Felt’s not necessarily Deep Throat. He’s just one of the top candidates and is claiming it. I don’t think we’ll truly know Deep Throat’s identity until Woodward and Bernstein finger the guy.
Also, an interesting note on the “distrust of government” attitude. The 1950s or so The Blob movie (or some such Z-Grade sci-fi date movie) had the blob being alien in origin, and the government saves the day! The 70s or 80s version had the government create the blob in an experiment. Maybe it was The Thing. I dunno. All I remember is some stupid sci-fi blob movie that was remade after Watergate shows the pop culture distrust of government.
Nixon never was in trouble for the actual break in itself, he was in trouble for lying and covering it up since he did having (such as the missing mintues on the tapes). Watergate did actually expand the powers of the President. Watergate had many other impacts on our systems besides Nixon, such as the President officially executive privledges. Nixon didn’t have it in the actual case, but the court did say that the President did have it at times.
The Washington Post published that online earlier today. The Washington Post was who Woodward and Bernstein originally worked for when they published the stories with Deep Throat as a source, and now the Post and Woodward, at least, have confirmed it. Woodward and Bernstein are working on a story for tomorrow morning’s edition of the Post as a follow-up. They had a story ready, but they’re revising it, as their original story listed him as being dead (as they didn’t plan on revealing him until the time of his death).
Okay. I believe it now. I just wanted to wait for confirmation from the journalists.
Also, one other thing about Watergate. It alone didn’t really make people distrust the government. Shit from the Civil Rights movement through Vietnam through Kent State through Watergate made people distrust the government. It was a culmination of shit rather than just one little break in and cover up.
I’m gonna try to buy a copy of the Post tomorrow, or Thursday, whenever Woodward and Bernstein’s story is printed.
I’m just really happy that this came out while all three of them were alive. If Woodward and Bernstein had died in a plane crash or something, and then this guy came out, the political pundits just wouldn’t believe him. Hell, a lot of people aren’t believing him as it is.
[edit]
On <A HREF=“http://hardball.msnbc.com/”>Hardball</A> earlier, Chris Matthews showed a clip of <A HREF=“http://mtp.msnbc.com/”>Meet the Press</A> from 1999 in which Tim Russert confronts both Woodward and Bernstein with the fact that both of their ex-wives had come out with the fact that W. Mark Felt was Deep Throat. Both Woodward and Bernstein laughed it off, saying that their ex-wives knew who Deep Throat was just as much as the next guy. Ironically, today, we learn that W. Mark Felt <I>was</I> Deep Throat.
Also, people already had plenty of distrust for the government, Watergate, Vietnam, and all the other shit going on at the time brought a new distrust. The government gained tremendous trust from the people after the New Deal and WW2.
The oddest part was watching the cable news channels during the very moments when the discussion shifted from “OMG, we know who Deep Throat is” to “OMG, is he a traitor or a hero?” I’m sure it had already been brought up somewhere, probably on another channel, but on MSNBC, no one had mentioned the possibility that he was a traitor until Chris Matthews started talking to David Gergen and Pat Buchanan (both of whom used to work for Nixon), and both of them were talking as if they wanted to go find Felt in the parking lot and kick his ass, and Chris Matthews had a confused look for a second, and the conversation immediately shifted.
One commentator (a Washington Post guy I believe) said something that sounds pretty reasonable to me about Felt. He’s a hero with human flaws. He did the right thing in helping expose the corruption, but he may have done it for the wrong reasons (anger over not being named the new FBI director).