Sorry folks -- I'm still not done with Felt!

I had hoped to finish up with Deep Throat today, but life does tend to get in the way. Briefly, though, I recommend John Dean's fine study, which proves that the Felt revelation only adds a new layer of mystery to Watergate. He notes a couple of points that I've not seen elsewhere:

1. Mark Felt (allegedly) has compared the Nixon-era surveillance efforts to the Nazi regime, yet Felt himself -- when he was virtually running the FBI -- authorized even those black bag operations that Hoover wanted shut down.

2. Nixon testified on Felt's behalf during the latter's trial for spying on Americans. The image of Nixon helping Deep Throat is startling -- especially when we keep in mind that Nixon was caught on tape suspecting Felt of leaking. Of course, Felt spent much of the '70s denying that he was DT; in an interview with Ovid Demaris, Felt said that his wife would have known if he had gone skulkinig out of the house after midnight. (Maybe his wife did know.) It is possible that Felt's denials were enough to mollify Nixon.

3. Mickey Kaus has joined those searching for the "Deep Throat behind Deep Throat." But only five or six people inside the White House knew about the tape gap before the first week of November, 1973 -- yet somehow, Felt was able to relay the info to Woodward. In my view, none of those people had sufficient motive to blab to Felt, who was, by this point, both a suspected leaker and well outside the FBI. The obvious conclusion: The White House was bugged, and whoever did the bugging then used Felt as a conduit. Of course, guys like Kaus will never allow themselves to think that way.

3. Media Matters has a good piece on cable news coverage of the revelation, which has emphasized the reactions of Watergate conspirators Colson and Liddy -- without telling the audience that the crooks were, in fact, crooks. Here's a little history: G. Gordon Liddy once threatened to murder his boss Magruder, a threat Liddy later said was meant humorously, although it was taken quite seriously. He also made very real plans to murder reporter Jack Anderson. He forthrightly told a Playboy interviewer that getting Nixon re-elected was more important than the democractic process itself. And yet this fascistic swine recently had the audacity to say (on Joe Scarborough's propaganda-fest) that Mark Felt was "unethical" when he leaked to Bob Woodward!