John
Dean's Deep Throat candidates: "Dean's
158-page e-book lists five people who may have been who fed key information
to Woodward and Bernstein. That list includes former Nixon aide Pat Buchanan;
Nixon Press Secretary Ron Ziegler; Jerry Warren, Zeigler's assistant; Steve
Bull, an assistant to Nixon's appointment secretary Dwight Chapin; and Raymond
Price, a special assistant to Nixon. " For $8 you can read
the story at Salon. Pat Buchanan seems to lead Dean's list, and that
of SPIKE, the student
magazine of the University of Illinois Department of Journalism.
Is Deep Throat
a potted plant? Why doesn't Deep Throat step forward himself? (Bob Woodward
says his source is a man, and he will reveal Deep Throat's identity only after
the source is dead because, if he did it sooner, sources he deals with today
might question whether he can keep a confidence.)
What harm could
come to Throat now, 30 years later? Who might not want the wealth, fame and
chance to tell their own version to history?
1. A journalist,
maybe, who'd find the moniker a distraction: AP
reported, "Monica Crowley, a young aide to the former president for
four years before his death in 1994, quoted Nixon as saying Deep Throat
was "someone on the inside.... One person who thought he had a lot to gain
by spilling his guts to those two guys," Nixon also said, "someone who wanted
to be seen as a liberal because he wanted "a media career."
Santa Rosa (Dalif.)
Democrat columnist Chris Coursey last month wrote ('Deep
Throat' mystery points to SR man) about another man Richard Nixon thought
was Deep Throat, Mark Felt, ("The number-three man in the FBI when J. Edgar
Hoover died in May 1972, he wrote that he hoped Nixon would appoint him to
replace the director. Instead, Nixon picked an outsider, L. Patrick Gray,
who directed the bureau as the Watergate investigation unfolded. Almost immediately,
someone close to the investigation began talking to Woodward.") Felt has issued
repeated denials, claiming that no one person knew all of the information
that "Deep Throat" purportedly leaked.
"Some information
appeared to come from the White House, some from the FBI, some from the Committee
to Re-elect the President, known as CREEP or CRP," John Dean, White House
counsel to Richard Nixon, tells Salon managing editor Scott Rosenberg.
2. Someone
who was intimate with people in all these high places might know all this
information. Does someone not wish a sexual past to surface now in answer
to, "How did you find out all this stuff?"
Woodward once
said, years after Watergate, that Throat did not want the hassle of being
known as a whistleblower. Maybe then, but this is the age of the whistleblower,
from Erin Brockovich (Julia Roberts played her) to Enron Vice President for
Corporate Development Sherron
Watkins (Time magazine's Person of the Week Jan. 18) to FBI agent Coleen
Rowley (Newsday, Spotlight
on Faces of Courage). They're all women, aren't they...
Could Woodward
be claiming it's a man because it's the only way to protect the only woman
on the list of "suspects," journalist Diane Sawyer?
Rabbi Baruch
Korff, dying in Providence in 1995 of pancreatic cancer, said Sawyer was Deep
Throat. Sawyer was an assistant to presidential press secretary Ron Ziegler
during the Watergate years, when Rabbi Korff made periodic visits to the Nixon
White House. Korff said she had a "special relationship" with Ziegler.
On Nov. 28, 1995
the Providence Journal published a story by reporter Jody McPhillips, who
interviewed Korff at his East Side home after he dropped his bombshell:
Rabbi Baruch
Korff, propped up on four pillows and beaming into the cameras, stuck to
his guns yesterday: Diane Sawyer, ABC's glamorous blond newshound, was "Deep
Throat," the anonymous source who helped The Washington Post uncover
the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s.
Rabbi Korff
said as much to several TV crews over the weekend, and the phones have been
ringing off the walls in his East Side home ever since...
...Yesterday
he could offer no hard evidence to support his contention that Sawyer was
Deep Throat. So what does he base it on? "The manner in which she carried
herself," he said. "The young lady was far too self-assured .
. . to be anything else."
Calls to Sawyer
yesterday were fielded by Leslie Sherrill, an ABC News publicist. "She
says it's just hilarious," said Sherrill, who did not sound all that
amused. "It's providing a lot of laughs and entertainment. Obviously,
there's nothing to it."
Bob Woodward,
believed to be the only person who knows who Deep Throat is [Editor's note:
Post editor Ben Bradlee is now known to be privy to the secret], did not
return phone calls yesterday. Woodward, now an assistant managing editor
at the Washington Post, gave the Associated Press the kind of quote conspiracists
can feed on for years:
"For 20
years we've always said that the source 'Deep Throat' was a man. There is
no evidence that Diane Sawyer in her kind of subsidiary role in the Nixon
White House would have that kind of knowledge."
The person
who was Deep Throat had to know two things: what happened during the Watergate
break-in and what happened during the ensuing cover-up. Darrell West, Brown
University political scientist and pollster, said, "The press secretary's
office was a pretty interesting place to be, because people in the press
office have the opportunity to ask a lot of questions. If you read All
the President's Men carefully, the range of Deep Throat's information
was very impressive. It was unlikely anyone sitting in one office would
know all that."
West reread
the book, by Woodward and former partner Carl Bernstein, a few months ago,
when Rabbi Korff first mentioned the Diane theory to him. He says Deep Throat
is described as modest, unable to conceal feelings, dependable, well read,
frightened and losing weight.
Whoa. Can you picture Alexander Haig whining about his weight?"
...And once
before, said West, Rabbi Korff knew what he was talking about: when he gave
the Journal-Bulletin a national scoop on Nixon's plans in 1974. "The
rabbi broke the last big story, about Nixon resigning."
Who smoked cigarettes,
drank Scotch, did a mean impression of Nixon spokesman Ron Ziegler, and might
arrange 2 a.m. meetings in a parking garage?
3. Maybe Deep
Throat has written a book to be published posthumously, and likes his/her
life as it is.
Maybe someday
at a funeral, Bob Woodward will join those recounting memories of the deceased,
saying, "The truth of X's life can finally be told. X was Deep Throat."
But what if
Woodward dies first?
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