Jump to content
The Education Forum

Deep Throat: Richard Ober


John Simkin

Recommended Posts

A little-known book by Deborah Davis’s (Katharine the Great) claimed to know the name of Watergate's "Deep Throat". In fact very few copies of the book exist. When it was originally published in 1979 Katharine Graham (probably under instructions from the CIA) persuaded the publishers William Jovanovich, to pulp 20,000 copies of the book. Deborah Davis filed a breach-of- contract and damage-to-reputation suit against Jovanovich, who settled out of court with her in 1983.

Davis was well connected and had been involved in exposing the CIA's Operation Mockingbird when working for Ramparts. CIA got its revenge by putting Ramparts out of business.

According to Davis, Bob Woodward was brought in to help Carl Bernstein with his Watergate story because he was a CIA asset. Bernstein, whose parents had both been victims of McCarthyism in the 1950s was a genuine left-wing reporter. Most of his stories were cut from the Washington Post and Ben Bradlee made attempts to sack him. According to Davis, it was Bradlee who put Woodward into contact with ‘Deep Throat’. It was ‘Deep Throat’ and later James McCord who shaped the investigation. Both men were CIA. Deep Throat was actually Richard Ober. Bradlee’s friendship with Ober went back to when they were at university together.

In June 1970, Nixon held a meeting with Hoover, Helms and the heads of army and navy intelligence. Nixon wanted better intelligence on “revolutionary activism”. The result was Operation Chaos. Ober was put in charge of the operation. He was given an office in the White House and worked closely with Nixon, Haldeman and Ehrlichman. It was during this period he gathered information on Nixon’s illegal activities. Ober discovered that Nixon was trying to undermine the power of the CIA. It was therefore decided to bring him down. Ober therefore became ‘Deep Throat’ and two CIA assets, Bradlee and Woodward, became the characters with the task of forcing Nixon to resign from office.

Richard Ober below (maybe even James Richards has not got a picture of Deep Throat):

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 36
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

John, I agree the CIA probably wanted to bring Nixon down and Watergate provided them the opportunity. Of course, if Nixon had handled the situation correctly, he might never have faced impeachment. Then again, he probably had so many other secrets to hide that he could not afford a full investigation of the Watergate burglary.John wrote:

It was ‘Deep Throat’ and later James McCord who shaped the investigation.

Of course, I assume everyone knows that the Watergate burglars were caught in the first place because McCord, after somehow opening the door to the DNC (I forget how that was accomplished) placed adhesive tape over the lock but rather than placing it vertically inside the door he placed it horizontally around the lock so the tape showed on the front of the door. The guard noticed the tape and called the police.

Given McCord's professionalism, many people believe that his mistake in taping the door was intentional, that he wanted the burglars caught.

Do the Forum members think McCord's placement of the tape was a negligent error or intentional?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Davis identifies Deep Throat as Richard Ober, the chief of the CIA's domestic spying program called Operation CHAOS. The evidence is circumstantial and her sources remain anonymous. According to Davis, Kissinger moved Angleton into the White House and set him up with his own Israeli intelligence desk in 1969. This sounds like vintage Kissinger as he acts swiftly to capture the foreign policy apparatus, but it's the first I've heard that Angleton, who thought the Sino-Soviet split was a ruse designed to catch the West napping, was on any sort of terms with the China-hopping, detente-talking Kissinger.

This was a write up some time back. But not proof on it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Richard Ober below (maybe even James Richards has not got a picture of Deep Throat): (John Simkin)

John,

I am still in the process of getting my scanner and computer in sync and when I do, I will send you another shot of Ober.

In the Davis book, is there any mention made of HYDRA?

James

Link to comment
Share on other sites

John, I agree the CIA probably wanted to bring Nixon down and Watergate provided them the opportunity.  Of course, if Nixon had handled the situation correctly, he might never have faced impeachment.  Then again, he probably had so many other secrets to hide that he could not afford a full investigation of the Watergate burglary.John wrote:

It was ‘Deep Throat’ and later James McCord who shaped the investigation.

Of course, I assume everyone knows that the Watergate burglars were caught in the first place because McCord, after somehow opening the door to the DNC (I forget how that was accomplished) placed adhesive tape over the lock but rather than placing it vertically inside the door he placed it horizontally around the lock so the tape showed on the front of the door.  The guard noticed the tape and called the police. 

Given McCord's professionalism, many people believe that his mistake in taping the door was intentional, that he wanted the burglars caught.

Do the Forum members think McCord's placement of the tape was a negligent error or intentional?

I recently read "A Piece Of Tape," McCord's account of Watergate, and lost all doubts about the man. He was a true believer in the CIA, was disgusted that Nixon was using the plumbers for political operations, was even more disgusted that Nixon, the FBI, and the Justice Department orchestrated a cover-up and tried to blame the CIA, and took perverse delight in blowing the whistle and watching the house of cards collapse. He hired Bernard Fensterwald, one of the most tireless of JFK assassination researchers (read Coincidence or Conspiracy if you can find it) as his lawyer, and went on a speaking tour supporting his book and speaking out against the Nixon White House. IMHO, the man was for real. In his book he explains a lot of the mistakes that were made. What really sold me on his account was his frank confession that he had planned to talk to Sirica all along, and that the heavy sentence handed down by Sirica had no impact on his actions. He says he waited till after the trial to talk because he wanted to see how the whole thing played out and wanted to see how co-operative the federal prosecutors would be with the White House--he wanted to see how far the corruption went before talking because he wanted to blow the whole dirty house down. I don't see an operative for the CIA being that adversarial, for fear his actions would come back to hurt the agency. Remember, McCord was an electronics man; he was never an undercover man.

Edited by Pat Speer
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's been a while since I read All The President's Men, but I recall DT as having ready access to the FBI investigation and the Grand Jury activities. Would Ober have been positioned to know these?

Yes. As head of Operation Chaos he had access to the files of the CIA, FBI and army and navy intelligence.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's been a while since I read All The President's Men, but I recall DT as having ready access to the FBI investigation and the Grand Jury activities. Would Ober have been positioned to know these?

Yes. As head of Operation Chaos he had access to the files of the CIA, FBI and army and navy intelligence.

Thanks for the reply. I hear what you're saying, but much of the speculation I've heard about DT shows him to be very in touch with both the FBI investigation of the break-in and the grand jury proceedings, almost on a daily basis. I'm not sure Ober, whose charge was essentially domestic CI, would have been in the loop on a criminal FBI investigation, and I'm even more unsure about him having current knowledge of a grand jury investigation.

By the way, is Ober gravely ill, as is it rumored DT is?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

John,

I don't think he had access to the treasury dept. in the White House.

The Deep Throat issue now by John Dean in the book last done Unmasking Deep Throat had named that the persons who was DT was more than just one person.

At best Dean stated it had to be at least two or three people to make this up.

That in going throught the notes in Woodward hands now and Dean saw and read them all. He knew that DT got some things wrong and was off more than once. So it was hear say information handed down.

I think Dean has it right on that and he would know.

Also when I was in NARA once I was told by one of the employee's there that they put numbers in a hat and pulled the numbers out to just write down the conspiracy hours to give that info out to the public.

SO IT WAS MORE THAN ONE PERSON.

IT would have to be. I asked the man who told me this if this is true that they did this to Nixon for real. HE SAID TO ME YES THEY DID. I was not going to argue with a man who worked with the tapes since the day they arrived into the NARA building.

No one would ever be able to count conspiracy hours. That in itself isn't even logical. If no one can even fully understand the tapes itself. Also Nixon stated that no one even understood him. Ever listen to them. I have they are hard to understand hear and know what is going on where and what with it. Much less anything else.

Gaps are not just with the seven min. it is all over on them. That was something in itself they over made up and over did.

So when THEY pulled the number out of a hat and that would take one to hold the hat. One to pull and GOd knows how many knew exactly what was going down. THIS IS A GROUP OF PEOPLE, not just one.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

In his 1994 book, "Wedge: The Secret War Between the FBI and the CIA," author Mark Riebling suggests that Cord Meyer was Deep Throat. As Lisa Todorovich, pointed out in the Washington Post (13th June, 1997)

Meyer joined the CIA in 1951 at the behest of Allen Dulles, director of central intelligence, after a stint as president of the U.N.-centric United World Federalists, a post which got him denounced by Moscow Radio as "the fig leaf of American imperialism" and accused of Communist activity by Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy. At the CIA, Meyer adopted a strident anti-Soviet stance and became a top aide to Richard Helms, director of central intelligence under presidents Johnson and Nixon. Helms was fired from his post in 1973 after he refused to help Nixon use the CIA to stall the FBI's Watergate probe.

According to Riebling, Meyer fits the Deep Throat profile that Bob Woodward has sketched: intellectual, combat veteran, heavy drinker and chain smoker. Like Woodward, Meyer attended Yale. He described his experiences in a 1983 book, "Facing Reality: From World Federalism to the CIA."

Meyer also personifies the uniquely Washington phenomenon of the intermingling of government and the press. Meyer's wife, Mary Pinchot Meyer, was the sister of Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee's second wife, Tony Pinchot Bradlee. Meyer was estranged from his wife at the time of her murder on the towpath along the C&O Canal in Georgetown in 1964. The case has never been solved.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The one thing that people miss when discussing Deep Throat, particularly those who insist that he must have been more than one person, is that Deep Throat might very well have received some of his info second-hand. Who knows what Dean told Fielding, for instance, and if Fielding was also buddies with Henry Peterson, who knows what Peterson told him? What one should look for therefore is somebody NEAR the investigation, but not directly involved. Fielding is the best candidate. Meyer is not bad, it's just that his connections to the Justice Dept. are not as obvious.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In personal experience I have to say it is more than one person to make up this blend of what to do to Nixon.

They (referring to a group of men) pulled a number out of a hat. That number was the most redieculius thing ever done to Nixon. It was the number for his to be conspiracy hours. No one can count a number to deal with such a thing.

That is what was feed to us American citizen and it should have blown the whole darn thing up. Today it would have been torn to shreads and people would have known this is plain redidulious. Who in the world on tapes that no one can even understand in many parts of it sit there and count the hours on them involved into a conspiracy.

I was told this, that they literally pulled a number out of a hat and wrote it down.

THEY that means a group was involved in this against Nixon.

So when John Dean wrote the last book Unmasking Deep THroat he picked up things from the notes that Woodward wrote and in those notes he knew it was not even factual information dealing with somethings, some things were talked about but never came up and he knew from those notes it had to have been not first hand information. A passed down information.

In Nixon's forum this is meantioned on someone in the White House Treasurary dept involved and they know for sure on one of them. That would have to be as well but not the one to speak to Woodward in the middle of the night.

Whoever spoke to Woodward at night was a low bit person. Not a well known and not in any way high up in gov. position. No one in the right mind would even comply to some of the dumb things that he posed onto Woodward. Take several cabs move in opposite directions. Walk the last blocks. I know if I were Woodward I would have told him to GET LOST about that point of it. Which I have a feeling that is someting Woodward himself thougth of more than once in this triangle. Towards the end He did express certain words to him and called him Names himself.

Just my feelings about Woodward, he should have told who the old chap was a long time ago, because he is aiding to crimial activies and not the so noble route that he is posing to keep confidenatially with this person.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In her book, Katharine the Great, Deborah Davis does not only name Ober as Deep Throat. She claims that he encouraged Nixon to get involved in illegal activity.

Nixon's lawyer claimed it was John Sears.

http://watergate.info/news/00-08-01.shtml

And another list of candidates:

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/0...p.throat.facts/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now

×
×
  • Create New...