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Dec. 1, 2008

Max Freidlander, as told to Jacklyn C. Wadler: India Inkings

Mark Steyn: Whodunit!?

Nov. 28, 2008

Rabbi Ahron Rapps: An evil seed that didn't have to be

Melanie Phillips: Carpe diem --- or can we all relax now?

Nov. 26, 2008

Michael Feldberg: Meet the Orthodox Jew who laid groundwork for scientific development of ordnance that undergirds America's current world leadership

Andrea Simantov: Shades of life

Nov. 25, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Getting Emotional For Influence

The Kosher Gourmet by Ethel G. Hofman : Thanksiving feast!

Nov. 24, 2008

Rabbi S. Binyomin Ginsberg: 'I just Became a grandchild!'

Barry Rubin: Don't flatter your enemies, protect your friends

Nov. 21, 2008

Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: Money matters?

Caroline B. Glick: Civilization walks the plank

Nov. 20, 2008

Rabbi Avi Shafran: Bronfman's blindness

The Kosher Gourmet By Linda Gassenheimer: Portobellos add a hearty flavor to pasta with pesto

Nov, 19, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Spread the wealth? Jewish tradition and income equality

Elliot B. Gertel: 'Mad Men': Tackling prejudices or reinforcing them?

Nov, 18, 2008

Dr. Debby Schwarz Hirschhorn: The End of the Age of Reason

Jonathan Tobin: Does Barack + Bibi = Disaster?

Nov, 17, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The End of the Age of Reason

Diana West: Gulling Americans into making terror legit?

Nov, 14, 2008

Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: The Power of Spiritual Inertia

Caroline B. Glick: The perils ahead

Nov, 13, 2008

Stratfor Intelligence Briefing: How Bush and Obama together could change the Middle East dynamic

The Kosher Gourmet by JeanMarie Brownson: Sweet and savory, crispy and meltingly tender bestilla

Nov, 12, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Tyrannical Co-Workers

Michael Doyle: High Court to consider today donated monuments that may have religious messages in public parks

Nov, 11, 2008

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Will Obama stop government officials considering institutionalizing financial jihad?

Jonathan Tobin: They Will Decide Their Own Fate

Nov, 10, 2008

Rabbi Avi Shafran: $8 billion, modern-day Tower of Babel being built?

Barry Rubin: A letter to the president-elect from a Middle East realist

Nov, 7, 2008

Rabbi Francis Nataf: Of Children and Immortality

Caroline B. Glick: Livni's Obama strategy

Nov, 6, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: How I tricked a classroom of apathetic students into grasping the fallacy of moral relativism

The Kosher Gourmet By Gina Kim: Tips for making the perfect soup --- includes recipes

Nov, 5, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist By Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Destitute Debtors

Bruce Weinstein: 'Religulos': Bad title,even worse movie

Nov, 4, 2008

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Treasury Dept. submits to Shariah law

Frida Ghitis: A surprise for Obama in the Middle East

Nov, 3, 2008

Jonathan Rosenblum: Who says Jews are Smart?

Jonathan Tobin: Was He Wrong About Everything?

March 22, 2007

J-Rhythms with Avraham Rosenblum: JWR's cutting-edge music program showcasing performers -- singers, song writers, musicians, and bands -- who learn and live the Torah lifestyle (OUR NEWEST IGODCAST !)

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review June 6, 2005 / 28 Iyar, 5765

It's not a shut case on the Watergate mystery

By Jack Kelly

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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | The self-outing of former FBI Deputy Director Mark Felt as "Deep Throat" still leaves the most important questions about Watergate unanswered.

Bob Woodward has said Felt was Deep Throat, and he was seen visiting Felt at his Santa Rosa, California home in 1999.

What is cloudy is how much of a role Felt played in the Watergate saga. We know of Deep Throat not from the reporting Woodward and Bernstein did for the Washington Post in 1972, but from their book, "All the President's Men."


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But Woodward's literary agent, David Obst, has said Deep Throat was not mentioned in the original book proposal, and emerged only after Woodward had discussed movie possibilities with Robert Redford.

Woodward said he met Felt when, as a naval intelligence officer on the staff of Admiral Thomas Moorer, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he "sometimes acted as a courier, taking documents to the White House."

Therein lies a tale which we in journalism have been reluctant to explore.

At the time Woodward worked for him, Moorer was spying on the White House. Navy Yeoman Charles Radford, who was assigned to the staff of the National Security Council, admitted to investigators he "took so darn much stuff I can't remember what it was."

It is doubtful that Radford, a junior enlisted man, would have been Moorer's chief spy, or that Woodward, Moorer's messenger, would have been unaware of what his boss was doing.

In an interview two years ago, Haig told Christopher Ruddy of NewsMax he suspected Felt was Deep Throat, but added he doubted the FBI agent was Woodward's sole source.

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Felt couldn't have been the source of the most important piece of information Woodward attributed to Deep Throat, the existence of an 18 1/2 minute gap on the June 20th, 1972 White House tape, argues Joan Hoff, a history professor at Montana State University, who wrote a book about the Nixon presidency. Only a handful of people at the White House, among them Haig, could have known that, she said.

It's important to remember that what broke Watergate open was a letter one of the burglars, James McCord, wrote to Judge John Sirica (who had been threatening them with draconian sentences if they didn't talk) on March 19, 1973.

When McCord retired from the CIA in 1970, he was head of physical security at headquarters in Langley. Of the five burglars, he was an unlikely candidate to break under pressure, and most unlikely to have made the elementary mistakes he made which led to the discovery of the break-in.

(Among other things, McCord taped open a door to the Watergate building horizontally, so it was visible to a security guard making his rounds, rather than vertically, as every would-be spy is taught in Tradecraft 101.) It's almost as if McCord wanted the burglars to be caught.

In his 1984 book "Secret Agenda," journalist Jim Hougan speculated the CIA got Nixon before Nixon got the CIA. Nixon was mad at the CIA for the well founded belief officials there leaked classified information to John F. Kennedy during the 1960 campaign. Public disclosure of the CIA's clumsy attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro would have humiliated the agency (as it did three years later when then CIA Director William Colby exposed the "family jewels."). Only weeks before the break-in, Nixon aide John Ehrlichman had been at Langley reviewing those files.

Despite the Felt revelation, Hougan still believes Woodward got most of his information from Robert Bennett, now a U.S. senator from Utah, but then the head of a CIA front which employed E. Howard Hunt, one of the Watergate burglars.

In a memo to his boss (obtained by Hougan under the Freedom of Information Act), Bennett's CIA case officer, Martin Lukoskie, wrote that Bennett had told him he was feeding stories to Woodward, and that Woodward "was suitably grateful."

It's apparent Woodward isn't telling all he knows, and that his scoop was based less on his skills as an investigative reporter than on his prior contacts as a naval intelligence officer, one who may have been involved in a plot to spy on the president.

It isn't time to close the book on Watergate just yet.

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JWR contributor Jack Kelly, a former Marine and Green Beret, was a deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. Comment by clicking here.

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