Deep Throat Revealed?

[Christopher T. George]

Hi John

For me, possibly the most important points you make are points 8 and 9, the making of "All the President's Men" and Woodward's new book deal, to which I have responded on another thread. It does sound like a salient point that Deep Throat did not appear in earlier versions of the manuscript of "All the President's Men" or in the Washington Post stories -- though that might be explained if Woodward was trying to protect Deep Throat (Felt). If Felt was not Deep Throat, why did Woodward meet with him in 1999? The point about Felt having given up smoking in 1943, if true, is a good one, since Woodward makes a major point about Deep Throat being a heavy smoker. In regard to Felt leaving the FBI in June 1973, and the most important meetings, about the gap in the Nixon tapes, having taken place the first week of November 1973 -- another excellent point, although it might be argued that an FBI man might still have his sources even after resigning. All interesting and intriguing stuff, John!

All my best

Chris

[Pat Speer]

Deep Throat is obviously a composite of several of his sources. It is important to discover who these sources were. This is because we need to know the name of the insider who who was trying to bring down Nixon. Once we have established who that is, we will have a better understanding why this man, or the organization he represented, wanted Nixon out.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I finally see what you're getting at, John. You acknowledge that Felt was the original high-ranking source, but suspect that someone else came along and fed Woodward the late 1973 info, and that Woodward is now trying to use Felt to cut-off speculation as to the identity of this second man. I've already acknowledged this makes sense. Gut instinct. Who do you think this man is? You keep saying Ober. Why not Haig? Dean's choice in Lost Honor. He knew Woodward, is still alive, and would probably not desire his good Republican credentials to be soiled. By late 73, Nixon was so damaged that the JCS may have had a talk with Haig and asked him to make sure Nixon was put out to pasture. It might even have been the right thing to do (covertly exposing his criminal acts, as opposed to blowing his head off in public). After all, Nixon himself forced Agnew out because he felt Agnew was unqualified to lead.

Edited June 14, 2005 by Pat Speer

[Nancy Eldreth]

Mr. Simkins,

Question.

How much do you think that Dallas Texas had their hands onto Nixon having to leave office?

My feelings say A LOT.

Don't be surprised if some finaancial support didn't come from Down in Dallas Texas. Who are those Texas Businessmen that don't wish to get the truth out about JFK and their hands were stained with Blood just like the men that did in fact shoot the guns.

Let's see \

Now there would be LBJ. I got a nice letter from NARA you might be highly interested in on LBJ. This is just one.

Don't be surpised on Bush Sr. and his own father.

Others as well.

I can think of one on Felts street address,,,,, hint and clue,,,,, Chapman.

Now, there is more. This was not an easy game of bringing down a man of power and a lot of people did like Nixon a lot before they stated the fireball game on him.

Who are those Texas Businessmen other than what I just named? Why would Hoover himself really wish to see Nixon pushed down and out of power?

I like your comments now added to Deep Throat section of this forum. You could be right but there is more than that even.

Add Colson and one from White House Treasury dept. Don't remember his name but it was named on Nixon's Library forum.

See way back, Bush Jr. pardoned Colson for his Watergate crimes so he could get back into politics and vote for him. Bush JR. just never seeks to amaze me in a wrong way.

Politics is dirty and that is for sure. I was huffed when Bush did this, it took all this time for someone to pardon him and I guess they needed his input on some issues like how to destroy this so the truth can't really come out. Just parts of it but not all of it.

If I am wrong please point it out to me, but I don't think so.

[John Simkin]

Deep Throat is obviously a composite of several of his sources. It is important to discover who these sources were. This is because we need to know the name of the insider who who was trying to bring down Nixon. Once we have established who that is, we will have a better understanding why this man, or the organization he represented, wanted Nixon out.

I finally see what you're getting at, John. You acknowledge that Felt was the original high-ranking source, but suspect that someone else came along and fed Woodward the late 1973 info, and that Woodward is now trying to use Felt to cut-off speculation as to the identity of this second man. I've already acknowledged this makes sense. Gut instinct. Who do you think this man is? You keep saying Ober. Why not Haig?

I have looked at this in some detail here:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4001

Several researchers have put forward the name of Alexander Haig as being “Deep Throat”. This has included Jim Hougan (Secret Agenda) and John Dean (Lost Honor). The main reason is because of the most important information that was given to Woodward by Deep Throat. In the first week of November, 1973, Deep Throat told Woodward that their were "gaps" in Nixon's tapes. He hinted that these gaps were the result of deliberate erasures. On 8th November, Woodward and Bernstein published an article in the Washington Post that said that according to their source the "conservation on some of the tapes appears to have been erased". According to Fred Emery (Watergate: The Corruption and Fall of Richard Nixon), only Richard Nixon, Rose Mary Woods, Alexander Haig and Stephen Bull knew about this erased tape before it was made public on 20th November.

However, I am not convinced that Haig was Deep Throat. Haig was not in Washington during Woodward's meeting with Deep Throat on 9th October, 1972. The other problem with Haig concerns motivation. Was it really in his interests to bring down Richard Nixon? According to Leon Jaworski Haig did everything he could, including lying about what was on the tapes, in order to protect Nixon from impeachment. Why did he do this if he wanted Nixon out?

My guess is that it was Stephen Bull who told Woodward (or someone else in contact with him) about the erased tape.

My own view is that it was the CIA who had most to gain from the removal of Nixon. The organization was extremely upset when Nixon sacked helms and replaced him with one of his cronies (James Schlesinger). This was the beginning of a clear out of those involved in covert operations.

Schlesinger was heard to say: “The clandestine service was Helms’s Praetorian Guard. It had too much influence in the Agency and was too powerful within the government. I am going to cut it down to size.” This he did (a cut of 7 per cent). Karamessines resigned (claiming a bad back had made it difficult for him to carry on working) and Meyer was demoted and sent to London where he was quickly exposed by the UK media as being responsible for bribing leading figures in the Labour Party and the trade union movement between 1945 to 1951.

However, the important thing Schlesinger did was issue a directive to all CIA employees on 9th May, 1973. This is what Schlesinger said of his directive:

“I have ordered all senior operating officials of this Agency to report to me immediately on any activities now going on, or might have gone on in the past, which might be considered to be outside the legislative charter of this Agency. I hereby direct every person presently employed by CIA to report to me on any such activities of which he has knowledge. I invite all ex-employees to do the same. Anyone who has such information should call my secretary and say that he wishes to talk to me about “activities outside the CIA’s charter”.

There were several employees who had been trying to complain about the illegal CIA activities for some time. As Meyer points out, this directive “was a hunting license for the resentful subordinate to dig back into the records of the past in order to come up with evidence that might destroy the career of a superior whom he long hated.”

This was all out war. High-ranking CIA officials had no choice, Nixon had to be removed from office as soon as possible. It is at this point that the CIA began giving information on Nixon’s illegal activities to the Washington Post. As a key player in Operation Mockingbird, Ben Bradlee and the Washington Post was the obvious vehicle for the destruction of Nixon. In this way, the CIA involvement could be contained. This is why Carl Bernstein was in a position to expose the activities of Operation Mockingbird in the Rolling Stone in October 1977.

I believe that Bernstein and Woodward got information from several different sources. Mark Felt was one of these. However, I don’t think he was an important figure in this. I think the most important figure leaking against Nixon was Richard Ober. The other important figure in this was William Sullivan. I suspect it was one of these two who found out about the erased tape.

[Robert Charles-Dunne]

Below is an ironic item from today's UK Guardian, posted under Fair Use provisions. I read it in the Globe & Mail, Canada's national newspaper of record, but it doesn't show up on their online edition, so the URL below is for the original article from the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1506479,00.html

How Deep Throat chased his own tale

Julian Borger in Washington

Wednesday June 15, 2005

The Guardian

Since Mark Felt unmasked himself as Deep Throat last month, one of the remaining mysteries of the Watergate affair is how the Nixon administration failed to catch such a high-ranking mole. We now know the answer: the official in charge of the FBI hunt for Deep Throat was - Mark Felt.

According to FBI documents obtained by the Nation magazine, Mr Felt, the FBI deputy director at the time of the scandal, sent his agents on wild goose chases in search of the source of government leaks to the Washington Post.

In a memo on September 11 1972 to the head of the FBI's criminal division, Mr Felt suggested a county prosecutor in Miami named Richard Gerstein could be the main source for the investigative reports by Bob Woodward and Carl Bern stein. He ordered the head of the Miami FBI office to interview every official who had been in contact with Mr Gerstein.

He also admonished Robert Kunkel, who was in charge of the FBI's Watergate investigation, about the leaks. "I told him he should forcibly remind all agents of the need to be most circumspect in talking about this case with anyone outside the bureau," Mr Felt wrote in his memoirs.

When ordered by the attorney general, Richard Kleindienst, to launch a second mole-hunt, Mr Felt sent out another memo to his investigators steeped in feigned scepticism about Woodward and Bernstein's reporting, which he said "contained much fiction and half truths". The inquiry he launched ended up pointing to the justice department and the White House.

[Tim Gratz]

Great article.

Reminiscent of the speculation that Angleton was the CIA mole.

[Christopher T. George]

Hi all

The Felt family have a publishing and movie deal and Felt might end up being played by Tom Hanks whose company have optioned Felt's life story. Where does this leave a possible movie deal for Woodward's upcoming book? Or will the Tom Hanks film be mostly about Felt's life, as implied in the following Washington Post story, leaving the way open for a movie based on Woodward's book focusing on Deep Throat and Watergate?

Deep Throat Family Cuts Publishing, Film Pacts

Tom Hanks to Develop Movie About Secret Watergate Source

By Bob Thompson

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, June 16, 2005; Page C01

Deep Throat has a book deal and a movie deal, and he could end up being played by Tom Hanks.

The family of 91-year-old W. Mark Felt, who revealed his role as The Washington Post's key Watergate source two weeks ago, has chosen PublicAffairs Books to publish a combination of autobiography and biography, publisher and CEO Peter Osnos said last night. Osnos said that Universal Pictures has optioned Felt's life story and the book for a movie to be developed by Hanks's production company, Playtone.

He said the book will blend Felt's own writing about his life, including his out-of-print 1979 memoir, "The FBI Pyramid: From the Inside," and some unpublished material, with contributions from Felt's family and from lawyer John D. O'Connor, who has been advising the Felts. O'Connor wrote the Vanity Fair article that named Felt as Deep Throat after the secret had been kept for 33 years.

The additional material from Felt, Osnos said, includes discussion of how he decided to provide guidance to Post reporter Bob Woodward, and why.

The book is to be published next spring. Its working title is "A G-Man's Life: The FBI, Being 'Deep Throat' and the Struggle for Honor in Washington."

David Kuhn, the New York-based agent who has been representing the family in conjunction with Beverly Hills-based Creative Artists Agency, said last night that "Hanks's company was interested in the rights to the story within a day or two" of the revelation of Deep Throat's identity. He said the movie deal was concluded Tuesday night.

Kuhn would not comment on the sums paid in either the book or the movie deal, except to say that the family's decision on the book "was not based on money" but rather on the vision for its publication put forth by Osnos, a former Washington Post reporter and editor who helped cover the Senate Watergate hearings.

PublicAffairs generally doesn't pay advances of more than $75,000.

Neither Felt's daughter, Joan, nor his son, Mark Jr., returned phone calls last night. Kuhn said they would be "interviewed for the book and would participate in the storytelling."

During the two weeks the Felt project was being shopped, it met with considerable skepticism from publishers. The two reasons usually cited were the health of the elderly Felt, whose physical and mental deterioration appeared to preclude new contributions from him, and the presence of a competing book from Woodward, who had already written his own version of the Deep Throat story.

Woodward's "The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate's Deep Throat" is being rushed into print. His publisher, Simon & Schuster, has set a publication date of July 6.

Warner Books publisher Jamie Raab said last week that she had heard the Felt pitch and decided not to bid. "The book is not a Watergate book per se," Raab said. "It's not going to answer some of the lingering questions. . . . They're sort of writing around Mark Felt's life."

Little, Brown editor Geoff Shandler expressed skepticism as well, but he didn't rule out the success of a Felt book. "Traveling in Woodward's wake could be a profitable place to be, depending on what you pay and when you publish," Shandler said. "There is an equation that would work."

But publishing executives agreed that the real money was on the Hollywood end.

Edited June 16, 2005 by Christopher T. George

[John Simkin]

Jim Hougan, email (31st May, 2005)

In the last couple of hours I've gotten half-a-dozen emails, and a couple of phone-calls, about Mark Felt's belated declaration (in the upcoming Vanity Fair) to the effect that he's Deep Throat. I've just done an interview with Fox (James Rosen/Britt Hume), and it looks like this is the story de jour.

That said, it's possible, maybe even likely, that you have no absolutely interest in Wategate. If so, put this down as parapolitical spam, and stop reading.

Anyway, here's my take on Felt's declaration:

1. He was badgered into it by family and friends. Felt is 91 years old, and counting. A reporter who recently interviewed him found the interview an incoherent waste of time, and killed his own story.

2. Felt has always denied that he was Deep Throat until, as we're told, members of his family recently pointed out to him there might be a buck in it, and that his children and grandchildren have bills to pay. (And there is a buck in it: Bob Loomis told me, 20 years ago, that Throat could probably get a $4-million advance from Random House for his life-story.)

3. Felt wrote a book about his career in the FBI. In it, he goes out of the way to say that he met Woodward on a single occasion. This was in Felt's FBI office, and the upshot of it was that Felt told Woodward that he would not cooperate with him in his pursuit of "Watergate."

4. After a careful study of Throat's relationship to the Washington Post and to the White House, first in Secret Agenda and subsequently while working with Len Garment, it became clear that no one in or around the Nixon White Hoouse was in a position to know all of the things that Throat is alleged to have told Woodward. For example, Felt had no way of knowing about the 18-and-a-half minute gap in Rosemary Woods' tape. This strongly suggests that Throat was a composite.

5. Just as importantly, if Felt was Throat, he betrayed the people for whom he was a source. This is so because the biggest story that anyone could have broken in the Summer of 1972 was Alfred Baldwin's decision to come forward and tell what he knew. An employee of James McCord's, Baldwin told the U.S. Attorney's office and the FBI that he had monitored some 250 telephone conversations from "the Listening Post," his room in the Howard Johnson's motel across the street from the Watergate. The significance of this information was that the public and the press believed that the Watergate break-in was a failure, and that the burglars were arrested before they could succeed in placing their bugs. Because of that, the public believed, no telephone calls were ever intercepted. Baldwin gave the lie to that, and Felt knew it. For him to have withheld that information from the Washington Post would not only have been a betrayal - it would not have made sense if Felt's alleged intention (as Throat) was to keep the story alive. (The Baldwin story was eventually broken in the Fall of 1972 by the Los Angeles Times.)

6. What we have here, then, is the sad spectacle of an old man being manipulated.

For the record, it seems to me that if anyone proposes to identify Deep Throat, or to identify the lead singer in the choir of sources subsumed by the identity of Throat, they must meet a very basic criterion. That is, they must demonstarate, at a minimum, that their candidate met repeatedly and secretly with Bob Woodward. (Throat is obviously Woodward's creation. I don't think Bernstein would know him from a bale of hay.)

The only person who meets that criterion, to my knowledge, is Robert Bennett. Now one of the most powerful men in the U.S. Senate, Bennett was President of the Robert R. Mullen Company in 1972-3. This was the CIA front for which Howard Hunt worked. (It was also the Washington representative of the Howard Hughes organization.) As I reported in Secret Agenda, Bennett's CIA case officer, Martin Lukoskie, drafted a memo to his boss, Eric Eisenstadt, reporting on his monthly debriefing of Bennett after the Watergate arrests. According to Eisenstadt, Bennett told him that he, Bennett, had "made a backdoor entry to the Washington Post through Edward Bennett Williams' office," and that he, Bennett, was feeding stories to Bob Woodward, who was "suitably grateful." (Williams was the Post's attorney, and attorney, also, for the Democratic National Committee.)

Woodward's gratefulness was manifest in the way he kept the CIA, in general, and the Robert R. Mullen Company, in particular, out of his stories. (I obtained the Lukoskie memo under the Freedom of Information Act. Eric Eisenstadt's reaction to that memo, which I also obtained under FOIA, was considered so secret that it was delivered by hand to then - CIA Director Richard Helms.

What bothers me the most about all this, and what inspires me to write this unforgiveably long email to so many about something so few care about, is the gullibility of "the press" - by which I mean Talking Heads like Jeffrey Toobin - who have bought Felt's story hook, line and sinker.

That Woodward and Bernstein have taken a no-comment stance toward Felt's story is interesting and probably predictable. On the one hand, if I'm right about Bennett being Throat, they have a serious problem where their source is concerned - not just that he was a composite, but that their relationship to him was predicated on a quid pro quo concealing the CIA's involvement in the Watergate story.

[Robert Charles-Dunne]

John:

Any chance at all of convincing Jim Hougan to join us here? "Spooks" and "Secret Agenda" are both excellent pieces of detective work, and we'd all benefit enormously from his wisdom.

Just a thought...

[John Simkin]

Any chance at all of convincing Jim Hougan to join us here?  "Spooks" and "Secret Agenda" are both excellent pieces of detective work, and we'd all benefit enormously from his wisdom.

Great idea. I have not read Spooks but Secret Agenda is a great book. Jim also appears to be a generous researcher who does not have a big ego. However, I do not have his email (this message had been posted on a notice board). If any member has his email (or any other important researcher) please send it to me and and I will invite them to join us. I am currently trying to get Dick Russell (The Man Who Knew Too Much) to join us on the Forum.

Daniel Brandt (Namebase website) joined us yesterday. I am sure he will make an important contribution to our debates.

[John Simkin]

Information from Deep Throat to Bob Woodward came out very gradually. For some reason, he wanted Woodward to work out what was happening for himself. Woodward accused Deep Throat of playing games with him. All this changed in a meeting that took place on 16th May. Soon afterwards Woodward sent Ben Bradlee a memo where he outlined the whole Watergate Scandal.

Why did Deep Throat change his tactics on 16th May? I think the best answer to this involves the CIA. During the Watergate Scandal Nixon became concerned about the activities of the CIA. Three of those involved in the burglary, E. Howard Hunt, Eugenio Martinez and James W. McCord had all worked for the organixation. As a result Nixon and his aides attempted to force the CIA director, Richard Helms, and his deputy, Vernon Walters, to pay hush-money to Hunt, who was attempting to blackmail the government. Although it seemed Walters was willing to do this, Helms refused. In February, 1973, Nixon sacked Helms. His deputy, Thomas H. Karamessines, resigned in protest.

James Schlesinger now became the new director of the CIA. Schlesinger was heard to say: “The clandestine service was Helms’s Praetorian Guard. It had too much influence in the Agency and was too powerful within the government. I am going to cut it down to size.” This he did and over the next three months (7 per cent of CIA officers lost their jobs).

On 9th May, 1973, Schlesinger issued a directive to all CIA employees on 9th May, 1973. “I have ordered all senior operating officials of this Agency to report to me immediately on any activities now going on, or might have gone on in the past, which might be considered to be outside the legislative charter of this Agency. I hereby direct every person presently employed by CIA to report to me on any such activities of which he has knowledge. I invite all ex-employees to do the same. Anyone who has such information should call my secretary and say that he wishes to talk to me about “activities outside the CIA’s charter”.

There were several employees who had been trying to complain about the illegal CIA activities for some time. As Cord Meyer pointed out, this directive “was a hunting license for the resentful subordinate to dig back into the records of the past in order to come up with evidence that might destroy the career of a superior whom he long hated.”

I believed it was this Schlesinger directive that resulted in the CIA bringing down Nixon. On 16th May, 1973, Deep Throat has an important meeting with Woodward where he provides information that was to destroy Nixon. This includes the comment that the Senate Watergate Committee should consider interviewing Alexander P. Butterfield. Soon afterwards Woodward told a staff member of the committee (undoubtedly his friend, Scott Armstrong) that Butterfield should be asked to testify before Sam Ervin.

On Friday, 13th July, Butterfield appeared before the committee and was asked about if he knew whether Nixon was recording meetings he was having in the White House. Butterfield reluctantly admitted details of the tape system which monitored Nixon's conversations. This was the information that was to bring down Nixon.

[Tim Gratz]

John this was a very interesting point you have raised. I had not read the Schlesinger directive before.

It reminds me of a point I had intended to make, which I think was raised in a JFK biography I was recently reading.

Robert Charles-Dunne has argued strenuously that the Kennedys were unaware of the CIA/Mafia plots. However, it was ultimately Kennedy's responsibility as president if one of his agencies was engaging in rampant illegal activity. It shows he was not in control of the executive branch.

Of course JFK might not have wanted such an explicit order. He might have wanted "plausible deniability".

Edited June 18, 2005 by Tim Gratz

[Tim Gratz]

John I just want to re-iterate how important the discovery you made and reported may be. Excellent research and scholarship and well-written!

One can argue that Nixon was trying to get the CIA "under control" through Schlesinger. He may have had similar plans for the FBI. With Felt's involvement in the FBI's "black bag" operations, Felt may very well have felt it was then necessary to take Nixon out.

[John Simkin]

Adrian Havill investigated the existence of Deep Throat in his book, Deep Truth: The Lives of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (1993). I find this passage very convincing:

In mid-September 1972, seven men were indicted for the Watergate break-in. To the original five who had been arrested inside the Democratic headquarters, G. Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt were added. After reporting the story for the Post, Bob wrote in the duo's 1974 book, All the President's Men, he "broke the rule" and telephoned his source in the government known as Deep Throat.' The source told him that the go-ahead to give funding for the break-in had come from officials who were above CREEP employees.

Bob's "rule," of course, was the now-legendary signaling ritual made famous to everyone who read the book or watched the movie of All the President's Men. If Bob wanted to talk with his source, he would pull a flowerpot, into which a red flag was stuck, back to the rear of his sixth-floor apartment balcony. If the source wished to meet with Bob, he would mark page twenty of his New York Times with a hand-drawn clock before it was delivered. Bob would then meet the source by taking two cabs to be sure that he wasn't followed and then rendezvous in an underground garage late at night.

This does strain credulity! We are asked to believe the skulking around, taking two cabs, meeting in man-made subterranean caverns, and after all this are told Bob would cavalierly break the rules on a whim by telephoning to read him a story he had just written. This author has been on every floor of 1718 P Street, N.W.-Bob's former apartment building-and has been inside Bob's sixth-floor apartment and has stood in the courtyard several times. He found the following discrepancies between Bob's account in All the President's Men and what was physically possible.

Bob's apartment, number 617, faced into an inner sunken courtyard, a small area that, stepped off, is approximately one hundred feet in length and thirty feet in width. Bob's unit was the second one in from the alley, yet its balcony couldn't be viewed from there-one needs to get deep into the courtyard in order to just see part of it. The balcony floor is a single slice of concrete with an opaque divider set in the middle to separate another apartment's share of the same cement slab. Bob's half was the innermost one.

In order to have a chance of spotting a flowerpot, one would have to walk far into the courtyard and crane one's head sharply up to see the sixth floor. The flowerpot would then have had to be pulled against the rear and all the way to one side, up against the metal railing. Otherwise it couldn't have been seen on the balcony from any angle inside the courtyard. So if one made it into the courtyard and if the flowerpot were at the outside angle of the balcony, it could be seen, but one wouldn't have gotten away with such an action more than a few times. There were eighty apartments that looked down into the tiny courtyard, and anyone staring up to an apartment and daily lurking around in the enclosure would have been observed and likely reported after more than one visit. If Deep Throat had checked daily, as Bob said on page 72 of All the President's Men he would have been noticed within weeks.' The author knows from firsthand experience. The few times he came to the building and looked up to the sixth floor, a resident came out, leaned over the railing, and engaged him in friendly, sometimes suspicious, conversation. This was during the daylight hours. The author didn't have the nerve to try it at night.

To get to the courtyard one had to pass through two locked doors and within view of the reception desk. The building was heavily secured. But there was another way to view Bob's apartment in 1972, and that was by entering from the alley, walking fifty-six steps and then looking up. This was an even steeper angle, yet was more accessible. It was much harder to see anything on Bob's balcony floor from that angle, and again a daily intruder would have been on display to eighty apartments. For "a source in the executive branch," as Bob described him (page 71), to attempt either gambit on a regular basis would have been an unacceptable risk, given the many alternatives. The flowerpot adventure was the stuff of spy novels as the reader shall soon see.

In a June 17, 1992, twentieth-anniversary story in the Washington Post on Watergate, Bob said he couldn't remember his apartment number. Then he misled Karlyn Barker, the Post reporter, by saying, "606 or 608 or 612, something like that."' In APM, Bob vaguely described it as a "sixth-floor apartment" (page 72) even though he had long moved out by the time the book was released. On the other hand, he described a single visit to Martha Mitchell (page 93) precisely as "room 710, Marriott Suite." By giving equalnumbered digits to Karlyn Barker, Bob placed each unit on the outside of the building and in a location able to be easily seen without ever entering the premises. But the even-numbered red herring was simply that, a false clue. The author acquired documents handwritten by Bob Woodward updating his resume in 1972. He had clearly written "Apt. 617" on those papers. That Bob-a master recordkeeper-would somehow forget the number of an apartment in which he lived for several years and where such historic events took place is surprising.

Bob said he never knew how the New York Times got marked. Fewer than ten residents usually subscribed to the paper. Thus, the Times was not delivered to his door, but left at the reception desk, unmarked and stacked with several others in the lobby. In 1972, the front door was locked at night for security reasons. This author also doesn't know how Bob's paper could have been "marked with a clock." Other parts of APM fail to add up. Bob said he once had to walk for "fifteen blocks" (page 195) to meet with his source because he couldn't find a cab. But Bob knew that three of Washington's largest and most prominent hotels-the Mayflower, the Capital Hilton and the Madison-were all within six blocks of his apartment. All normally have taxis lined up in front twenty-four hours a day. Each had an all-night doorman available to summon or whistle a cab.

So why were there so many questionable cloak-and-dagger scenes in All the President's Men? Money. It was that simple. Carl had the idea to write a book and the two dutifully began their work on it.

"At first we were going to do it about the Watergate burglars," Bob said in a 1974 Los Angeles Times interview. "We had a chapter about Howard Hunt. Carl wrote one about the 1970 elections." The book that Bob and Carl originally intended to write also included chapters on G. Gordon Liddy and John Mitchell. It was about the men and women closest to Richard Nixon. According to Bob, the original title was simply Reporting Watergate.

What changed it all was a phone call from Robert Redford. He wanted to make a movie about Watergate. He had just finished making a political film titled The Candidate, and he had gotten into an argument with some Washington reporters about Watergate and whether or not Richard Nixon had been involved. Redford, who had met Nixon when he was thirteen-Redford was awarded a tennis trophy by him-had a low opinion of the president. Always political, Redford began following Bob and Carl's byline in the Post and became fascinated with the odd pairing. The coupling of the classic Ivy League WASP and the dead-end, dropout Jewish kid was, to Redford, as if Martin and Lewis had gone into journalism rather than comedy. He checked them out and was further impressed with the chemistry-Bob's iceberg-lettuce crispness and Carl's seething volatility. There was a movie to be made here, Redford told friends.

But he suggested to Bob Woodward the movie should be about two reporters and how they cracked the Watergate mystery. If that's how Redford wanted it, then that's how the book would be written. Redford was willing to pay $450,000, plus profit participation, for the privilege. For that, Bob and Carl could take poetic license.

[Pat Speer]

John this was a very interesting point you have raised.  I had not read the Schlesinger directive before.

It reminds me of a point I had intended to make, which I think was raised in a JFK biography I was recently reading.

Robert Charles-Dunne has argued strenuously that the Kennedys were unaware of the CIA/Mafia plots.  However, it was ultimately Kennedy's responsibility as president if one of his agencies was engaging in rampant illegal activity.  It shows he was not in control of the executive branch.

Of course JFK might not have wanted such an explicit order.  He might have wanted "plausible deniability".

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Tim, the gathering of the family jewels is one of the most important moments of recent history. I'm surprised you weren't aware of it. Schlesinger was brought in by Nixon for only three months. Three months in which he was supposed to clean up the agency. Colby was brought in as his replacement only on the condition he carried on this work. I believe Schles was out and on to Defense the day the report was finished. Although the creation of the family jewels was supposedly Schles' idea, I'd bet my family jewels Nixon had something to do with it and that he gave a copy to Nixon. If one continues to follow the timeline, one can see that Helms was pushed out when he wouldn't help Nixon cover-up Watergate, that Schles was brought in to create the family jewels to give Nixon control of the secrets Helms so closely guarded, that Colson became obsessed with the thought that he'd been set up by the CIA, through the machinations of McCord, Hunt, Martinez and Bennett, that he spread this obsession to Nixon as Nixon's Presidency collapsed, that within months of the collapse, tidbits from the jewels were leaked by a still unnamed source to Seymour Hersh (I wouldn't be surprised if his source was Ziegler, who continued to baby-sit Nixon after the fall)), that the leaking of these tidbits forced Angleton out and forced the creation of the Rockefeller Commission, that Colby briefed Ford on the jewels and that Ford let it slip to members of the media that the jewels included mention of assassination, that this led to the creation of the Church Committee, and that this led to the HSCA. The Helms/Nixon feud is thus at the center of the 1970's. Ehrlichman clearly saw it this way, and built his best-selling book The Company aka Washington: Behind Closed Doors around it.

Edited June 20, 2005 by Pat Speer