Deep Throat is STILL a mystery! (A wild ride through '70s-era paranoia...)

Way too much is happening. We suddenly have solid evidence of vote manipulation by the Bush administration -- in Iraq -- while the Plame affair has officially morphed into one of those nasty what-did-the-President-know scandals.

I can thus easily understand why an insufficient number of people have noticed the revelation that Deep Throat, of Watergate fame, may not be Mark Felt after all. Instead, Felt seems to have been one member of an FBI committee of leakers.

Forgive me for indulging in a Bill O'Reilly moment, but -- remember my earlier posts? I said that the important question was not "Who is Deep Throat?" but "Who was the Throat behind Throat?" Many noticed that "Felt" supposedly told Woodward about the 18 minute gap (and other taped lacunae) after Felt had left the FBI.

Murray Waas has detailed much of the story on his blog, Whatever Already, and in this Village Voice piece, which discusses newly-released evidence that the FBI had investigated -- and cleared -- Mark Felt for leaking.

This newest revision of the Throat saga began with a little-noticed article in the Albany Times-Union concerning highly respected former FBI man Paul Daly. Daly claims to have had personal interactions with the individuals who used Felt as a front man.

Daly, a Boston native, identified the others -- all deceased -- as Richard Long, who was chief of the FBI's white-collar crimes section during Watergate; Robert G. Kunkel, agent-in-charge of the Washington field office, which led the Watergate burglary investigation; and Charles Bates, who was assistant director of the FBI's criminal investigative division.

John Dean's reaction is of interest:

"I have been saying since Day 1 when I learned that it was Felt's identity that he could not have acted alone," Dean said in a telephone interview from his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. "He could not have done it alone, and the names you bring, Kunkel and Bates, were highly suspect always. Pat Gray had a huge problem with them."

Kunkel's son denies that his father worked with Felt, and also alleges that the elder Kunkel had mentioned another (as yet unnamed) Throat suspect. Of course, Felt himself used to go to great lengths to deny the "Throat" accusation. WOrth noting: In his 1979 book, Felt describes his close working relationship with Kunkel during Watergate.

Apparently, Daly mentioned this scenario to well-known author Joe Persico some two years ago, well before Felt identified himself.

As for Charles Bates -- well, he has always been a particularly interesting fellow.

He attracted quite a bit of attention (particularly from left-leaning conspiracy-spotters) back in the 1970s for his handling of the Patty Hearst case, as well as the killings of Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. Gadfly journalist and Realist editor Paul Krassner gives his unique perspective on this history:

In 1969, Charles Bates was Special Agent at the Chicago office of the FBI when police killed Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark while they were sleeping. Ex-FBI informer Maria Fischer told the Chicago Daily News that then-chief of the FBI's Chicago offfice Marlon Johnson personally asked her to slip a drug to Hampton; she had infiltrated the Panther Party at the FBI's request a month before. The drug was a tasteless, colorless liquid that would put him to sleep. She refused. Hampton was killed a week later. An autopsy indicated "a near fatal dose" of secobarbital in his system.

In 1971, Bates was transferred to Washington, D.C. According to Watergate burglar James McCord's book, A Piece of Tape, on June 21, 1972, White House attorney John Dean checked with acting FBI director L. Patrick Gray as to who was in charge of handling the Watergate investigation. The answer: Charles Bates -- the same FBI official who in 1974 would be in charge of handling the SLA investigation and the search for Patty Hearst. When she was arrested, Bates became instantly ubiquitous on radio and TV, boasting of her capture.

During the SLA imbroglio (far too complex a matter to discuss properly here), Bates took an oddly protective stance toward self-proclaimed rebels William and Emily Harris. The Harrises set off paranoia buzzers when they somehow managed to avoid the deadly shoot-out which killed most other members of the group. (Were they tipped off? They had Patty under their wings at the time.) When caught, they received astonishingly light sentences, even though Patty was willing to testify that Emily had murdered Myrna Opsahl. "So far, the Harrises were not overtly involved in any of these incidents," Bates declared to the press in 1974, as he more-or-less offered the Harrises immunity -- even though anyone clipping news stories at the time knew full well that the Harrises were heavily involved with the SLA's kidnappings, robberies and killings. Understandably, some progressives uspected that the Harrises were deep, deep undercover provocateurs (at the time, various stories alleged that the couple had been narcs before joining the SLA) -- and that Charles Bates knew something about the duo that he did not reveal.

(Note: The duo finally went back to prison -- for how long, I don't know -- after Kathleen Soliah resurfaced. Emily has finally been acknowledged as the murdered of Myrna Opsahl.)

If the reader will forgive still another small side-trip into '70s-era paranoia, Krassner goes on to describe his one personal interaction with Bates. While the following passage may (or may not) take us some distance away from Watergate and Deep Throat, it's still worth noting. This material will probably seem oddly nostalgic to older members of the reading audience, while younger folk might see it as a warning for the future. Krassner speaking:

In the middle of Patty's trial--on a Saturday afternoon, when reporters and technicians were hoping to be off duty--Bates called a press conference. At 5 o'clock that morning, they had raided the New Dawn collective, the aboveground support group of the Berkeley underground Emiliano Zapata Unit. Was there a search warrant? No, but the FBI had a "consent to search" signed by the owner of the house, who later admitted to being a paid FBI informant. Accompanying a press release about the evidence seized at the raid were photographs still wet with developing fluid. Bates posed with the photos.

Six weeks later, I received a letter by registered mail on Department of Justice stationery, signed by Charles Bates, advising me that I was on an Emiliano Zapata Unit "hit list" seized during a search. The information "is furnished for your personal use and it is requested it be kept confidential. At your discretion, you may desire to contact the local police department responsible for the area of your residence."

But I was more logically a target of the government than of the Emiliano Zapata Unit -- unless, of course, they were the same. Was the right wing of the FBI warning me about the left wing of the FBI?

The "underground history" of the 1970s continues to haunt us.

Bob Woodward has refused to comment on Daly's assertions or on Waas' articles.

In his new book, Woodward also refuses to discuss his interactions with his other known "inside" source, Robert Bennett of the CIA (now a senator) -- even though the Lukoskie memo (which Jim Hougan has done so much to publicize) makes clear that Bennett was feeding Woodward stories in exchange for silence on the CIA's role in Watergate.

Odder still, Woodward has evinced a very strange attitude toward Plamegate -- an attitude which, so far as I know, he may still hold, despite recent events:

[Washington Post editor Len] Downie, and Post assistant managing editor Bob Woodward-- the one and same Bob Woodward who took on the White House during Watergate-- have been telling anyone willing to listen to their complaint (a complaint made by a powerful man is always heard more reverently than one made by the rest of us!) that the Plame affair has been much ado about nothing, that the Post has bravely not given into competitive pressures by joining the rest of the journalistic pack, and that if there is real news sometime, they will be the first to publish and crack the case!

If we presume that Downie followed Woodward's lead, what do we make of all this? Woodward may simply have misjudged the importance of the story. Or -- just perhaps -- he continues to dally with one faction of the intelligence community, a faction which advised him to steer clear of the Plame scandal.