Deep Throat is ailing and his identity will be revealed soon 2/6

[Ivote]

I have little doubt that one of my former Nixon White House colleagues is history's best-known anonymous source — Deep Throat. But I'll be damned if I can figure out exactly which one.

We'll all know one day very soon, however. Bob Woodward, a reporter on the team that covered the Watergate story, has advised his executive editor at the Washington Post that Throat is ill. And Ben Bradlee, former executive editor of the Post and one of the few people to whom Woodward confided his source's identity, has publicly acknowledged that he has written Throat's obituary.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-sources6feb06,0,1365197.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions


http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-purist6feb06,0,4893837,print.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
Not since the Watergate era has the media's use of confidential sources been so heatedly debated as it is today. Unfortunately, several recent decisions by judges outside California suggest the lessons of that era have been forgotten. Chief among them is the reminder of how an independent press can and must serve as a check on government power.

In 1973, the Washington Post, relying on information obtained from a confidential source, exposed criminal conduct by people at government's highest levels, resulting in the resignation of the president. It is less widely known that Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were subpoenaed that year by individuals demanding they identify "Deep Throat" and produce all the information they had gathered about the break-in at the Watergate Hotel.

[rodeodance]

1. his obituary has been written. my my

[EVDebs]

35. Most likely Gordon Strachan but Deep Throat is a 'literary device'

and a composite, not an actual person. Sen Robert F. Bennett of UT certainly plays a role (but as a Mormon non-smoker can't qualify).

Read the link below and tell me what YOU think after reading the embedded links.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=103&topic_id=103887#

[Lexingtonian]

2. my bet's on Fred Fielding

Woodward visited him some time ago. Fielding lives somewhere just north of Marin County, iirc.

[Darth_Kitten]

20. If it's him.....

how could he work with both the Reagan and Bush administrations?
:shrug:

I don't know... :)

http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues03/dec03/presence.html

"Fielding, who helped Dean run the White House’s law office during the growing Watergate crisis, left the White House before Nixon resigned and returned to private law practice. In 1981, he became chief counsel to President Reagan and served in the White House for another five years before again returning to private practice. Fielding became a member of the Bush-Cheney transition team in 2000. In 2002, he became a member of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. Today, at age 64, he is a senior partner in the law firm Wiley Rein & Fielding LLP in Washington, D.C. "

[bettyellen]

23. woodward didn't deny it was fielding, as he did when sears name was....

floated. interesting.
how do you know Woodward has visited him lately?

snip...
Attempts to uncover the closely guarded identity of Deep Throat, known only to Woodward, Bernstein and former Post executive editor Ben Bradlee, have been the subject of books and college journalism class projects for years. One book, In Search of Deep Throat, published in 2000 by former Nixon aide Leonard Garment, speculated that White House colleague John Sears was Deep Throat.

Sears and Woodward denied it. In 1999, Bill Gaines, a journalism professor at the University of Illinois and a former investigative reporter for the Chicago Tribune, began a class project to solve the mystery. Four years later, he and his students concluded that Nixon White House deputy counsel Fred Fielding was Deep Throat. Fielding also has denied it

http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=64108

[bettyellen]

26. Same Frat as Woodward at Yale, and he apparently admitted it when he

was gravely ill.
snip
He drank scotch and was known to smoke Marlboros. Bumiller reported that a story circulated around Washington, D.C. that when Fielding was seriously ill with a pulmonary embolism, he said that he was Deep Throat and "then cackled uproariously." When later asked if the story was true, Fielding said, "Probably so."

http://deepthroatuncovered.com/bio/

[Sparkly]

33. Mine too n/t

[Carni]

34. Fielding just served on the 911 commision

He didn't look ill to me...not that he couldn't be ill here's a link to his bio on a US Government site

ON EDIT: Never mind regarding the link something was wrong with my link and it took me to some religious weirdness--WTF? :(

[DistressedAmerican]

3. I suppose someone will have to die before we know who outed

valery!

Novak, YOU are a douchebag!

[blondeatlast]

8. We can get it out of him. Just make sure there's no organ damage.

Since he has no heart, no problem...

[qanda]

4. Is it Ford?

That would be wild.

[Ivote]

5. To Be Continued

John Dean will be on COUNTDOWN tomorrow night
Should be very interesting
Go Keith!
:kick:

[blondeatlast]

9. Dean, really? He wrote the best anti-Bush book of the election year.

This is a guy who knows from nasty politics.

[HereSince1628]

10. I'd bet Rehnquist...

In the time leading up to Watergate he worked in the AG's office...so he would have been in a position to know things.

He got promoted to the Court by Nixon...a supreme court justice clearly wouldn't want his identity to be disclosed.

and Rehnquist is apparently very ill.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

12. I do believe...

You have hit the nail on the head.

[HereSince1628]

13. Without wishing an imminent death to anyone, we'll know soon

if I am right.

And someone please tell bluedog to take me off ignore :)

[ElsewheresDaughter]

28. i concur!

[calimary]

29. Whoa! I never thought of that one. Rehnquist IS certainly ill.

And he WAS part of the operations back then.

John Dean will probably repeat speculation that it could be Ray Price, or Pat Buchanan (whom he's always said is VERY coy about the way in which he denies it) or Fielding (I think, although my brain's a little addled this morning). But Dean also says he's found a way to rule out all these guys, too. And Buchanan certainly isn't sick. Well, not in body, anyway.

Must say I DO LOVE the speculation that it's poppy bush. What's been out there about this is delicious - about how it was revenge for Nixon convincing him to leave Congress on the hint that he might be chosen as a running mate and then not getting it. Gee, a bush, petty and vindictive? Holding a grudge? Wanting to screw somebody over to get even? A bush? As some DUers would say - "BWAAAAAAAAAHAAAAAAAAHAAAAAAAAA!!!!"

[flyarm]

32. wow..wow wow

yes rehnquist...i never thought of him..yes ...i believe you are right!! and i bet the farm dean knows its rehnquist as well..a legal mind like his would have everything planned for his funeral..i.e. what dean said about the eulogy being already for the imminent death...he would want all the details done..he knew he had a lifetime job in the bag under nixon...but it would be too controversial to have that information known all these years...
and i do believe rehnquist knows today..now what a mistake the S.C. made in making * president..he now knows how dangerous these neo cons are..thats the only thing that bothers me with him being deep throat was his vote for * as pres...
unless he was in on the neo con program and as i have read knew that someone had to dump nixon as he was ready to crack on the neo con plan..and they cut their losses with nixon and needed someone with credibility to be the hatchet man against nixon...
wow rehnquist is a perfect fit!

[Liberty Belle]

38. Bingo. Rehnquist was probably the source for "The Brethren,"

Woodward's book on the Supreme Court, too.

[merh]

30. Ford has been sick too

He didn't make the opening of big dawg's library or the inaug.
just pointing that out!

[news_junkie]

39. Ford is not ill...

Just old. Depsite being 90+ years old, there isn't any reason to think he will die soon. Woodward said DT was ill. I spoke with President Ford (and listened to him deliver a fairly lengthy speech) in mid-November. Other than a little rambling and a few random discussions about his days as a football player at U of M, he's fine. Old, but certainly not ill. Ford didn't attend the Inauguration becuase he doesn't travel anymore, not becuase he was too sick to attend. He didn't attend the ceremony for the Clinton Library either, everyone speculated he was ill and couldn't attend. It was a couple weeks later that I spoke with him, he wasn't ill.

Unless Ford has fallen terribly ill in the last two months and his family is hiding it, I'm certain it's not Ford.

[merh]

41. Thank you for the update. Guess I just assumed since he

didn't attend either the library or the inaug, he was ill. I was wrong to assume and appreciate your setting me straight. Not to be nosey, but why did you speak to him? Do you know him personally or were you doing a story?

By the Way, welcome to DU! :hi:

[The Zanti Regent]

6. Is Old Fart Bush dying?

damn, and I went with Gerald Ford in my office Dead Pool instead of him...

[Darth_Kitten]

18. LOL!

:D

[bling bling]

7. If this is true, it would take less than a day to figure out who it is.

I mean, maybe we don't have access to the health status of all possible DT's, but any journalist worth anything should be able to go down the list of candidates and do some research and find out how his health is. Whoever is in ill-health is DT. Am I missing something?

[hippiechick]

11. OMG, it's the Pope !!!

:wow:

[KoKo]

14. hippiechick.....I was just going to post that! After all he's the only

one besides Renquist that we know is ill. Maybe Henry Kissinger...haven't seen him in awhile and last I saw he looked pretty bad.

[hippiechick]

15. KoKo, I couldn't resist !

:hi:

[Darth_Kitten]

17. LOL!!! right on, hippiechick.......

LOL.... :D

[cyn2]

37. Excellent lol!

[bluedog]

16. Rehnquist is another guess. He is also very ill.

Rehnquist is another guess. He is also very ill

When President Richard Nixon was elected in 1968, Rehnquist
returned to work in Washington. He served as Assistant
Attorney General of the Office of Legal Counsel, from 1969
to 1971.


In this role, he served as the chief lawyer to
Attorney General John Mitchell.

President Nixon mistakenly
referred to him as "Renchburg" in several of the tapes of
Oval Office conversations revealed during the Watergate
investigations.

*********I haven't checked these facts out......another friend poster sent this to me***********

[Darth_Kitten]

19. Something I found.....

http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues03/dec03/presence.html

[mordarlar]

21. The last paragraph of that link is interesting...

>>On April 22 of this year, at a press conference in the Watergate Hotel, I announced that my students and I had deduced that Fred Fielding was indeed Deep Throat. The next day, I got an e-mail from John Dean: "I’ll bet you a hundred dollars that you’re wrong about Fielding."<<<

[bettyellen]

22. so anyone know the state of fieding's health?

that was interesting... thanks.

[B0S0X87]

24. I always thought it was Buchanan

He was an isolationist and thus very opposed to Nixon's foreign policy.

[Darth_Kitten]

25. apparently he's denied it.....

:) but then again.... :)

[RB TexLa]

27. I've leaned towards Pat as well over the years

[Comicstripper]

31. But is Pat Ill?

I think he's in decent shape.

[cyn2]

36. Some would say he's most definitely ill....n/t

[Democrat Dragon]

40. It'll probably be someone we'd never suspect.

[orleans]

42. i've been seeing/reading a lot of stuff implicating poppy bush

after all he was cia. he was the head spook, right? who best to know about break-ins, phone taps, etc. then the top spooker. plus he was pissed at nixon for picking agnew who bush called (according to kitty kelly's book) "zorba the veep".