As we approach the 50th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s unprecedented resignation, Americans would do well to revisit Watergate before the Washington Post report.Journalistic misconduct becomes an unchangeable historical fact.
It is true that there was a large-scale cover-up of Watergate, but it was a cover-up by the Washington paper of record, not by the Nixon administration, which was the real victim of Watergate.
So who did Ordered an invasion of DNC headquarters, and why? The Washington Post had known the truth for a while, but refused to report it.
The Post’s sensational reporting revealed that in the immediate aftermath of the arrest, what initially appeared to be a “rigged” heist plot was foiled by hacks and ultimately turned out to be a deliberate attempt to influence the election. It should be remembered that the election plan was transformed into an election plan planned in the presidential power.
This change was accomplished through the seemingly credible accusation that former Attorney General John Mitchell, the campaign chairman and a longtime ally of President Nixon, himself had ordered the robbery.The Post triumphantly touted his involvement., Previous reports inspired by Deep Throat acknowledged that the intrusion was just one part of an overall “espionage and sabotage operation” directed by the White House. At the very least, it was clear that the “unguided missile” supervisor, attorney G. It became an important link between the White House and the president. Himself.
On the other hand, if Mitchell had been innocent and Liddy had received Mitchell’s instructions from elsewhere, the entire story of the scandal would have been different.
After all, the six other arrested defendants all had ties to the CIA and had collaborated with it in the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961. From the campaign’s perspective, the DNC would not have had any intelligence value until the Democratic convention was held in Miami later in the summer.
In other words, Mitchell’s involvement was always necessary to link the event to Nixon. Without Mitchell, astute observers would look elsewhere for the criminal progenitor of trespassing.
It’s no surprise that for more than 50 years, the Post has done its best to keep the truth about Mitchell’s innocence from being known to the public. Hence the recent admission that John Mitchell did not order the break-in, as the paper had confidently reported for years and his lieutenant Jeb Magruder dubiously testified. should be of earth-shaking importance.
Investigative reporter James Rosen published “The Strongman” in 2008, persuasively arguing that Mitchell was wrongly accused.postI studiously ignored this well-supported conclusion. But it seems to have realized that its credibility is under threat, so it recently tried a new approach. The paper collaborated with Gerald Groff on his 2023 book “Watergate: A New History.” The book reaches the same conclusion as Rosen, and oddly enough, Leonard Downey, former editor-in-chief emeritus of the Washington Post, seems willing to go., In a review published at the same time as the book.
Mitchell’s exoneration has been long overdue, but a strange byproduct of this collaboration is that Groff will try to assess who, if not Mitchell, actually ordered the robbery and why. It was a statement that Downey praised, saying it was pointless at this point. After all, both sides say a long time has passed and the witness is dead. If deceased actors and witnesses hindered the writing of history, it is contradictory that thousands of books are still being published about past wars, presidents, kings, and crimes. But both Groff and Downey have urged the case to remain closed.
But why would Downey’s principal, the Post, want to bury the truth about the robber’s origins? Doesn’t this create a gaping hole in the traditional Watergate story?
The famous work of Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein distorted the insights of key sources.
Simply put, an investigation will reveal significant misrepresentation in this Pulitzer Prize-winning paper. Looks like a devil’s deal has been made: post will promote and praise Groff’s efforts, but the author will claim that Sleeping Dog is lying about Mitchell’s lack of involvement, which is a boon for the paper.
In fact, after Watergate, a lot of explanatory evidence was unearthed, and we now know it was there for the taking all along. But none of that could overcome the version the Post received. Former Atlantic Monthly Washington Editor-in-Chief Jim Hogan’s 1984 masterpiece “The Secret Agenda” brilliantly chronicles the CIA’s role in the infiltration of President Nixon’s White House and campaign, and the CIA’s heist for its own purposes. It led to This was followed by an uneven but glittering “silent coup” by Len Kolodny and Robert Getlin in 1991, when his out-of-town DNC visitors called to arrange assignments. pointed to his wiretapping of CIA-protected brothels.
Both books misunderstood Deep Throat and his motives for collaborating with Bob Woodward. What Kolodny and Getlin added to Hogan was strong circumstantial evidence that John Dean was interested in brothels. So it turns out that Watergate had nothing to do with the campaign, even though it was funded by campaign funds. If so, the question arises, what did that post do?I know, and when did you know that?
In 2019, I published my book Postgate: How the Washington Post betrayed Deep Throat, covered up Watergate, and launched today’s partisan journalism.,” built on the “secret agenda” and “silent coup” while explaining Deep Throat and exposing the Post’s partisan misdirection in its reporting. “Postgate” with Hogan, Kolodny, Getlin, RosenHe completed his story while fighting the Post’s aggressive crackdown on journalistic fraud.
The Post was at the scene the morning of the robber’s arrest. It quickly became clear that the target of the robbery was a secretarial desk in a part of the DNC office occupied by the Democratic Chairmen’s Association, an affiliate not part of the DNC that has its own telephone system. One of the robbers, “retired” CIA agent James McCord, admitted to a friend in the Metropolitan Police Department that morning that the scam was a failed CIA operation. Wiretap monitors had been eavesdropping on “apparently intimate” conversations between men and women over the past few weeks. And Supervisor Howard Hunt’s part-time employer, Mullen & Company, was a CIA front providing cover to CIA agents around the world.
Post’s famous worksReporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein distorted the insights of a key source, Mark Felt, the FBI’s chief of investigations known as Deep Throat. Mr. Felt had been unsuccessfully seeking a grand jury investigation into the “dirty tactics” campaign of Donald Segretti, a young aide to President Nixon. make a hypothesis He claimed that the robbery was part of the plan and therefore directed by the White House.
After a long garage meeting with Deep Throat, Woodward falsely reported: Establishment” The robbery was part of an “espionage and sabotage mission” ordered by the White House. As Felt knew, and as Woodward should have known, establishing a fact is not the same as hypothesizing a fact.
Woodward exaggerated the story of the dirty tricks as pointing to the White House, but later ignored the dramatic meeting with Deep Throat in the press. In it, this reliable source told reporters that the CIA was threatening lives to keep its role in the heist and heist hidden. and many other covert operations. Woodward included this sensational meeting in his book and film for effect, obscuring its meaning, but did not report on the clear implications of CIA sponsorship at the time.
When Mr. Mitchell’s once disloyal aide, Jeb Magruder, accused his boss of getting a lenient deal, the Post reportedThe fraud was covered up along with the real purpose of the robbery.
So who did Why did he order Magruder to send a robber to DNC headquarters?postI’ve known it for a long time, but I refused to report the truth.
There will be a lot of smugness among the posts as the real story remains hidden.The 50th anniversary of Nixon’s death will soon be “celebrated” with ample comparisons to Donald Trump. There are some great similarities between Nixon and Trump. But to those who understand the hidden truth of Watergate, this comparison should be a disgusting journalistic deception, each a sad symbol of today’s corrupt partisan media.
John D. O’Connor is a former federal prosecutor and San Francisco attorney who represented W. Mark Felt when he was exposed as Deep Throat in 2005. O’Connor is the author of “.Postgate: How the Washington Post betrayed Deep Throat, covered up Watergate, and launched today’s partisan journalism” and “The Watergate Mystery: What Really Happened” (Post Hill Press).
