Throat Job

By Matt Taibbi, New York Press. Posted June 20, 2005.

I've seen some horseshit in my time, but I'm not sure I've ever seen anything quite like last week's Newsweek cover story on Deep Throat, by Evan Thomas.

The Thomas piece is remarkable on a number of levels, not the least being its frank and undisguised hypocrisy: Evan Thomas was one of the figures involved in the Koran-toilet-unnamed-sources fuck-up, and so an article written by him that denounces as unpatriotic the "legacy" of America's most famous unnamed source is humorous from the outset.

Thomas halfheartedly attempts a revisionist history of Watergate, arguing that the scandal was just an ordinary power struggle in which Nixon's part was that of a Capra-esque outsider president trying, quite reasonably, to assert his independence from an entrenched Democratic Party bureaucracy that was the Washington legacy of FDR. Thomas makes it sound like all Nixon was trying to do was break big-government gridlock. This is hilarious stuff, but it pales in comparison to the meat of the article.

Having titled his piece "The Meaning of Deep Throat," Thomas actually delivers his conclusion—the "meaning"—in the middle of the article:

Watergate did not just spell the end of the Nixon presidency. It started a chain reaction of investigations and prosecutions that eventually exposed all manner of secret wrongdoing by the FBI and the CIA... the effect of these investigations by the press, the courts, and congressional committees was profound. Battered by failure in Vietnam and the exposure of the CIA's "crown jewels" (its most hidden and deniable covert operations), the military and intelligence community became deeply demoralized in the late 1970s. From the highest levels to the lowliest commands, the watchword was caution.

As soon as I saw the bit about the intelligence community being "deeply demoralized," I thought I knew where Thomas was headed. But I could never have predicted the passage that came next:

When unarmed Islamic militants poured into the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in November, 1979, the Marine guards fired a few cans of tear gas—but otherwise held back and let the "students" seize the embassy. Secretary of Defense Harold Brown and national security advisor Zbignew Brzenzinski wanted to avoid military action. A 444-day hostage crisis ensued...

Thomas is saying exactly what you think he's saying. Having set up the idea that in the post–Deep Throat era—"caution was the watchword" from the "highest levels to the lowliest commands"—Thomas brings us to one of those "lowly commands"—the Marine guard in Tehran. What he is saying is that seven years after Watergate, Marines in Iran used tear gas instead of bullets because they were afraid of... Deep Throat!

For Thomas, the lesson of Watergate was not that elected officials should take care not to commit electoral fraud, burglary, perjury, or other low-rent domestic felonies that might be construed as an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the election process. Apparently, the lesson is not to fire back when fired upon; wave bin Laden through customs. Deep Throat might be watching! How Thomas moves from Nixon getting caught stonewalling a criminal investigation to Marines not defending themselves against Iranian students is beyond me, but he does it, and God bless him.

From the Carter years he moves on to Reagan, whose presidency he describes as a valiant attempt to countermand the unfortunate legacy of Watergate and Deep Throat. Among Reagan's accomplishments:

The Reagan presidency saw a renewed buildup of the military and an 'unleashing' of the CIA, as well as stirring rhetoric about renewed American pride.

In the parallel structure of this sentence, the buildup of the military, the 'unleashing' of the CIA and the renewal of American pride all go together. The implication of this passage, of course, is that American pride had taken a hit not only because of Watergate, but specifically because of Deep Throat. Remember, the article is entitled, "The Meaning of Deep Throat," not "The Meaning of Watergate." When Thomas talks about the unfortunate legacy of Watergate, he's pinning something on Felt, not Nixon.

Matt Taibbi lives in New York. He covers politics for Rolling Stone and the New York Press.

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