Bob Woodward

[Sidney Blumenthal]

In the beginning, seasoned political reporters at the Washington Post disdained the Watergate story as insignificant, implausible and unserious. But two young journalists doggedly pursued every lead, helping bring about Richard Nixon's resignation. Three decades later, Bob Woodward had come to embody the ultimate Washington insider. Over the past month, however, he has personified the stonewalling and covering up he once shattered to launch his brilliant career. His unravelling is as surprising and symptomatic a story of Bush's Washington as his making was of Nixon's.

On October 27, the night before Vice-President Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was indicted on five counts of perjury and obstruction of justice, Woodward appeared on CNN. Asked about the case, he said: "I'm quite confident we're going to find out that it started as a kind of gossip ... There's a lot of innocent actions in all of this ... I don't know how this is about the build-up to the war." He expressed his sympathy for those who might be indicted: " ... what distresses me is, you know, so and so might be indicted and so and so is facing ... And it is not yet proven." He concluded with invective against Patrick Fitzgerald, "a junkyard dog prosecutor".

On November 16 Woodward admitted he had been called to testify on November 3 before the prosecutor, having been given up by a source after Libby's indictment. Woodward, it turned out, was the first journalist to learn Plame's identity. "I hunkered down," he told his own newspaper. "I'm in the habit of keeping secrets. I didn't want anything out there that was going to get me subpoenaed." Woodward claimed he heard about Plame in an interview he conducted in June 2003 for his book Plan of Attack, which failed to contain this startling information. While two Post reporters testified before the prosecutor, Woodward hid his role as material witness. With the disclosure, the storyteller lost the plot.

Woodward advocates no ideas and is indifferent to the fate of government. His fabled access has been in the service of his technique of accumulating mountains of facts whose scale fosters an image of omniscience. As his bestsellers and wealth piled up, he lost a sense of journalism as provisional and inherently imperfect, seeing it instead as something engraved in stone. But his method made him particularly vulnerable to manipulation by cunning sources.

Woodward's 2002 book Bush At War, based partly on selected National Security Council documents leaked to him at White House instruction, was invaluable to the administration for its portrait of Bush as strong and decisive. Its omissions are as striking as its fragmentary facts, such as the absence of analysis of the disastrous operation at Tora Bora that allowed Bin Laden to escape. Plan of Attack includes intriguing shards of information about the twisting of intelligence to justify the war, but he fails to develop the material and theme.

By the publication of Plan of Attack, Woodward was "hunkered down," hiding his "secrets" from his newspaper, its readers and the prosecutor. He cryptically told one of the subpoenaed Post reporters to "keep him out of the reporting". He said there were "reasonable grounds to discredit" Joseph Wilson, the whistleblower. He asserted that a CIA assessment had determined that Plame's outing had done no damage, but the CIA said no damage assessment report had been done. But when a source outed Woodward to the prosecutor, his cover-up was revealed. Above all, the extent of his credulity is exposed. It is more than paradoxical that the reporter who investigated Nixon and worked closely with professionals in government alarmed by the abuses should exhibit so little scepticism about Bush.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,...1654480,00.html

[Dawn Meredith]

[quote name='Sidney Blumenthal' date='Dec 1 2005, 07:31 PM' post='46915']

But when a source outed Woodward to the prosecutor, his cover-up was revealed. Above all, the extent of his credulity is exposed. It is more than paradoxical that the reporter who investigated Nixon and worked closely with professionals in government alarmed by the abuses should exhibit so little scepticism about Bush.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,...1654480,00.html

SId:

Welcome to the forum. An honor to have you here.

Woodward's actions/ and inactions today do not seem so "paradoxical" if viewed from the

perspective that his coverage of Watergate was in keeping with what Operation Mockingbird

felt comfortable with "revealing". Many aspects of Watergate, such as Dortthy Hunt's 12/8/72 highly suspicious plane crash were totally ignored by Woodward and Co.

I also don't believe Felt is Deep Throat. Interesting that Felt should be outed while alive, but in no condition to remember those days.

Dawn

[Ron Ecker]

It has always been my impression that Woodward is a creature of the intelligence community. It made him what he is today. The CIA had need of a hotshot reporter or two to help dispose of a troublemaker, and Woodward was in the right place at the right time. During the Watergate scandal the Post, as personified by its intrepid reporters Woodward and Bernstein, brought down Nixon because it was led to do so by the CIA, the "bungling" of the Watergate burglary being apparently a CIA setup.

In ordinary times there is no way the Post or any other newspaper in this country would be allowed to bring down a president in that fashion. (Wouldn't it be wonderful?) It was a coup in which the Post was used by the powers that be, with Deep Throat (whether it was Felt or someone else) dutifully leading our intrepid reporters by the nose to paydirt, fame and fortune.

[Guest John Gillespie]

SId:

Welcome to the forum. An honor to have you here.

Woodward's actions/ and inactions today do not seem so "paradoxical" if viewed from the

perspective that his coverage of Watergate was in keeping with what Operation Mockingbird

felt comfortable with "revealing". Many aspects of Watergate, such as Dortthy Hunt's 12/8/72 highly suspicious plane crash were totally ignored by Woodward and Co.

I also don't believe Felt is Deep Throat. Interesting that Felt should be outed while alive, but in no condition to remember those days.

Dawn

If Mark Felt is Deep Throat then my name is Sidney Blumenthal. BTW: Sam Dash, on Larry King's old radio show, opined that Deep Throat was a composite. One can speculate (lots of that on THESE pages) on the relative innocence or merits of the remark but it was made clearly.

This business about Woodward sort of forgetting his roots is the spin, however benign or malignant, making the rounds these days. Don't you believe it! He is, however, a most fascinating character of these interesting times.

JAG

Edited December 1, 2005 by John Gillespie

[Pat Speer]

SId:

Welcome to the forum. An honor to have you here.

Woodward's actions/ and inactions today do not seem so "paradoxical" if viewed from the

perspective that his coverage of Watergate was in keeping with what Operation Mockingbird

felt comfortable with "revealing". Many aspects of Watergate, such as Dortthy Hunt's 12/8/72 highly suspicious plane crash were totally ignored by Woodward and Co.

I also don't believe Felt is Deep Throat. Interesting that Felt should be outed while alive, but in no condition to remember those days.

Dawn

If Mark Felt is Deep Throat then my name is Sidney Blumenthal. BTW: Sam Dash, on Larry King's old radio show, opined that Deep Throat was a composite. One can speculate (lots of that on THESE pages) on the relative innocence or merits of the remark but it was made clearly.

This business about Woodward sort of forgetting his roots is the spin, however benign or malignant, making the rounds these days. Don't you believe it! He is, however, a most fascinating character of these interesting times.

JAG

Call me Pollyanna but I believe 100% that Felt was Deep Throat. He had the motive and the connections. What a lot of people miss is that Deep Throat merely confirmed what Woodward and Bernstein were able to get from their other sources, mostly still un-named. Haig and some of the other "suspects" may well have been among these other sources. I do agree that Woodward is such an institution that he may have become institutionalized--too sympathetic to the powers-that-be. As such he may have incorrectly assumed that Rove telling him Plame was with the CIA was merely gossip unworthy of repetition, rather than a deliberate attempt to out the woman and drop a gotcha on her husband. I don't believe Woodward has been fully brain-washed however. His interviews with Powell demonstrating the in-fighting over intelligence and the efforts to sell the Iraq war were undoubtedlly damaging to the Bush Ad legacy. To Woodward's mind, his ability to get such admissions from a former Sec. of State justify his keeping the lid on numerous other scandals. I'm not so sure he's wrong.

[Guest John Gillespie]

SId:

Welcome to the forum. An honor to have you here.

Woodward's actions/ and inactions today do not seem so "paradoxical" if viewed from the

perspective that his coverage of Watergate was in keeping with what Operation Mockingbird

felt comfortable with "revealing". Many aspects of Watergate, such as Dortthy Hunt's 12/8/72 highly suspicious plane crash were totally ignored by Woodward and Co.

I also don't believe Felt is Deep Throat. Interesting that Felt should be outed while alive, but in no condition to remember those days.

Dawn

If Mark Felt is Deep Throat then my name is Sidney Blumenthal. BTW: Sam Dash, on Larry King's old radio show, opined that Deep Throat was a composite. One can speculate (lots of that on THESE pages) on the relative innocence or merits of the remark but it was made clearly.

This business about Woodward sort of forgetting his roots is the spin, however benign or malignant, making the rounds these days. Don't you believe it! He is, however, a most fascinating character of these interesting times.

JAG

Call me Pollyanna but I believe 100% that Felt was Deep Throat. He had the motive and the connections. What a lot of people miss is that Deep Throat merely confirmed what Woodward and Bernstein were able to get from their other sources, mostly still un-named. Haig and some of the other "suspects" may well have been among these other sources. I do agree that Woodward is such an institution that he may have become institutionalized--too sympathetic to the powers-that-be. As such he may have incorrectly assumed that Rove telling him Plame was with the CIA was merely gossip unworthy of repetition, rather than a deliberate attempt to out the woman and drop a gotcha on her husband. I don't believe Woodward has been fully brain-washed however. His interviews with Powell demonstrating the in-fighting over intelligence and the efforts to sell the Iraq war were undoubtedlly damaging to the Bush Ad legacy. To Woodward's mind, his ability to get such admissions from a former Sec. of State justify his keeping the lid on numerous other scandals. I'm not so sure he's wrong.

I'd rather call you a taxi. This is the kind of stuff that absolutely repels me. The following is an essay I wrote and posted some weeks ago that I reproduce here (once again, I leave you to yourselves):

'Part I.

'I do not have personal real conversations (sic) with a_ _holes.'

- Jack White on the Re-education Forum (REF)

'...saying things that they would not dare to say in a personal face-to-face setting.'

- ibid

One would have thought the above to have been intended irony, however humorless, if one hadn't known better and had not been forced to navigate the prose of Jack White to get to something untangled. But this is so often the case on the REF, is it not?

Here's a guy using the 'a' word while at the same time decrying a lack of civility! Then he writes things he wouldn't dare say face-to-face while at the same time criticizing others for writing things THEY might not say cheek to cheek. To further paraphrase Irving Berlin: I won't dance, don't ask me.

The Progressives are good - great, actually - at gathering various techniques to further their double standards and doublethink, as if no one would notice. They're also good at getting angry at you and getting personal real quickly (but after all, YOU are to blame), as in nasty. I refer you to any of the more recent Nic postings or one can simply pinch one’s nostrils and browse the Let’s Attack Tim Gratz Archives. Once these people have exposed themselves, the hatred and self loathing are impossible to hide. The light has been shone on the cockroach; the rodent has been cornered. The paranoia is bared full. You are on to them, you see?

So, AHEM! That's about the extent of expletive usage that you'll get outta ME, guys.

(cont’d)

Part II.

"And you David - you just like posting in the forum. You don't seem to add anything to the topic being discussed..."

- recent commentary by Evan

Good call, Ev Man! The REF reeks of that sort of thing. Touche. Though I still like perusing the topics, I realize there is far too much Jack, Nic, Pamela, David, et al through which to wade – like Tim Robbins in “The Shawshank Redemption”. For the most part, these are people who have never done anything meaningful outside the womb of academia and have nothing to offer but a continuous stream of nonsense worthy of an adolescent chatline. It is nothing more than the trading of drivel, full of sound and fury and signifying NOTHING.

I have come to realize that there may never be a time when it's possible to be inured to this barrage of rubbish. These postings keep topping one another. This week I saw perhaps the most gratuitous, speculative twaddle that I have encountered to date on the REF, above and beyond the usual. It was posted under the Tippitt slaying sub-topic of the JFK assassination "debate" in January 2005 by something called Dixie Dea.

Dale Myers wrote a marvelous book on this subject - one of the best investigative works of our time -

- entitled "With Malice." It is a work of scholarship, honest research and meticulous, dedicated investigation. If only it had been read by those whose names and postings appear in the wake of this Dixie Dea trailor-park verbiage. Instead of eagerly flowing with the swill they would have cringed and taken Ms Dea to the woodshed. But, obviously, they got to read just what they wanted - Earlene Roberts and The Incredible Honking Horn, for instance

Somewhere in the fetid aftermath of Hurricane Dea, in the heaving of refuse that followed, there was a classic Nic posting about – get this - an alley somewhere off of Patton Street and near the scene of the Tippitt slaying. Nic and a couple of other Progressives babbled that the alley really and truly was there at the time but it’s just not there anymore. (cont’d)

Ah, let me guess. The CIA subsequently must have purchased the surrounding property and reconfigured it – bulldozed it, even - to ensure the success of the cover up to hide the real Tippitt murderer(s). These are the same people that sabotaged Ted Kennedy’s Presidential hopes six years later at Chappaquidick when they “messed up his car”... and stuff, as Nic would say. Yes, perhaps these are even the same hooligans that O.J. hopes to encounter after slicing one off into the woods. Claptrap. Give me my Mulligan and let me guess again: Nic hasn’t read “With Malice.”

So hey, you progressives, listen up. This is not hard: Oswald did NOT kill JFK. But he DID kill Tippitt. Being unable to accept that notion or even consider the possibility tells me there just might be an agenda at work. All of you, the Guesswork Groupies of the REF, seriously set back the overall effort on a number of fronts. You are The McAdams' Morons. You do immeasurable harm and you don’t care because it makes you and the likes of Dixie feel better, doesn't it?

Let’s to the Dea atrocity once more and what it represents on the REF. It is symptomatic of the mire through which one must scroll, i.e., declarative statements without substance and shot from the hip to achieve nothing so much than a faux credence by the author(s). They simply want to believe what they write and to feel good in the process. As with Jack, there is presumed license to dispense garbage as if it were wisdom from on high, when in truth it simply is wild theorem put out for its own sake with an implied insistence that theirs is a voice to be heard on serious matters.

They are up past their bedtimes."

...including you, Sidney.

John A. Gillespie

"Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should."

Alan Greenspan, 1957, letter to Editor, N.Y. Times, on a selected theme of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged."

Edited December 1, 2005 by John Gillespie

[John Simkin]

It has always been my impression that Woodward is a creature of the intelligence community. It made him what he is today. The CIA had need of a hotshot reporter or two to help dispose of a troublemaker, and Woodward was in the right place at the right time. During the Watergate scandal the Post, as personified by its intrepid reporters Woodward and Bernstein, brought down Nixon because it was led to do so by the CIA, the "bungling" of the Watergate burglary being apparently a CIA setup.

In ordinary times there is no way the Post or any other newspaper in this country would be allowed to bring down a president in that fashion. (Wouldn't it be wonderful?) It was a coup in which the Post was used by the powers that be, with Deep Throat (whether it was Felt or someone else) dutifully leading our intrepid reporters by the nose to paydirt, fame and fortune.

I agree Ron. Bob Woodward was a communications officer for naval intelligence. Later, Woodward was assigned to Admiral Thomas Moorer, chief of naval operations.

Woodward left the service in 1970 and began his career in journalism on the Montgomery County Sentinel. The following year he joined the Washington Post. Everybody agrees he could not write to save his life yet Bradlee gave him a job after only a year's experience on a local newspaper. Bradlee (also former naval intelligence) kept a close eye on his career. Bradlee was himself a long-term CIA asset.

In 1951 Phil Graham (key figure in Operation Mockingbird) helped Bradlee to become assistant press attaché in the American embassy in Paris. In 1952 Bradlee joined the staff of the Office of U.S. Information and Educational Exchange (USIE), the embassy's propaganda unit. USIE produced films, magazines, research, speeches, and news items for use by the the Central Intelligence Agency throughout Europe. USIE (later known as USIA) also controlled the Voice of America, a means of disseminating pro-American "cultural information" worldwide. While at the USIE Bradlee worked with E. Howard Hunt.

According to a Justice Department memo from a assistant U.S. attorney in the Rosenberg Trial Bradlee was helping the CIA to manage European propaganda regarding the spying conviction and the execution of Ethel Rosenberg and Julius Rosenberg on on 19th June, 1953.

Mark Riebling, the author of Wedge: From Pearl Harbor to 9/11 points out that Bob Woodward described Deep Throat as "having an aggregate of information flowing in and out of many stations" and "perhaps the only person in the government in a position to possibly understand the whole scheme, and not be a potential conspirator himself". Riebling goes on to argue that this indicates that Deep Throat was a senior official in the CIA. He points out that Woodward virtually confirmed that his source was from the CIA: "As you know, I'm not going to discuss the identify of Deep Throat or any other of my confidential sources who are still alive. But let me just say that the suggestion that we were being used by the intelligence community was of concern to us at the time and afterward."

Deborah Davis, the author of Katharine the Great, also believes that Deep Throat was a senior official of the CIA. Her candidate is Richard Ober, the head of Operation Chaos. Ober was given an office in the White House and worked closely with Richard Nixon, H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman during this period.

The best way to identify Deep Throat is to take a close look at what he told Woodward. The initial information suggested that his source was someone involved in the FBI investigation of the Watergate break-in. However, Jim Hougan (Secret Agenda) argues that Deep Throat was unlikely to have been a member of the agency. He points out that Deep Throat did not tell Woodward about the role played by Alfred Baldwin in the Watergate break-in. This was first revealed by a press conference held by the Democratic Party in September.

Hougan suggests that the only reason Deep Throat did not pass this important information to Woodward was that he did not know about it. If that is the case Deep Throat was not from the FBI (L. Patrick Gray or Mark Felt). Nor could he have been one of Nixon's aides who all knew about Baldwin's key role in the break-in (John Dean, H. R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, Charles Colson, John N. Mitchell, Jeb Magruder, Egil Krogh and Frederick LaRue).

Another clue to the identity of Deep Throat comes from Barry Sussman, Woodward's editor at Washington Post. In his book, The Great Cover-Up, Sussman claims that Woodward first made use of Deep Throat when writing about how Arthur Bremer attempted to kill George Wallace on 15th May, 1972. This suggests that his informant was working in a senior position in the FBI.

In April, 1982, John Dean met Bob Woodward at a conference being held at the University of Massachusetts. Although Woodward refused to identify Deep Throat it was possible for Dean to work out that he was someone working in the White House.

According to Woodward it was Deep Throat who first suggested that Alexander P. Butterfield could be an important figure in the investigation. In May, 1973, Woodward told a member of the Senate Watergate Committee (undoubtedly his friend, Scott Armstrong) that Butterfield should be interviewed.

On 25th June, 1973, John Dean testified that at a meeting with Richard Nixon on 15th April, the president had remarked that he had probably been foolish to have discussed his attempts to get clemency for E. Howard Hunt with Charles Colson. Dean concluded from this that Nixon's office might be bugged. 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.

In Lost Honor John Dean concludes that it was Deep Throat who had told Woodward about Nixon's taping system that had been installed by Alexander P. Butterfield. This was the best-kept secret in the White House with only a few people knowing about its existence.

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". It was later claimed by Jim Hougan (Secret Agenda) and John Dean (Lost Honor) that only a very small group of people could have known about these these gaps at this time. 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.

In his book Deep Truth: The Lives of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (1993) Adrian Havill argues that Deep Throat was a dramatic devise used by Woodward. Havill visited the place where Woodward lived during the Watergate investigation. He discovered that the balcony where he placed the flower pot with a red flag faced an interior courtyard. Havill argues in his book that the only way Deep Throat could see the flag was "to walk into the center of the complex, with eighty units viewing you, crane your neck and look up to the sixth floor". Havill argues that Deep Throat would have been highly unlikely to have exposed himself if this way.

Nor was Havill impressed with the way Deep Throat communicated to Woodward when he wanted a meeting with the journalist. According to All the President's Men Deep Throat drew a clock on page 20 of his New York Times. Havill discovered that the papers were not delivered to each door, but left stacked and unmarked in a common reception area. Havill argues that there is no way Deep Throat could have known which paper Woodward would end up with each morning.

In May, 2005, John O'Connor, a lawyer working for Mark Felt, told Vanity Fair magazine that his client was Deep Throat. Shortly afterwards Bob Woodward confirmed that Felt had provided him with important information during the Watergate investigation. However, Carl Bernstein was quick to add that Felt was only one of several important sources.

However, there are serious problems with the idea that Mark Felt was Deep Throat. In his autobiography, The FBI Pyramid: Inside the FBI, Felt denied being Deep Throat and said he met with Woodward only once. Felt's last word on the subject came in 1999, on the 25th anniversary of Nixon's resignation, when he told a reporter that it would be "terrible" if someone in his position had been Deep Throat. "This would completely undermine the reputation that you might have as a loyal employee of the FBI," he said. "It just wouldn't fit at all."

Felt had not made the confession himself. In 2001 Felt suffered a stroke that robbed him of his memory. Before this happened Felt had told his daughter Joan that he was Deep Throat. She admits that the family have gone public in an attempt to obtain money. Joan Felt told journalists: "My son Nick is in law school and he'll owe $100,000 by the time he graduates. I am still a single mom, still supporting them (her children) to one degree or another."

Vanity Fair only paid the Felt family $10,000 (£5,500) but the whole project is linked to a $1m book deal. The book was written of course to be written by Bob Woodward. However, on 4th June, 2005, the publisher Judith Regan (HarperCollins) revealed that negotiations over a possible book deal had collapsed because of serious concerns that Felt was no longer of sound mind.

There are several major problems with Mark Felt being Deep Throat. Felt resigned from the FBI. in June, 1973 and no longer had to worry about his career. Why did he not come forward with his information at this stage of the Watergate investigation? He would have been seen as a national hero and would no doubt have made a fortune from his memoirs.

In November, 1980, Felt was convicted of conspiring to violate the constitutional rights of Americans by authorising illegal break-ins and wire taps of people connected to suspected domestic bombers. Why did Felt not attempt to rebuild his public image by disclosing that he was Deep Throat?

If Felt had been Deep Throat why did he not tell Woodward about the role played by Alfred Baldwin in the Watergate break-in. The FBI knew about this within days of the break-in. Yet Woodward did not mention it in his articles until the story was revealed by a press conference held by the Democratic Party in September, 1972.

According to Woodward it was Deep Throat who first suggested that Alexander P. Butterfield could be an important figure in the investigation. In May, 1973, Woodward told a member of the Senate Watergate Committee that Butterfield should be interviewed. On Friday, 13th July, Butterfield appeared before the committee and was asked about if he knew whether Richard Nixon was recording meetings he was having in the White House. This was the best-kept secret in the White House with only a few people knowing about its existence. How could Felt have known about this system?

[Dawn Meredith]

I'd rather call you a taxi. This is the kind of stuff that absolutely repels me. The following is an essay I wrote and posted some weeks ago that I reproduce here (once again, I leave you to yourselves):

'Part I.

'I do not have personal real conversations (sic) with a_ _holes.'

- Jack White on the Re-education Forum (REF)

'...saying things that they would not dare to say in a personal face-to-face setting.'

- ibid

One would have thought the above to have been intended irony, however humorless, if one hadn't known better and had not been forced to navigate the prose of Jack White to get to something untangled. But this is so often the case on the REF, is it not?

Here's a guy using the 'a' word while at the same time decrying a lack of civility! Then he writes things he wouldn't dare say face-to-face while at the same time criticizing others for writing things THEY might not say cheek to cheek. To further paraphrase Irving Berlin: I won't dance, don't ask me.

The Progressives are good - great, actually - at gathering various techniques to further their double standards and doublethink, as if no one would notice. They're also good at getting angry at you and getting personal real quickly (but after all, YOU are to blame), as in nasty. I refer you to any of the more recent Nic postings or one can simply pinch one’s nostrils and browse the Let’s Attack Tim Gratz Archives. Once these people have exposed themselves, the hatred and self loathing are impossible to hide. The light has been shone on the cockroach; the rodent has been cornered. The paranoia is bared full. You are on to them, you see?

So, AHEM! That's about the extent of expletive usage that you'll get outta ME, guys.

(cont’d)

Part II.

"And you David - you just like posting in the forum. You don't seem to add anything to the topic being discussed..."

- recent commentary by Evan

Good call, Ev Man! The REF reeks of that sort of thing. Touche. Though I still like perusing the topics, I realize there is far too much Jack, Nic, Pamela, David, et al through which to wade – like Tim Robbins in “The Shawshank Redemption”. For the most part, these are people who have never done anything meaningful outside the womb of academia and have nothing to offer but a continuous stream of nonsense worthy of an adolescent chatline. It is nothing more than the trading of drivel, full of sound and fury and signifying NOTHING.

I have come to realize that there may never be a time when it's possible to be inured to this barrage of rubbish. These postings keep topping one another. This week I saw perhaps the most gratuitous, speculative twaddle that I have encountered to date on the REF, above and beyond the usual. It was posted under the Tippitt slaying sub-topic of the JFK assassination "debate" in January 2005 by something called Dixie Dea.

Dale Myers wrote a marvelous book on this subject - one of the best investigative works of our time -

- entitled "With Malice." It is a work of scholarship, honest research and meticulous, dedicated investigation. If only it had been read by those whose names and postings appear in the wake of this Dixie Dea trailor-park verbiage. Instead of eagerly flowing with the swill they would have cringed and taken Ms Dea to the woodshed. But, obviously, they got to read just what they wanted - Earlene Roberts and The Incredible Honking Horn, for instance

Somewhere in the fetid aftermath of Hurricane Dea, in the heaving of refuse that followed, there was a classic Nic posting about – get this - an alley somewhere off of Patton Street and near the scene of the Tippitt slaying. Nic and a couple of other Progressives babbled that the alley really and truly was there at the time but it’s just not there anymore. (cont’d)

Ah, let me guess. The CIA subsequently must have purchased the surrounding property and reconfigured it – bulldozed it, even - to ensure the success of the cover up to hide the real Tippitt murderer(s). These are the same people that sabotaged Ted Kennedy’s Presidential hopes six years later at Chappaquidick when they “messed up his car”... and stuff, as Nic would say. Yes, perhaps these are even the same hooligans that O.J. hopes to encounter after slicing one off into the woods. Claptrap. Give me my Mulligan and let me guess again: Nic hasn’t read “With Malice.”

So hey, you progressives, listen up. This is not hard: Oswald did NOT kill JFK. But he DID kill Tippitt. Being unable to accept that notion or even consider the possibility tells me there just might be an agenda at work. All of you, the Guesswork Groupies of the REF, seriously set back the overall effort on a number of fronts. You are The McAdams' Morons. You do immeasurable harm and you don’t care because it makes you and the likes of Dixie feel better, doesn't it?

Let’s to the Dea atrocity once more and what it represents on the REF. It is symptomatic of the mire through which one must scroll, i.e., declarative statements without substance and shot from the hip to achieve nothing so much than a faux credence by the author(s). They simply want to believe what they write and to feel good in the process. As with Jack, there is presumed license to dispense garbage as if it were wisdom from on high, when in truth it simply is wild theorem put out for its own sake with an implied insistence that theirs is a voice to be heard on serious matters.

They are up past their bedtimes."

...including you, Sidney.

John A. Gillespie

"Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should."

Alan Greenspan, 1957, letter to Editor, N.Y. Times, on a selected theme of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged."

What the hell brought THIS on? John are you suddenly on drugs or something?? Sidney does one post and you rant and rave about poor Nic and Dixie? This sounds like the ravings of a lunatic....and has zero to do with this thread.

Dawn

[Shanet Clark]

Readers

The author James Bamford, in "Pretext for War" (NY:Doubleday, 2004) makes it clear that the

CIA did indeed twist the evidence against Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the political buildup for

the war.

A Directorate of Operations case officer in the Counter Proliferation Division stated that a

superior officer at Langley CIA headquarters "called a meeting and gave them their marching orders. 'And he

said, "You know what--if Bush wants to go to war, it's your job to give him a reason to do so,"' according to

the official. It was the first time the official had ever heard anyone order employees to slant their analysis

for political purposes."

"another longtime DO officer...heard directly from a colleague about the outside pressure on

agency personnel, 'he was saying to me, well the administration pressured us to saythings that

probably weren't true'"

(page 333 and 336)

So that is pretty clear.

The British Cabinet memo from the Head of Intelligence

confirms James Bamford's view of Bush's illegal politicizing of the intelligence effort.........

Edited December 2, 2005 by Shanet Clark

[Shanet Clark]

A Directorate of Operations case officer in the Counter Proliferation Division stated that a

superior officer at Langley CIA headquarters "called a meeting and gave them their marching orders. 'And he

said, "You know what--if Bush wants to go to war, it's your job to give him a reason to do so,"' according to

the official. It was the first time the official had ever heard anyone order employees to slant their analysis

for political purposes."

Come to think of it,

Bamford's source here could very well have been

Valerie Plame herself.....................

[Ron Ecker]

CIA director George Tenet went along with the pressure from the Bush gang, i.e. failed to protect his employees from it, then wound up as the gang's scapegoat for allowing the twisted intelligence. (Having to resign for "personal reasons," the only person held accountable, though hardly anyone noticed.)

Ha ha ha. Sometimes you just can't win, eh, George? That's what you get for trying to please those bastards (telling them that finding WMDs in Iraq was a "slam dunk"). They used you and then hung you out to dry.

All the folks at CIA are glad you're gone, you bootlicking outsider. They still get sick when they think about you on live national TV, sitting behind Colin Powell like a gofer during his tortuous spiel to the UN about Iraq. Good riddance to you and Powell both. I'll bet even your beloved "mentor" ex-Senator Boren (with whom you were having breakfast on the morning of 9/11) won't return your phone calls now.

[Tim Carroll]

CIA director George Tenet went along with the pressure from the Bush gang, i.e. failed to protect his employees from it, then wound up as the gang's scapegoat for allowing the twisted intelligence. (Having to resign for "personal reasons," the only person held accountable, though hardly anyone noticed.) Ha ha ha. Sometimes you just can't win, eh, George? That's what you get for trying to please those bastards (telling them that finding WMDs in Iraq was a "slam dunk"). They used you and then hung you out to dry. All the folks at CIA are glad you're gone, you bootlicking outsider.

He who laughs last, laughs best. Whether or not the folks at CIA are glad about Tenet's Medal of Freedom departure, they're doing a good job of resisting Bush's imperial presidency, just as they resisted Nixon's. It sure seems that Poppy Bush would have warned Junior against making enemies at Langley. It's an interesting twist of fate to have Bob Woodward again playing a critical role in a CIA-White House power struggle.

T.C.

Edited December 2, 2005 by Tim Carroll

[Ron Ecker]

It sure seems that Poppy Bush would have warned Junior against making enemies at Langley.

Trouble is, the CIA is using kid gloves on Bush compared to what it did to Nixon. The CIA could take the Bush PNAC Pack down in a heartbeat over 9/11, but then the PNAC would take the CIA down with it, the government would simply implode. So they're stuck with each other. While the CIA has used the Plame affair to cause Bush some grief, that same affair has helped keep Able Danger, a potential 9/11 smoking gun, off the front pages. Woodward could simply be the latest installment in this big smokescreen. The networks could also use another big murder case (if they don't already have one, I've quit watching) to keep the sheeple mesmerized indefinitely on the government's behalf.

[Pat Speer]

I nominate this as the strangest thread ever. Sidney posts something reasonable. Gillespie becomes an attack dog, using 11 month old posts by a high school girl to discredit everyone, and Ecker and Simkin start arguing that Mark Felt was NOT Deep Throat. Carl Bernstein--one of those who blew the whistle on the CIA's use of the media--remember?--says Mark Felt was Deep Throat, his ex-wife swears he told her it was Felt back in the seventies. That's good enough for me. I can think of no reason why both Bernstein and Ephron would lie about Felt being Deep Throat. Anyone who remembers the movie Heartburn knows she hates her ex's guts and would be unlikely to go along with any belated cover-up. It should also be noted that Woodward's book was written BEFORE the Vanity Fair article in anticipation of Felt's death. I firmly believe the identity of Deep Throat has been resolved.

Edited December 2, 2005 by Pat Speer

[John Simkin]

I nominate this as the strangest thread ever....Ecker and Simkin start arguing that Mark Felt was NOT Deep Throat. Carl Bernstein--one of those who blew the whistle on the CIA's use of the media--remember?--says Mark Felt was Deep Throat.

Bernstein actually agrees with me. He said after the story first appeared that Mark Felt was just "one" of the sources that made up "Deep Throat". As I have pointed out, the facts show that "Deep Throat" was not one person. Woodward argues this to cover-up the role that the CIA played in destroying Richard Nixon. As Ron has pointed out, the CIA have been much kinder to George Bush so far. The full story will eventually come out and Bush will be destroyed as well (see the bombing of al-Jazeera story that is gradually emerging in UK at the moment).