Deeper than Deep Throat

W. Mark Felt, 91 years old and formerly second-in-command at the FBI, says that he is the source that Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein called Deep Throat in their book about the Watergate break-in that was organized out of the Nixon White House.

Since the time when Richard "Tricky Dick" Nixon was forced to resign from the presidency, finding the identity of Woodward and Bernstein's Deep Throat has been a popular speculative sport. The revisionist histories all seem to say that it was the work of the two Washington Post journalists and Deep Throat's revelations that brought down the president.

The corporate media are already giving this twist to the reports on Felt's admission. Felt has become the hero of the hour. And buried with Felt's new hero status is the fact that Felt himself is one of only two FBI officials convicted for the notorious Counter-Intelligence Program--Cointelpro. Felt was one of the architects of Cointelpro, a murderous campaign that sought to derail and destroy Black, Latin@, Native and Asian civil rights and national liberation movements in this country. Cointelpro also sought to target and disrupt the movements against the Vietnam War and for women's and gay liberation. Though convicted for his role in illegal Cointelpro operations, Felt never spent a day in prison; he was pardoned by then-President Ronald Reagan.

Before history is completely rewritten, it's time to review what happened in the coup that toppled Richard Nixon.

Coup? That's how Workers World reported it at the time. (See "The meaning of Nixon's June 5 conspiracy," by Sam Marcy, Workers World, Aug. 24, 1973.) Nixon was brought down not by two or three diligent individuals; he was brought down by a loose coalition of ruling class forces, many of whom feared that if Nixon weren't brought down by them, he would be thrown out by a popular rebellion that could sweep away more than just the president.

Playing a big role in the move to topple Nixon was none other than the head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover. Now it is revealed that it was Hoover's top assistant who leaked to the media the details of the criminal activities being organized out of the White House.

Marcy, in another report, summarized the events of that time:

"Nixon succeeded Johnson, basically as a result of the polarization in the country arising out of the genocidal war against Vietnam. The most right-wing faction of the imperialist bourgeoisie, headed by Air Force Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay, urged nuclear bombing of Vietnam when he called publicly for authority to 'bomb the Vietnamese back into the Stone Age.' ...

"In the meantime, the very foundations of the imperialist military establishment began to be shaken by an unprecedented anti-war struggle together with the most significant revolutionary upsurge of the Black masses. The ruling class became divided over whether to continue its mad, adventurous policy. ...

"Once he became president, Nixon was besieged by both left and right within the establishment, and by an aroused, progressive mass anti-war movement and civil rights rebellions. Nixon found both the FBI and CIA unsuitable or unwilling instruments for his plans to win the wars at home and abroad.

"He called a secret and illegal meeting with all the intelligence chiefs on June 5, 1970. Its objective was to achieve 'a plan to widen the government's domestic spy network and increase its efficiency.' However, FBI head J. Edgar Hoover broke away from the conspiracy because he refused to yield bureaucratic control over his personal domain.

"Nixon then established an independent spy network that became known as the Plumbers.

"The ruling class, unprepared and unwilling to continue the war, used what were in reality minor infractions of bourgeois conduct in high office (the Watergate scandal) to threaten impeachment and drive Nixon from office." (Workers World, Sept. 12, 1991)

That's the real history.