Pat Buchanan puts Watergate to bed (almost)...

...except of course for the part about John Dean's wife, the hooker.


In the Watergate myth, two intrepid young reporters – guided by a conscientious whistleblower sickened at the scent of fascism he has found at the center of power, and backed up by a courageous and crusty editor – bring down the most dangerous tyrant in U.S. history.
It is the Great Myth of American journalism.
Now, thanks to Mark Felt's family wanting to get the old boy some publicity and themselves some of Woodward's stash, the Great Myth has been demolished.
Watergate involved two conspiracies. The first, now ancient history, was the botched cover-up of a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters, in which President Nixon was briefly complicit. But we now know there was a far larger and more successful conspiracy involving the FBI's No. 2, to rifle confidential files, to help the Washington Post bring down a president who had topped its enemies list since Joe McCarthy had gone to his grave.
Who was Mark Felt? A "hero," outraged by the crimes he saw in the White House, Ben Bradlee tells fawning interviewers.
It won't wash. Felt ran "black bag" jobs for J. Edgar and had to know of the taps and tapes of Dr. King that yielded the dirt the boys sent to Coretta that broke her heart. Is it credible this same Felt, discovering Segretti sent 200 pizzas to a Muskie fund-raiser, became so "shocked, shocked" he had no choice but leak to the Post to bring down the president of the United States?
The Post says Felt had no place else to go, as the White House and FBI chief Pat Grey were impeding the investigation. But if that is true, why wasn't the Post's big story headlined, "Justice Aides Say White House Impeding Watergate Investigation"? Why were the stories all about Segretti and the Haldeman slush fund?
The answer is obvious. After a week's botched attempt to get the CIA to tell the FBI to narrow its investigation, the Nixon White House had thrown in the towel. An honest and wide-ranging investigation was underway. It was only corrupted by Felt himself, a deceitful cop who carries the moniker of the porn star of the dirtiest movie of the day.
Why did Woodward, Bernstein and Felt cover up the identity of Deep Throat? By Occam's razor, the simple explanation is often the right one. Felt kept his mouth shut so as not to be prosecuted for his crimes and be disgraced before his FBI compatriots. Woodward and Bernstein covered up his identity so that no one knew that Mark Felt was their real managing editor and they were being run by the FBI.