I wouldn't be surprised if Buchanan was Deep Throat. He still holds Old World notions of honor, being a Latin Mass Catholic and a member of the Sons of the Confederacy. Of the four on the list he seems the most likely, plus he's the only one who hasn't denied it. It will be interesting to see if he refuses any talking head show TV appearances this week. This guy offers an argument against the idea that it's Buchanan:
Posted June 16, 2002
Wrong guy
From ADRIAN HAVILL: MEMO TO: the Fighting Illini's Journalism department, Dateline NBC, and William Gaines, all of whom should know better. Patrick J. Buchanan as Deep Throat? Let me first hurl my Ovaltine milkshake and I'll be right with you . . . there, that's better.
"I don't like newspapers," Woodward has the mythical Deep Throat opining in Chapter Six of All The President's Men. A strange statement if coming from PJB. He has a masters in journalism from Columbia University, began his career an an editorial writer at the St. Louis Globe-Democrat in 1962 where he stayed until 1966 until he joined the Richard Nixon campaign. He went back to being a syndicated newspaper columnist between White House stints.
Incidentally, did Gaines and Co. read the two page scene in Chapter Fourteen of ATPM where the former attorney for the Washington Post, the now deceased Edward Bennett Williams, literally embraces Bob Woodward while personally denigrating Buchanan? A partial excerpt:
"Aren't you ashamed? You're a conservative and all this law breaking. And the Washington Post really sticking it to you. Oh, that must have hurt the most," Williams threw his arm around Woodward. "The Washington Post just jamming it up your old ass."
"Sixty-one percent, Ed," Buchanan responded. "Sixty-one percent. Just the biggest landslide in recent history and if it hadn't been for Watergate, it would have been more."
"You did it dirty." Williams says.
And so on, the passage making Buchanan appear to be a political operative of the worst kind. (Well perhaps he was. Didn't PJB once write a note to Nixon, urging the President to "go to the kennels and turn the dogs loose on Muskie?") Incidentally, Woodward also slammed Buchanan in The Final Days, introducing him as "the resident expert in media manipulation" and later describing him as falling asleep from too many martinis, though to be fair, Buchanan did drink scotch.
But the Fighting Illini J. team takes literally the smoking and scotch references. If so, they have to go with the perception that DT is an older mentor. PJB and Woodward are near contemporaries -- Buchanan is five years his senior. And Woodward says he met DT in government years before -- PJB was never in government until Nixon was elected. One should also read PJB's column on the 25th Anniversary of Watergate in 1997. In it, the life-long Nixon loyalist wrote that "Watergate was a coup. It was the overthrow of an elected president by a media and political elite he had routed in a 49-state landslide." Excuse me, but isn't Woodward a member of that media elite?
Finally, I was a guest on Buchanan's syndicated radio show in 1993, pushing my bio on Woodstein. As I recall, Buchanan took a few shots at both Bob and Carl during the discussion.
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