[Leica] Deep Throat and B.D.

[bdcolen at comcast.net (B. D. Colen)]

Interesting stuff, Marc - I would suggest, however, that while the other
historical tidbits you site are interesting, they are just historical
footnotes (as is the identity of Deep Throat). But when the Watergate
episode is relegated to historical footnote we are all in Deep Shit.


On 5/31/05 10:37 PM, "Marc James Small" <msmall@aya.yale.edu> wrote:

> BD
> 
> I detested Nixon probably more than you did and for quite different reasons
> I suspect, as to me he was an excuser for governmental excesses and one of
> the many presidents (Gerry Ford, Ronald Reagand, and both of the Bushes
> being others) who encourage the growth of Big Gummit.  Nixon was the worst
> of the lot, as he made no pretence about doing so while claiming this was
> in accord with "conservative" values.  I was tempted to vote in '72 for
> Hospers, the Libertarian candidate, but my then-wife talked me out of this
> by reminding me of my own work for the Republican Party and my family's
> committment to the GOP since 1858.  (I have not been so foolish since, and
> have voted Libertarian since 1976, and have done so cheerfully.)
> 
> I reside in the Congressional District represented in 1973 by M Caldwell
> Butler.  Butler is an acquaintance of mine;  I do not know that he has
> "friends" as he is a bit of a Mr Bultitude in personality but, what the
> hey, I've known him close to four decades.  Butler was the junior GOP
> member on the Judiciary Committee who voted to send the impeachment of
> Nixon to the House Floor, and his vote was the critical one -- Nixon
> resigned shortly thereafter, the first President to do so.  (I happened to
> run into Caldwell the day Nixon died and asked him his thoughts:  he
> responded by saying that Nixon was "the most died-in-the-wool
> son-of-a-bitch I have ever encountered", and that seems to have remained
> his opinion.  
> 
> As to "Deep Throat", the scholars of Watergate have long figured that Felt
> was the man, though some interesting alternative have been suggested.  It
> is nice to have the record cleared but this only matters now to those of us
> who battled through those years.  It means little to my 22-year-old son and
> means less to my 8-month-old grandson.
> 
> Consider this:  I was 22 when the revelations of the British use of turned
> German spies (the Double-X Operation) and 23 when the British finally
> acknowledged that they had penetrated the Germann  higher-level codes
> (though Ladislas Farago had ntimated thsi in his GAME OF THE FOXES four
> years earlier, in 1969).  This meant a whole lot to my immediate circle of
> military-history junkies but had no impact on my broader circle of friends.
>  If they thought of it at all, it simply meant to them a closing of a minor
> curiousity of history.
> 
> Most USians alvie today were not of a cognizant age when Watergate ripped
> this nation apart.  Think of the impact a complete movie, newly discovered
> and shot on-scene, of the My Lai atrocity would have on the US populace
> now:  they would simply see it as a marginally interesting bit of Ancient
> History and would then want to discuss American Idol or the NBA playoffs or
> Paris Hilton's impending nuptials.
> 
> I acknowledge that the revelation of the real persona of DEEP THROAT is
> most interesting to historians and political junkies such as me and thee
> but I also recognize that it is of little interest to the general public.
> 
> Marc
> 
> 
> msmall@aya.yale.edu
> Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir!
> 
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