"Deep Throat" motives not altruistic

[G_j]

http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/hollea.html

Leak

Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat

Max Holland

March 2012
304 pages, 6 x 9
Cloth ISBN 978-0-7006-1829-3, $29.95 (t)

NAMED ONE OF THE TOP 100 BOOKS OF 2012 BY THE KANSAS CITY STAR

Through the shadowy persona of “Deep Throat,” FBI official Mark Felt became as famous as the Watergate scandal his “leaks” helped uncover. Best known through Hal Holbrook’s portrayal in the film version of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s All the President’s Men, Felt was regarded for decades as a conscientious but highly secretive whistleblower who shunned the limelight. Yet even after he finally revealed his identity in 2005, questions about his true motivations persisted.

<snip>

Holland critiques all the theories of Felt’s motivation that have circulated over the years, including notions that Felt had been genuinely upset by White House law-breaking or had tried to defend and insulate the FBI from the machinations of President Nixon and his Watergate henchmen. And, while acknowledging that Woodward finally disowned the “principled whistleblower” image of Felt in The Secret Man, Holland shows why that famed journalist’s latest explanation still falls short of the truth.

Holland showcases the many twists and turns to Felt’s story that are not widely known, revealing not a selfless official acting out of altruistic patriotism, but rather a career bureaucrat with his own very private agenda. Drawing on new interviews and oral histories, old and just-released FBI Watergate files, papers of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, presidential tape recordings, and Woodward and Bernstein’s Watergate-related papers, he sheds important new light on both Felt’s motivations and the complex and often problematic relationship between the press and government officials.

..more..

[graham4anything]

1. His breadcrumbs led EXACTLY to where he wanted Woodward (but NOT Bernstein) to find

but it took 30 years later to realize that they need to take Nixon down, and to not have it known at that time that
Nixon sabatoged the 1968 peace accords, and in fact, caused the Vietnam war to last 6 years longer

and in doing so, win Nixon the election and they took LBJ out with that sabatoge.

I still question if this person was it, and it was convienient that he was old and he never was truly questioned.

But I always found it weird that everything was Woodward AND Bernstein
but deep throat was only WOODWARD.

odd.

[Zen Democrat]

3. Felt was angry that Nixon didn't make him FBI Director after Hoover.

Deep Throat was out for vengeance against Nixon and Pat Gray. That, and I think Woodward was so plugged in at the CIA and FBI (he had been Naval Intelligence himself) that Deep Throat could easily hook up with him. Bernstein was a long-haired hippie type, the kind of guy Felt had spied on, as he did all the "hippie" organizations that he had his agents infiltrate.

I've read that some in the FBI suspected Nixon's people had a hand in the murder-poisoning-heart attack of J. Edgar Hoover because Hoover knew about the break-in and didn't approve because he didn't approve of a White House group working independent of the Bureau. Watergate break-in was about 3-4 months after Hoover's death. There are suspicions that FBI loyalists set up Nixon in retribution for Hoover. And that the FBI knew about the break-in and made sure Woodward was the guy to respond to that in the middle of the night. May be a touch tin-foil, but just because you wear a tin-foil hat doesn't mean there aren't buggers out there conspiring against us!

[Chiyo-chichi]

2. I want to read this. Thanks for posting.

Here's a short CSPAN interview with the author. http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/309593-15

Holland: "The true blue whistleblower who acts completely out of principle... that's a very rare bird. And the truth of why people leak to the media is much more complicated and compromising for both sides."

There are two separate hour-long CSPAN programs with him:
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/306746-1
and
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/307621-4

[G_j]

4. yes, whistleblowers have all sorts of motives

it really didn't matter what Felt's motivations were. What mattered is what he exposed.

[Zen Democrat]

6. Or what he failed to expose. After all, John Dean was the real whistleblower in Watergate.

Felt was doing his own dirty-word and Watergate would have been exposed without him. According to Woodward, all Felt did was confirm or deny, or give him a right-track, wrong-track. John Dean went to the Grand Jury with his incredible memory for recalling conversations verbatim, and put Nixon in the crosshairs of the investigation. The secret tapes nailed him, and for that Alexander Butterfield spilled the beans during sworn testimony, in response to a question from Fred Thompson in closed session. Thompson had asked that one question that he didn't know the answer to, and it blew up in his face.

But, if truth be told, and it is, the guy most responsible for opening Watergate as the scandal it became, was burglar and former CIA AND FBI agent James W. McCord. When McCord told Judge Sirica that the burglars were being paid to take the fall and keep quiet, it was all over but the shouting.

So, I believe, McCord, Dean and Butterfield played a much greater part in taking down Nixon than did some Deep Throat trying to advance his own career.

[Zen Democrat]

5. I've always had the feeling that Max Holland is working for one or more federal agencies. nt