Keith Olbermann
Dean sticks to report of ‘Throat's’ illness
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com |
Key Watergate witness turned Deep Throat sleuth John Dean is standing by his report in The Los Angeles Times that Bob Woodward has notified his masters at The Washington Post that "Throat" is ill.
Len Downie, the newspaper's executive editor, denied Woodward had given him such a message. But, joining me on 'Countdown', Dean said of Downie, "it's either he has a very bad memory, because my source when he told me this, had no reason to volunteer this other than the fact that he learned it directly from Downie." Dean also noted that Ben Bradlee, the then-Post editor who shepherded the reporting of Woodward and Bernstein, has confirmed he's written the obituary of "Throat" for the paper. "You don't generally have a former executive editor writing obits, to put those in the can to be ready for the day they might be needed."
But what does the story of illness do for the identification process? Dean refused to "clear" any of the four finalists (Pat Buchanan, Dwight Chapin, Ray Price, and Jerry Warren) he named in a 2002 electronic book for Salon. "I can't eliminate any of them. As I say, everybody who's ever been tagged has denied it, so you know, everyone still is denying it."
On the other hand, two simultaneous illnesses among people in Dean's life — one being Throat's, one being one of his friends' — may turn out to be one-in-the-same. And that presumed fact would put Dean, and others seeking to mask history's most famous unnamed source, in an ethical dilemma.
"When I first learned this," Dean told me, "I went around and checked to see who of my friends might be in bad health. And it was only because of a very unusual circumstance that I learned that a couple of people are ill that have not told me. In fact one of them happens to know that I believe this happened to be a clue to the identity of Throat and another friend of his, a mutual friend of ours, told me that he was ill.
"And this is very troubling to me because you know, I obviously want to honor this man's shuffling off with his denial and don't want to be the person to blow this up. So it's been a very difficult situation." But Dean did clear up just how sick Throat is said to be. In his piece, Dean wrote only that Throat "is ill," but by the time it got reported in other venues, it got exaggerated as far as 'is facing death.' "This was an undisclosed source that gave me the information that Woodward had reported to Downie that indeed this man was ill," Dean said. "Now I don't know exactly the words that Bob used. Whether it was that he was ill, that he was in bad condition, or what…. but it was clear that he was sometimes, he wasn't in the best of health." And, as Dean agreed, the idea that there's an obituary of the man waiting in a newspaper archive ordinarily wouldn't mean a single thing about the relative likelihood of his death (the major papers and news organizations all have obits of Britney Spears ready to go on a moment's notice), the idea that there is an article sitting around somewhere that says "Such-and-such — who was the Watergate source of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein known as "Deep Throat" — died today," is a different kettle of fish.
Lastly, I asked John Dean in jest if the movie version of Watergate — "All The President's Men" — might have been closer to the truth than we could have ever believed: "Is there any chance at all that Deep Throat was actually Hal Holbrook?"
He answered with a laugh. "Well, let me tell you this on that score — when he was cast, I'm told that Woodward said, 'Not bad.'"
If you're making a guess, that should give you something to work
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