31 Years and Swallowing

On this, the thirty first anniversary of the Watergate break-in, I thought I'd start with an email I wrote last month to a famous blogger, Joshua Micah Marshall.

Subject: Deep Throat (nothing on TPM since last June, I thnk....)
Date: Sat, 17 May 2003 12:04:42 -0400
From: Eric Scheie
To: talk@talkingpointsmemo.com

Reading your column, I wondered why you haven't said anything about that Pulitzer Prize winning journalist's study identifying Deep Throat as John Dean's White House assistant Fred Fielding.

http://www.news.uiuc.edu/news/03/0422deepthroat.html

By the way, I liked your review of "The Threatening Storm."

Cheers!

Eric Scheie

Mr. Marshall never answered me, and I didn't think he would. I don't think he is interested in Deep Throat. He was interested in it last summer though (in June of 2002). Glenn Reynolds, on the other hand, reported the news about Deep Throat's identity, and the subsequent tantrum thrown by Carl Bernstein (of Woodward and Bernstein fame).

On Watergate's anniversary last summer, while completely sure that "Deep Throat" had to be Pat Buchanan, Marshall nonetheless made an intriguing statement about Deep Throat:

After all this time, why wouldn't this person come forward to get some of the limelight?

It's hard to figure ... unless he was someone still operating in those Republican circles where that sort of disloyalty would be very damning and even career-threatening. That is, unless it was someone like Patrick J. Buchanan.
-- Josh Marshall

How about unless he was someone like John Dean, or his underling Fred Fielding?

Why the silence, Josh?

I don't know whether I'll ever be able to get this story out, the way it should be gotten out, but if you are reading this, I would ask you to please take the time to familiarize yourself with as much of the Watergate story as much as you can, because it is the biggest media scandal of them all -- the coverup of all cover-ups. If you ever wonder where modern journalistic pride and arrogance come from, take a close look at Watergate. If you ever wonder why the people whose job it is to make others come clean can't come clean themselves, take a close look at Watergate. And if you ever wonder why journalists, instead of correcting their lies, instead engage in "damage control" of the sort used by guilty politicians and movie stars -- then please, take a close look at Watergate.

I am not trying to exonerate Nixon, but I don't like being lied to about recent history. If they can lie about something so recent, what does that say about the rest of history? Those entrusted to give us the truth create national mythology instead, treating us like children reading about little George Washington with his cherry tree. John Dean = hero; Richard Nixon = villain.

Whether you're a curious blogger or a member of the public, don't swallow the conventional story. Instead, here are a couple of things you can do for the 32nd anniversary of Watergate:

Please read here as well as here.

Then stream this

You might then ask why the perpetrators of such fraud should continue to be treated as demigods.

UPDATE (June 17, 2004): Seems I was a year off in my anniversary date, so on the 32nd anniversary, I changed this year-old post to reflect that it was written on the 31st anniversary. (A new record for correcting a mistake in a post, but I guess the country's been waiting just as long for Watergate history to be corrected, so I can truly say, "good enough for government work!"