Could George Bush Snr really be Deep Throat?

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The Independent
He was the world's most famous journalistic source and heralded the end for Richard Nixon. A new report says he is the former president, another that he is near death. Andrew Buncombe and Rupert Cornwell report
09 February 2005


Fred Fielding, Deputy White House Counsel

Who is he? Now 66, served as deputy White House counsel and left in 1974 to enter private practice. Returned to serve in the Reagan White House from 1981-86. Also served on the independent 9/11 Commission.

When did the speculation begin? H R Haldeman, President Richard Nixon's chief of staff, speculated in his 1978 book The Ends of Power, that Fielding was Deep Throat, the government source who briefed Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward about President Nixon's involvement in the Watergate affair. The fall-out from the break-in at Democratic headquarters in 1972 forced Mr Nixon to quit. Woodward has said he will name Deep Throat only on his death.

The case for: A four-year project by journalism students at the University of Illinois, led by Professor Bill Gaines, identified Fielding as Deep Throat. Professor Gaines said yesterday: "We are 100 per cent certain." His class has carefully matched records from the Nixon White House showing what Fielding and his boss, John Dean, knew about, to passages from All the President's Men where Deep Throat tips off Woodward about those same incidents.

More:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=609187

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1. Independent gives odds of 2/1:

George Bush Snr, US Ambassador at the UN

Who is he? Bush was US ambassador to the UN from 1971 to 1973 and director of the CIA in 1976-77, later serving two terms as vice-president to Ronald Reagan. In 1988, Bush was elected president, serving one term before being beaten in the 1992 election by Bill Clinton. Now 80, Bush still exerts a degree of influence over the politics of his son, George W, the current President.

When did speculation begin? The British-born author Adrian Havill claimed this week on a journalism website that Bush Snr was Deep Throat.

The case for: Havill says new research points the finger of suspicion at Bush. He says he became suspicious after President George W Bush, who is known to dislike the press, gave an unusual seven hours of interviews to Woodward for one of his recent books. He argues that Bush Snr had reason to dislike Nixon, who had urged him to leave a safe congressional seat for a Treasury position with the promise that he would later become Treasury Secretary.

According to Havill, Nixon did not deliver and Bush was given the task of heading the Republican National Committee. He says that although Bush was UN ambassador (i.e in New York) from 1971 to 1973 he returned to Washington at weekends when seven of the eight meetings with Woodward took place. "My examination of White House records at the National Archives show Bush attending many Washington state dinners and weekly cabinet meetings during that period," wrote Havill. "More importantly, he was in Washington nearly every weekend where he owned a house and where his son Neil attended St Alban's prep school."
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=609187

Or is he Frank Gelli, brother of Andreas Paul Gelli, aka Markus Wolf, ex-head of the Stasi:


My odds are 6/4ON FAV....

[Oreo]

2. Article says 50-1 for Bush

The odds are at the end of each description. Fielding is 2-1

[Jack Rabbit]

3. Of the most popular candidates, I doubt it was either Bush or Rehnquist

Deep Throat had detailed knowledge of what was going on in the White House and the Nixon Campaign. He clearly was either a White House insider, a Nixon campaign insider (often the same) or an investigator.

Before being appointed to the Supreme Court, Rehnquist worked in the Justice Department screening potential Supreme Court appointees. At the time Mitchell recommended him to Nixon for the Court, Nixon barely knew who he was. Rehnquist was confirmed to the Court by the Senate in December 1971, six months before the Watergate burglary. Once on the Court, he would have taken no part in Nixon's campaign or had any knowledge of day-to-day White House business. There is no reason to suspect Rehnquist knew anything about Watergate.

The reason that Bush is often named as a candidate for being Deep Throat is that he was, as the story goes, angry about giving up his safe seat in the House for a failed run at the Senate in 1970 and getting nothing in return. According to this story, Bush was promised a sub-cabinet post if he would run for the Senate in the even he should lose. The story goes that Bush felt betrayed afterward.

However, the fact is that Bush was made Ambassador to the United Nations in 1971. This is a high-profile position that kept Bush in the public eye as he fielded the debate around admitting China to the UN as the one-and-only China (as it happened) as opposed to admitting to China and keeping Taiwan in the UN as well (as the US desired). This did more to introduce Bush to the American public, and thus enhance his future presidential ambitions, than being a member of Congress.

Did Bush feel betrayed? He had no reason to feel that way.

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4. Jackie Kennedy Onassis's sister

Caroline Lee Bouvier Canfield Radziwill was questioned by UK's MI6 at the request of the CIA way back in 1974.

Her extensive links with the P2 Lodge, the Polish Fascist Party (Stronnictwo Narodowe) and the Marian Fathers - a polish clerical order who laundered money via Banco Ambrosiano - are of note.