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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

Tales from Dark Side don't live up to hype

By Mark Steyn


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | One by one, the landmark epics of the 1970s are tying up the loose ends — alas, not always in ways that quite support the great mythic power invested in them. In ''Revenge of the Sith,'' George Lucas brings the ''Star Wars'' cycle to a close by revealing how Anakin Skywalker went over to the Dark Side, transformed himself into Darth Vader, destroyed the Republic and consigned it to the mad imperial ambitions of Chancellor Palpatine — all because, er, he was a bit worried his beloved Senator Padme might die in childbirth. If Senator Padme had been like Senator Rodham and had a socialized health care reform bill ready to roll, history might have been very different.

But ''Revenge of the Sith'' is a marvel of motivational integrity compared to ''Revenge of the Felt,'' the concluding chapter in that other '70s saga, Watergate. Before the final denouement last week, there were a gazillion guesses at the identity of ''Deep Throat,'' but all subscribed to the basic contours of the Woodward and Bernstein myth: that he was someone deep in the bowels of the administration who could no longer in good conscience stand by as a corrupt president did deep damage to the nation. So Darth Throat, a fully paid-up Dark Lord of the Milhous, saved the Republic from the imperial paranoia of Chancellor Nixotine by transforming himself into Anakin Slytalker and telling what he knew to the Bradli knights of the Washington Post.

Now we learn that Deep Throat was not, in fact, Alexander Haig, David Gergen, Pat Buchanan or Len Garment, but a disaffected sidekick of J. Edgar Hoover, an old-school G-man embittered at being passed over for the director's job when the big guy keeled over after half-a-century in harness.

Hmm. Like the ''Star Wars'' wrap-up, ''How Mark Felt Became Deep Throat'' feels small and mean after three decades of the awesome dramatic burden placed upon it.

The nobility of the Watergate myth — in which media boomers and generations of journalism school ethics bores have sunk so much — seems cheapened and tarnished by this last plot twist.

The best thing I read on the subject in the last few days was a 1992 piece by James Mann from the Atlantic Monthly. He doesn't identify Deep Throat, though he mentions Mark Felt in an important context. But get a load of this remarkably shrewd paragraph from 13 years ago:

''By coincidence, the Watergate break-in occurred on June 17, less than seven weeks after Hoover's death and [FBI outsider] Gray's appointment [as acting director].

The FBI took charge of the federal investigation at the same time that the administration was trying to limit its scope.

''Therein lies the origin of Deep Throat.''

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Bingo! Mann also adds: ''Rarely is it asked whether White House aides like Haig, Ziegler, and Garment were the sort of people willing to hold 2 a.m. meetings in a parking garage, or whether they were able to arrange the circling of the page number 20 of Bob Woodward's copy of the New York Times, which was delivered to his apartment by 7 a.m. — the signal that Deep Throat wanted a meeting.''

With the benefit of hindsight, Mann's observation seems obvious. That's what the spy novelists call ''tradecraft.'' It's the sort of thing spooks and feds do, not White House aides. Why then was it not so obvious for the last three decades?

The answer is that, thanks to All The President's Men, the media took it for granted they were America's plucky heroic crusaders, and there's no point being plucky heroic crusaders unless you've got the dark sinister forces of an all-powerful government to pluckily crusade against. Think how many conspiracy movies there've been where White House aides are the sort of chaps who think nothing of meeting you at 2 a.m. in parking garages, usually as a prelude to having you whacked. In films like Clint Eastwood's ''Absolute Power'' or Kevin Costner's ''No Way Out,'' political appointees carry on like that routinely. That image of government derives principally from the Nixon era.


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Yet, as the unveiling of Deep Throat confirms, Tricky Dick's downfall was mostly an accumulation of trivial errors. Earlier this year, I chanced to look at both the transcripts of the original Nixon tapes, typed up by his long-time secretary Rose Mary Woods, and the later material released in the '90s, typed up by researchers and scholars who understood the historical significance of what they were dealing with. The latter fellows left in the ''ers'' and ''ums,'' the stumbles and mumbles; when you read the conversations, the sense is of an administration floundering to stay on top of things. Unfortunately, when Miss Woods typed up the first Nixon tapes, she approached it as any good secretary would: She cleaned up the stumbles and ''ers'' and put everything into proper complete sentences. That's what you want in a secretary if you're dictating a letter to the chairman of the Rotary Club. But it was a disaster for Nixon: The cool clinical precision of the language makes the president's inner circle sound far more conspiratorial, ruthless and viciously forensic than the incoherent burble of the actual conversation.

The marking-page-numbers-in-the-morning-paper stuff cemented that impression: of the national government as one huge out-of-control rogue spook operation. Now it turns out that Deep Throat was merely a career law enforcement official leaking information about the target of an investigation. Nothing very unusual about that — around the world, rinky-dink police departments and local prosecutors do it every day of the week — and, being so routine, there's nothing very heroic about it either.

Especially when the man doing it is driven by personal pique and loyalty to J. Edgar Hoover, a figure whose place in liberal demonology comes only just below Nixon. If Rose Mary Woods had been less of a bowdlerizer, if Hoover had lived another year, history might have been very different.

Heigh-ho. If the bloom's belatedly off the rose, Woodward, Bernstein and a pompous, self-regarding U.S. media got a grand three-decade run out of Deep Throat and Watergate. As it is, the best take on Deep Throat comes not from the Washington Post but from LBJ's old aphorism on Mark Felt's boss J. Edgar Hoover: It's better to have him inside the tent, ah, leaking out than outside the tent leaking in. If only Nixon had kept Mark Felt inside the tent . . .


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