Doesn't everyone know him?
Posted on 02/18/2005 5:55:47 PM PST by Lathspell
was in a position--
SMITH: --to absolutely know, prior to his passing?
BURNS: He was Stephen Ambrose.
SMITH: All right, well that's interesting.
BURNS: The noted historian, who had at Simon & Schuster the same editor as Woodward and Bernstein. Stephen Ambrose told me this. There is in the safe at Simon & Schuster a copy of the first manuscript draft of All the President's Men. In it there is no Deep Throat. What does that mean? Deep Throat was a later insertion. Why? Because an editor at Simon & Schuster--and as I said they have the same editor, her name is Alice Mayhew, and she is a legend in the business--is supposed to have said two things to these cub reporters who were looking for their first big book advance. First, your book has so many sources in it that it's a little hard for the reader to keep up. Second, your book is lacking a little something in narrative drive. I mean, it's like a bunch of newspaper articles. It's good, it's important, but I have, Ambrose believes she said, one solution to both problems. Let's tie all your sources into one source, and let's make him a mystery man.
SMITH: Deep Throat, smoking in the car park.
BURNS: As the moviemakers decided to do it. But think about that. First of all, it's the same thing, Shep, as saying, as a lot of people have said, which is the most sensible explanation, that Deep Throat's a composite. What I'm saying here is not a suggestion that the information provided by or attributed to Deep Throat was false. Simply that the identity of this person was false. It is exactly the same as saying there are a lot of people who contributed to Deep Throat. And you know, people have done studies, people who know a lot more about this than I do, in which they've said it's very unlikely that the person who gave Woodward and Bernstein
this information, was placed in such a way that he or she could [also] have known this.
SMITH: It was a lot of stuff.
BURNS: It was a lot of stuff. It's not just it was a lot of stuff; it was a lot of stuff that was widely varied in source. So the likelihood that it's more than one person is great. The likelihood that this is an artistic invention is even greater. Look at this, it's 30--when was that book published, '74?
SMITH: Yep, '73, '4, yeah.
BURNS: All right, so it's more than 30 years, we're still talking about it. And why? Because Deep Throat has exactly the same characteristics as the great villains or mystery men of fiction. Why does Deep Throat resemble fiction? I think Stephen Ambrose is right. Deep Throat is fiction.
SMITH: Deep Throat is a group of people who told accurate, probably, as far as we know--
BURNS: No one has ever suggested that the information isn't accurate. But this--
SMITH: So accurate information from a lot of people, and some editor decided let's make it Deep Throat, and it never existed.
BURNS: Let's make it--no, and you know another reason to believe in this, is that when the moviemakers decided to do this too. They were looking at the Woodward and Bernstein first draft, and they thought, and this is on various records, they thought exactly the same thing. Well, what happened to Nixon is pretty interesting, but this book isn't very interesting. The creation of Deep Throat solved all manner of problems. And if I'm--there's an ultimate way to know whether I'm right, and I think I am because what Ambrose said makes so much sense, and whether Ambrose is right. Supposedly Woodward at least, I don't know about Bernstein, but Woodward has said when Deep Throat dies, his identity will be revealed.
SMITH: Yeah. He said that repeatedly.
BURNS: Well, first of all, that's an out. If you're going to attribute something to someone who's dead, is that person going to come back and say it's not true? Maybe I'm susceptible to the same charge because I am saying that Stephen Ambrose told me this. Ambrose told some other people too. But if he's going to wait until the person can't say I'm not Deep Throat, doesn't that suggest there's some credibility problems? And I submit to you that even when Deep Throat--if there were a Deep Throat and were to die, we still wouldn't be told about it.
SMITH: Eric, is there a Loch Ness Monster?
BURNS: See, what you have to do before I come on is you have to tell me what the topics are.
SMITH: I'm concerned that Nessie's not real.
BURNS: I have to do some research.
SMITH: So there's no Deep Throat. I mean, get that, start your blogging. I mean, Eric--
BURNS: That's why I said this morning that with this information revealed, it will be not a big expose but a big disappointment.
SMITH:Newswatch this weekend. Do not miss it, not this weekend. Don't.
BURNS: Actually, there's more on Deep Throat that you might find intriguing that I'm not going to share with you.
SMITH: Kind of you. Bye.
BURNS: Bye.
No disappointment at all. I always thought it was a piece of fiction created by W&B along with Bradley.
ping
He tried in vain to discredit Nixon and yet he did just the opposite with this.
The person, who is supposed to be "deep throat" is reportedly ill.
If its a composite character, then people will say these guys are lying.
They're lying. ;-)
Gotta be one that stands out though.
No news here, Eric...tell us something we didn't already know.
can we hunt down Woodward and that RAT Bernstien and beat them into submission now...........
If they make an annoucement, they had better be able to offer proof.
So Woodward and Bernstein pick one of their sources to be designated "Deep Throat", after he's deceased. Mr. "Deep" won't be around to call them liars, but I'll bet several other people will.
Remember Woodward's alleged deathbed visits to William Casey, when Casey was, according to his family, comatose?
If true, imagine what this would do to the reputation of Woodward and Bernstein.
If DT wasn't Diane Sawyer, and how could it not be a woman since its named after Linda Lovelace, then there is no Deep Throat.
Yes, simply confirm what many of us have pretty much deduced: They are not really reporters, put partisan, agenda driven activists.
Don't you find it ironic that Eric Burns hosts a show which supposedly holds the media accountable - at least, up for "critique" by a handful of "journalists," and yet he isn't the least bit embarrassed that these two reporters lied about their sources? These people really are through the looking-glass.
Last time I checked, Bill Clinton is ill and his wife was impeachment cousel...
A buddy pointed this interview out to me. He said that when he heard Woodward defending Rather's "fake but accurate" memos, he knew that that was the big tipoff that DT didn't exist.
Bump
Not a hard problem. Assuming there were say 4 or 5 sources amalgamated into deep throat, the last one to die is designated 'the one' and none of them are around to argue.
Personally, I always thought it was Mark Felt or Fred Felding, but no matter what, I want proof, I am not going to take these guys at their word when they announce.
Here's the thing, if somone was deep throat, wouldn't they have come forward on there own by now? I mean, why would you keep it a secret, you would be an instant celebrity worshipped by the media, regardless of political beliefs, and if your in office already, your automatically a presidential contender.
Unless they pull a BS move and name Reinquest, then the whole thing goes kapootski.
If Deep Throat did not exist, man would have to invent him.
To make his book read like more of a mystery thriller (and thus sell better), Woodward clumsily stirred in dollops of 'spook tradecraft.'
For example, Woodward pretended that he and Deep Throat had concocted a mysterious signaling system -- INVOLVING, lamely enough, A POTTED PLANT.
Posted on another thread yesterday:
YEAH, AND WHAT ABOUT THAT POTTED PLANT?
From the Miami Herald, 06/16/2002:
...Woodward and Bernstein have always insisted Deep Throat is real, not a composite or an invention. But it's also true they were not above fudging a bit to tell a good story. Other books on Watergate have pinpointed a number of literary embellishments -- metaphorically convenient rainstorms on days when the Washington weather was actually clear, for instance -- in All The President's Men that exaggerate, distort or outright falsify the truth.
DETAILS HARD TO VERIFY
Many of them concern the spook tradecraft Woodward supposedly used to set up his late-night parking garage meetings with Deep Throat, which make delicious reading but don't stand up to hard scrutiny. If Woodward wanted a meeting, he moved a potted plant to a particular spot on his apartment's outdoor balcony. If Deep Throat wanted a meeting, a coded handwritten note would mysteriously appear on page 20 of the copy of The New York Times delivered to Woodward's apartment.But as several Watergate scholars have noted, Woodward's sixth-floor balcony couldn't be seen from the street and was almost invisible even inside the building's courtyard. And the building's New York Times subscribers got their paper from a stack left in the lobby, making it impossible to know which one would go to Woodward on any given day.
''The secret of Deep Throat is that there was no Deep Throat,'' declares Adrian Havill, author of the Woodward-and-Bernstein biography Deep Truth. ``And if there was -- with his cigarette habit, a big drinker, and being much older than Woodward -- he's likely dead.''
We know that woodward is a fabricator (viz his getting revelations out of a comatose Bill Casey), and Bernstein is such a dumb ox, that I'm inclined to agree with the authors who think that 'Deep Throat' is either a composite of several persons (and embellished..er...liberally); or, a complete fraud.
LOL. The same Bernstein who stole a horse and carriage from in front of the Plaza and overturned it in Central Park?
In fiction writing, when the mushy middle of the story is sagging, one technique is to combine some of the characters to tighten things up and pick up the pace. Kinda makes you go "hmmm ..." doesn't it.
ann
How about a composite of two clowns named Woodward and Bernstein?
Bernwood or Woodbern?
I like that!
Think about it. Deap Throats only possible motivation is to take down Richard Nixon. Yet this know it all never told Woodward and Bernstein about the one thing that could bring Nixon down... proof that he was involved in the coverup.
Later we learned that nearly everyone who worked in the White House knew about the taping system. Nixon often asked people in his office to wait while tapes were changed.
If Deep Throat wanted to take down Nixon why didn't he tell Woodward And Bernstein. The existance of the tapes were revealed when an underling tesified before congress and told the congressional committee about the tapes.
The only conclusion was Deep Throat did not know about the tapes. I think Woodward just reported the Washington gosip as fact and claimed they had a source for it.
Geeze, I'm cynical enough already, but even I have a hard time believing Deep Throat is non-existant. If true, I'll feel like a true idiot and will be more afraid than ever of the MSM. Not kidding....
Please help me refresh my memory.
Didn't Woodward and Bernstein refer to Deep Throat as their source as their Watergate stories developed? The above interview makes it sound like DT didn't appear until the book was published.
Doesn't everyone know him?
"If Deep Throat did not exist, man would have to invent him."
Deep Throat wasn't invented! It was Edmund Morris. He was right there beside Nixon the entire time.
Many freepers have long come to the conclusion that deep throat was fiction. And I question the accuracy of the details.
Isn't this really old news in blogosphere? Takes the print/TV press forever to catch up. Probably beacuse so much of the MSM leftist world view is built on deception and outright lies.
This is all quite trite.
Everyone knows that Deep Throat was that guy that does all the Dan Rather document analysis....
Exactly, they're frauds. Now their technique is standard operating procedure. These guys are untoucheable.
This reminds me of a show like 20/20 a year or two ago doing a show on a college class (from Illinois, I think) that had the assignment that semester of figuring out who "Deep Throat" was. They all worked together and they were taken around in circles because (for example) when they would think it was Kissinger who met Woodward in the underground parking lot, they would discover that Kissinger was in Europe at that time. It went on and on like that with every suspect. They still were unsure at the end, but they decided it was probably PAT BUCHANAN. Pat denied it, and I believe him because he was a Nixon loyalist.
Eric Burns' account, per Stephen Ambrose, makes more sense than anything I have ever heard. I believe "Deep Throat" was MANY sources compiled into one as Ambrose said. Woodward and Bernstein are probably waiting until they ALL die before telling. Of course, I thought reporters were never to reveal anonymous sources.
W&B will continue to be cannonized by the left.
I saw him present at Arlington Towers in the Madison building in the early morning on three different days, in January 1973.
He had a large black valise. He entered the elevator to go UP as I got off.
None of that is terribly suspicious. On the other hand, on those very same days the "Cuban Defendants" were going to go to court to make pleas regarding their involvement in the Watergate scandal.
They were resident on the 7th floor.
Jack Anderson had his own agent hidden in the closet of the apartment where the "Cuban Defendants" met before going to court on each of those days. Although he couldn't hear everything, nor could he identify the voice, he was able to determine that money was offered, and paid.
Presumably we had the President's counsel paying a bribe to some of the folks involved so they'd cop a plea and let everybody else off the hook.
So, why should we then believe John Dean was "Deep Throat" based on this not-unexpected soft of involvement.
Well, there are three things ~ Woodward and Bernstein's book on the matter artfully failed to include ANYTHING AT ALL that happened in January 1973! If you can believe them, in the flurry of activity, public hearings, trials, scandal montering, investigations, and all that those things entail, where almost every single day is accounted for regarding these matters on the pages of the Washington Post, an entire month just flat out disappeared and nothing happened.
It's certainly a sign of someone's guilty conscience, or it's a coverup.
Then, there's John Dean himself. He started talking the next month, and by March he'd opened the floodgates.
Although there are a lot of other candidates, no one was more involved, said more about it, and got better protection for his actions than John Dean ~ that is, until he got to Allenwood and met his roommate!
Wonder is John Dean related to Howie Dean?
Anyway, I have always suspected that John Dean was doing whatever he could to protect 'himself'.
However, I do not think that 'Deep Throat' was specifically John Dean, I think that there were many sources, but one specifically that will never be named.
The parking garage description used by Woodward and Bernstein fits the Jefferson building parking garage in Arlington Towers.
"The parking garage description used by Woodward and Bernstein fits the Jefferson building parking garage in Arlington Towers."
That may well be, however, Dean as counsel would not have had access to some of the information these two were given, unless he, Dean was being fed by an insider.
Not sure you could be more of an insider than H.R. He may even have had access to Nixon's safe where the infamous "secret slush fund" was kept.
Pray for W and Our Freedom Winning Troops
And why wouldn't Haldemann and Dean have cooperated out of their own self-interest? Even if Dean hated Haldemann, that doesn't prove anything. Dean hated G. Gordon Liddy. He hated many others. He's just that kinda' guy.
Sometimes you don't need to look at the big picture ~ just the little picture ~ and how long the jail term is going to be.
Let's use Martha Stewart for exampl ~ she was facing only 6 months yet she was willing to let one of her broker's assistants take the rap for the whole thing. Why should we expect more out of John Dean than we expect out of Martha Stewart?
I knew Steve well. He, I and Gov Martz drank tequila at Windbag's on the Gulch one night in 2001. If Woodward and Bernstien were going to reveal Deep Throat's name after his death, they would have revealed it over a year ago, when Steve died.
However, 100% of everything I've written so far appeared in an affidavit I filed with Judge Sirica way back when (during the sentencing phase for the "Cuban Defendants" ~ the original fall guys).
That's probably why I'm weak on understanding motives ~ I was merely one of the witnesses to various deeds done within the context of the bigger event.
After many years I've concluded that Nixon might well have framed himself so that he could walk off with the "slush fund" ~ since the only piece of furniture he took with him the day he left was the safe.
Of course that would be silly ~ he was a rich man ~ but that happened after he left the White House.
McGovern low-balled the amount too ~ he said it was a "million dollar slush fund". There was much more than that ~ no doubt NOT in one dollar bills!
"McGovern low-balled the amount too ~ he said it was a "million dollar slush fund". There was much more than that ~ no doubt NOT in one dollar bills!"
LOL probably got his cut.
I do not doubt what you have posted, however, after the Clintons, and the fact that Hillry cut her political teeth working on impeachment and the path she has taken, is the evidence for me that this was not just about 'Cuban defendants' or a huge sum of cash.
That is why I do not believe we will ever be told who the 'Deep Throat' is, and why the profile fits so many, because there were many involved.
Personally, I would liken it to a 'coup' more than anything else.
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