explained a high CIA official, and were then placed
in major news organizations with help from management. “These were
the guys who went through the ranks and were told, “You’re
going to be a journalist,” the CIA official said. Relatively few
of the 400-some relationships described in Agency files followed that
pattern, however; most involved persons who were already bona fide journalists
when they began undertaking tasks for the Agency.
The Agency’s relationships with journalists, as described in CIA
files, include the following general categories:
• Legitimate, accredited staff members of news organizations —
usually reporters. Some were paid; some worked for the Agency on a purely
voluntary basis. . . .
• Stringers and freelancers. Most were payrolled by the Agency under
standard contractual terms. . . .
• Employees of so-called CIA “proprietaries.” During
the past twenty-five years, the Agency has secretly bankrolled numerous
foreign press services, periodicals and newspapers — both English
and foreign language — which provided excellent cover for CIA operatives.
. . .
• Columnists and commentators. There are perhaps a dozen well-known
columnists and broadcast commentators whose relationships with the CIA
go far beyond those normally maintained between reporters and their sources.
They are referred to at the Agency as “known assets” and can
be counted on to perform a variety of undercover tasks; they are considered
receptive to the Agency’s point of view on various subjects.
. . . . .
MURKY DETAILS OF CIA RELATIONSHIPS with individuals and news organizations
began trickling out in 1973 when it was first disclosed that the CIA had,
on occasion, employed journalists. Those reports, combined with new information,
serve as casebook studies of the Agency’s use of journalists for
intelligence purposes.
• The New York Times. The Agency’s relationship with the Times
was by far its most valuable among newspapers, according to CIA officials.
[It was] general Times policy . . . to provide assistance to the CIA whenever
possible.
. . . . .
CIA officials cite two reasons why the Agency’s working rela tionship
with the Times was closer and more extensive than with any other paper:
the fact that the Times maintained the largest foreign news operation
in American daily journalism; and the close personal ties between the
men who ran both institutions.
. . . . .
• The Columbia Broadcasting System. CBS was unquestionably the CIA’s
most valuable broadcasting asset. CBS president William Paley and Allen
Dulles enjoyed an easy working and social relationship. Over the years,
the network provided cover for CIA employees, including at least one well-known
foreign correspondent and several stringers; it supplied outtakes of newsfilm
to the CIA; established a formal channel of communication between the
Washington bureau chief and the Agency; gave the Agency access to the
CBS newsfilm library; and allowed reports by CBS correspondents to the
Washington and New York newsrooms to be routinely monitored by the CIA.
Once a year during the 1950s and early 1960s, CBS correspondents joined
the CIA hierarchy for private dinners and briefings.
. . . . .
At the headquarters of CBS News in New York, Paley’s coopera tion
with the CIA is taken for granted by many news executives and reporters,
despite the denials. Paley, 76, was not interviewed by Salant’s
investigators. “It wouldn’t do any good,” said one CBS
executive. “It is the single subject about which his memory has
failed.”
. . . . .
• Time and Newsweek magazines. According to CIA and Senate sources,
Agency files contain written agreements with former foreign correspondents
and stringers for both the weekly news magazines. The same sources refused
to say whether the CIA has ended all its associations with individuals
who work for the two publications. Allen Dulles often interceded with
his good friend, the late Henry Luce, founder of Time and Life magazines,
who readily allowed certain members of his staff to work for the Agency
and agreed to provide jobs and credentials for other CIA operatives who
lacked journalistic expe rience.
. . . . .
At Newsweek, Agency sources reported, the CIA engaged the services of
several foreign correspondents and stringers under ar rangements approved
by senior editors at the magazine.
. . . . .
“To the best of my knowledge:’ said [Harry] Kern, [Newsweek’s
foreign editor from 1945 to 1956] “nobody at Newsweek worked for
the CIA.... The informal relationship was there. Why have anybody sign
anything? What we knew we told them [the CIA] and the State Department....
When I went to Washington, I would talk to Foster or Allen Dulles about
what was going on .... We thought it was admirable at the time. We were
all on the same side.” CIA officials say that Kern's dealings with
the Agency were extensive.
. . . . .
When Newsweek was purchased by the Washington Post Company, publisher
Philip L. Graham was informed by Agency officials that the CIA occasionally
used the magazine for cover purposes, according to CIA sources. “It
was widely known that Phil Graham was somebody you could get help from,”
said a former deputy director of the Agency. . . . But Graham, who committed
suicide in 1963, apparently knew little of the specifics of any cover
arrangements with Newsweek, CIA sources said.
. . . . .
Information about Agency dealings with the Washington Post newspaper is
extremely sketchy. According to CIA officials, some Post stringers have
been CIA employees, but these officials say they do not know if anyone
in the Post management was aware of the arrangements.
. . . . .
• Other major news organizations. According to Agency officials,
CIA files document additional cover arrangements with the following news-gathering
organizations, among others: the New York Herald Tribune, the Saturday
Evening Post, Scripps-Howard Newspapers, Hearst Newspapers, . . . Associated
Press, United Press International, the Mutual Broadcasting System, Reuters
and the Miami Herald. . . .
“And that's just a small part of the list,” in the words of
one official who served in the CIA hierarchy. Like many sources, this
official said that the only way to end the uncertainties about aid furnished
the Agency by journalists is to disclose the contents of the CIA files
- a course opposed by almost all of the thirty-five present and former
CIA officials interviewed over the course of a year.
COLBY CUTS HIS LOSSES
THE CIA’S USE OF JOURNALISTS CONTINUED virtually unabated until
1973 when, in response to public disclosure that the Agency had secretly
employed American reporters, William Colby began scaling down the program.
In his public statements, Colby conveyed the impression that the use of
journalists had been minimal and of limited importance to the Agency.
He then initiated a series of moves intended to convince the press, Congress
and the public that the CIA had gotten out of the news business. But according
to Agency officials, Colby had in fact thrown a protective net around
his most valuable intelligence assets in the journalistic community.
. . . . .
After Colby left the Agency on January 28th, 1976, and was succeeded by
George Bush, the CIA announced a new policy: “Effective immediately,
the CIA will not enter into any paid or contract relationship with any
full-time or part-time news correspondent accredited by any U.S. news
service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network or station.”
. . . The text of the announcement noted that the CIA would continue to
“welcome” the voluntary, unpaid cooperation of journalists.
Thus, many relationships were permitted to remain intact.
The Agency's unwillingness to end its use of journalists and its continued
relationships with some news executives is largely the product of two
basic facts of the intelligence game: journalistic cover is ideal because
of the inquisitive nature of a reporter's job;[i] and many other sources
of institutional cover have been denied the CIA in recent years by businesses,
foundations and educational institutions that once cooperated with the
Agency.
[i] [Earlier in the article, Bernstein had stated the following:] Many
journalists were used by the CIA to assist in this process and they had
the reputation of being among the best in the busi ness. The peculiar
nature of the job of the foreign correspondent is ideal for such work;
he is ac corded unusual access, by his host country, permitted to travel
in areas often off-limits to other Americans, spends much of his time
cultivating sources in governments, academic institutions, the military
establishment and the scientific communities. He has the opportunity to
form long-term personal relationships with sources and — perhaps
more than any other category of American operative — is in a position
to make correct judgments about the susceptibility and availability of
foreign nationals for recruitment as spies.
According to The New York Times, which broke the story February 19,
2002 "The Pentagon is developing plans to provide news items, possibly
even false ones, to foreign media organizations as part of a new effort
to influence public sentiment and policy makers in both friendly and unfriendly
countries."
The leak clearly ambushed the Pentagon, which quickly retreated in a fog
of contradictory statements that culminated in an announcement just a
week later by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that the whole idea had
probably been scrapped.
"I met with Undersecretary Doug Feith this morning and he indicated
to me that he's decided to close down the Office of Strategic Influence,"
Rumsfeld told a Pentagon news conference.
That didn’t mean, of course, that the idea was dead, or couldn’t
be moved to another agency with more experience in "disinformation,"
such as the Central Intelligence Agency.
Remarks by the President
on the Office of Strategic Influence
February 25, 2002
(Remarks During Presentation of World Trade Center Bullhorn)
[...]
Q: Sir, have you told Secretary Rumsfeld to get rid of the Office of Disinformation
that he's talking about?
THE PRESIDENT: I told Secretary Rumsfeld -- I didn't even need to tell
him this; he knows how I feel, I saw it reflected in his comments the
other day -- that we'll tell the American people the truth. And he was
just as amazed as I was about reading, you know, some allegation that
somehow our government would never tell the American people the truth.
And I don't -- I've got confidence, having heard his statement, I heard
him this morning talk about it, that he'll handle this in the right way.
[...]
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