Where are all the new Deep Throats?
Now that the identity of Deep Throat has been revealed, I feel a little disappointed. I liked the theory proposed by the 1999 Kirsten Dunst movie Dick (an amusing satire on the Watergate scandal that seems to have been missed by a lot of filmgoers), in which Deep Throat turned out to be two rather naive teenaged girls who befriended Nixon. Instead, it turns out to have been Mark Felt, the number two man in the FBI. In light of this, the question inevitably arises: where are the Deep Throats of today?
As former US Senator Mark Gravel wrote yesterday,
More than 30 years after Watergate, we have another President whose level of secrecy and corruption easily matches that of Richard Nixon. And yet, there seem to be no Deep Throats out there, and no young investigative reporters like Woodward and Bernstein who are willing to pursue the kinds of high crimes and misdemeanors that Bush has committed over the last four years. Things have certainly changed over the last three decades, haven't they?
The ultimate smoking gun against Bush, the document that ought to serve as the grounds for impeachment, is the recently revealed Downing Street memo from 2002. Jason Leopold contrasts succinctly and brilliantly Bush's public statements about Iraq during that time period,versus the facts reported in the memo, which showed that Bush had decided to go to war against Iraq by the middle of that year and then, lacking any real legal justification for war, needed to come up with a pretext to justify it. (Those who are interested in this issue should check out the web site http://www.downingstreetmemo.com.)
As Leopold points out, "despite the fact that the memo was splashed across the front pages of dozens of international newspapers, it was relegated to the back pages-or not covered at all-in U.S. papers." And herein lies the tragedy. The mainstream US press is uninterested in pursuing this issue, Bush controls both houses of Congress, and any would-be Deep Throats have nowhere to turn if they wanted to reveal the sordid details of the crimes of the Bush regime.
Mark Gravel's comment above about secrecy is an important one to remember. Leopold points out that "the parallels between the Bush and Nixon administrations are eerily familiar. Both bullied the press, were/are highly secretive, obsessed over leaks, engage(d) in massive cover-ups and quickly branded aides as disloyal if they dared to raise questions about the President's policies." John Dean, a former member of the Nixon administration who played a key role in the Watergate hearings, has this to say about the Bush regime:
One of the George Bush's early acts as President in 2001 was Presidential Order 13233, which effectively rescinded the Presidential Records Act, passed in 1978 in the aftermath of Watergate. Bush's executive order prevented the release of records about members of his own government who were in his father's administration. As John Dean wrote back in 2001 when this executive order was signed,
As former US Senator Mark Gravel wrote yesterday,
"The greatest threat to democracy is secrecy. It is a generic flaw of our representative system of government...The only antidote to the excesses of secrecy is the occasional patriot leaking the truth to the media or to the Congress. Unfortunately, the Congress is all too complicit in maintaining secrecy in government. Thank you, Marc Felt, for your service to freedom and democracy; let us hope that your revelation is an incentive to present-day whistleblowers. The need for whistleblowers has never been greater."
More than 30 years after Watergate, we have another President whose level of secrecy and corruption easily matches that of Richard Nixon. And yet, there seem to be no Deep Throats out there, and no young investigative reporters like Woodward and Bernstein who are willing to pursue the kinds of high crimes and misdemeanors that Bush has committed over the last four years. Things have certainly changed over the last three decades, haven't they?
The ultimate smoking gun against Bush, the document that ought to serve as the grounds for impeachment, is the recently revealed Downing Street memo from 2002. Jason Leopold contrasts succinctly and brilliantly Bush's public statements about Iraq during that time period,versus the facts reported in the memo, which showed that Bush had decided to go to war against Iraq by the middle of that year and then, lacking any real legal justification for war, needed to come up with a pretext to justify it. (Those who are interested in this issue should check out the web site http://www.downingstreetmemo.com.)
As Leopold points out, "despite the fact that the memo was splashed across the front pages of dozens of international newspapers, it was relegated to the back pages-or not covered at all-in U.S. papers." And herein lies the tragedy. The mainstream US press is uninterested in pursuing this issue, Bush controls both houses of Congress, and any would-be Deep Throats have nowhere to turn if they wanted to reveal the sordid details of the crimes of the Bush regime.
Mark Gravel's comment above about secrecy is an important one to remember. Leopold points out that "the parallels between the Bush and Nixon administrations are eerily familiar. Both bullied the press, were/are highly secretive, obsessed over leaks, engage(d) in massive cover-ups and quickly branded aides as disloyal if they dared to raise questions about the President's policies." John Dean, a former member of the Nixon administration who played a key role in the Watergate hearings, has this to say about the Bush regime:
George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney have created the most secretive presidency of my lifetime. Their secrecy is far worse than during Watergate, and it bodes even more serious consequences. Their secrecy is extreme, not merely unjustified and excessive but obsessive. It has created a White House that hides its president's weaknesses as well as its vice president's strengths.
It has given us a presidency that operates on hidden agendas. To protect their secrets, Bush and Cheney dissemble as a matter of policy. In fact, the Bush-Cheney presidency is strikingly Nixonian, only with regard to secrecy far worse (and no one will ever successfully accuse me of being a Nixon apologist). Dick Cheney, who runs his own secret governmental operations, openly declares that he wants to turn the clock back to the pre-Watergate years, a time of an unaccountable and extraconstitutional imperial presidency. To say that their secret presidency is undemocratic is an understatement.
One of the George Bush's early acts as President in 2001 was Presidential Order 13233, which effectively rescinded the Presidential Records Act, passed in 1978 in the aftermath of Watergate. Bush's executive order prevented the release of records about members of his own government who were in his father's administration. As John Dean wrote back in 2001 when this executive order was signed,
What appears to have provoked President Bush's action is the fact that some 68,000 documents from the Reagan presidency were waiting at the White House when Bush arrived, ready for release by the National Archives.If Bush is indeed even more Nixonesque than Nixon, what is important to realize is that, ultimately, the nation has constitutionally gained nothing as a result of the lessons of the Watergate scandal. The temporary reprieve against abuses of Presidential authority that emerged in the 1970s after Watergate were only a minor victory in the context of a long term defeat. When considering the state of American democracy, we are actually worse off now than we were in 1974. And with a compliant mainstream press and a compliant Congress, there is nothing in the halls of power stopping Bush from getting away with lies, corruption, and secrecy, not to mention the impeachable offense of going to war on a fabricated pretext. We cannot rely on the political and media elite to save us this time.These documents passed the twelve-year deadline for public release on January 12, 2001, but their release has been stalled by the Bush White House until now. The documents are believed to contain records that Papa Bush, as Reagan's Vice President, is not happy to have made public. They also contain papers of others now working for Bush, who might be embarrassed by their release.
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