Felt problems

Despite being published in NewsMax, this article by Phil Brennan is an excellent summary of some of the many problems with the thesis that Mark Felt is Deep Throat, and includes a discussion of the important Dean/slore thesis of G. Gordon Liddy. When you think about it for a minute, the whole Deep Throat story was meant for a mid-level employee as whistleblower. It's absurd that the number two guy in the FBI had to meet in underground parking garages with an completely unknown junior reporter for the Washington Post (Woodward attempts to explain the whole implausible story, but doesn't even seem to convince himself). Felt was picked because his family wanted to make some money and his senility meant that he wouldn't have to face any of the many difficult questions that come to mind. If you want to read more:

1. Kurt Nimmo and Larry Chin point out that Felt was the ringleader of the FBI's COINTELPRO program. Rather than the smiling old man you see on TV, you should regard Felt as easily one of the worst villains in American history. You can't possibly overstate how deeply evil this man is, and how much harm he did to his country.


2. John Dean raises some interesting points, although, given the Liddy thesis, it is difficult to know how seriously we can take Dean on this matter.


3. Joseph Cannon has lots more good thoughts, including passing on more from Jim Hougan.


4. Felt himself has taken many positions on the matter over the years.


5. Edward Jay Epstein raises issues about the extent of Felt's knowledge. Mickey Kaus tries to rebut this. The problem with the Kaus position is that it makes this supposedly lone wolf into the head of a big FBI conspiracy of sources, with the accompanying questions about why none of the various sources of parts of the story have come forward.


6. The official rebuttal of the conspiracies appears to be by David Greenberg, and is a rather shoddy job. He refers to the single best work on the subject, Silent Coup by Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin, a lot of which is available on the internet, and is well worth reading.


7. Deep Throat was described by Woodward and Bernstein as a smoker. Felt never smoked.