by
Patrick
J. Buchanan

Recently
by Patrick J. Buchanan: What
If Zimmerman Walks Free?

It was, they
said, the crime of the century.

An attempted
coup d’etat by Richard Nixon, stopped by two intrepid young reporters
from The Washington Post and their dashing and heroic editor.

The 1976 movie,
All
the President’s Men, retold the story with Robert Redford
as Bob Woodward, Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein and Jason Robards
in his Oscar-winning role as Ben Bradlee. What did Bradlee really
think of Watergate?

In a taped
interview in 1990, revealed now in Yours
in Truth: A Personal Portrait of Ben Bradlee, Bradlee himself
dynamites the myth:

“Watergate
… (has) achieved a place in history … that it really doesn’t
deserve. … The crime itself was really not a great deal. Had it
not been for the Nixon resignation, it really would have been a
blip in history.”

“The Iran-Contra
hearing was a much more significant violation of the democratic
ethic than anything in Watergate,” said Bradlee.

Yet when the
Iran-Contra scandal hit the Reagan White House, Bradlee chortled,
“We haven’t had this much fun since Watergate.”

All fun and
games at the Post. Yet with Nixon’s fall came the fall of
South Vietnam, thousands executed, hundreds of thousands of boat
people struggling in the South China Sea and a holocaust in Cambodia.

Still, what
is most arresting about Yours in Truth is the panic that
gripped Bob Woodward when Jeff Himmelman, the author and a protege
of Woodward, revealed to him the contents of the Bradlee tapes.

Speaking of
All the President’s Men, Bradlee had said, “I have a little
problem with Deep Throat,” Woodward’s famous source, played in the
movie by Hal Holbrooke, later revealed to be Mark Felt of the FBI.

Bradlee was
deeply skeptical of the Woodward-Felt signals code and all those
secret meetings. He told interviewer Barbara Feinman:

“Did that potted
palm thing ever happen? … And meeting in some garage. One meeting
in the garage. Fifty meetings in the garage … there’s a residual
fear in my soul that that isn’t quite straight.”

Bradlee spoke
about that fear gnawing at him: “I just find the flower in the window
difficult to believe and the garage scenes. …

“If they could
prove that Deep Throat never existed … that would be a devastating
blow to Woodward and to the Post. … It would be devastating,
devastating.”

When Himmelman
showed him the transcript, Woodward “was visibly shaken” and repeated
Bradlee’s line – “there’s a residual fear in my soul that that isn’t
quite straight” – 15 times in 20 minutes.

Woodward tried
to get Bradlee to retract. He told Himmelman not to include the
statements in his book. He pleaded. He threatened. He failed.

That Woodward
became so alarmed and agitated that Bradlee’s bullhockey detector
had gone off over the dramatized version of All the President’s
Men suggests a fear in more than just one soul here.

A second revelation
of Himmelman’s is more startling.

During Watergate,
Woodward and Bernstein sought to breach the secrecy of the grand
jury. The Post lawyer, Edward Bennett Williams, had to go
to see Judge John Sirica to prevent their being charged with jury
tampering.

No breach had
occurred, we were assured.

We were deceived.

According to
Himmelman, not only did Bernstein try to breach the grand jury,
he succeeded. One juror, a woman identified as “Z,” had collaborated.
Notes of Bernstein’s interviews with Z were found in Bradlee’s files.

Writes Himmelman:
“Carl and Bob, with Ben’s explicit permission, lured a grand juror
over the line of illegality …”

This means
that either Woodward, Bernstein and Bradlee lied to Williams about
breaching the grand jury, or the legendary lawyer lied to Sirica,
or Sirica was told the truth but let it go, as all were engaged
in the same noble cause – bringing down Nixon.

Who was that
grand juror? Woodward, Bernstein and Bradlee know, but none is talking
and no one is asking. The cover-up continues.

Had one of
Nixon’s men, with his approval, breached the secrecy of the Watergate
grand jury, and lied abut it, that aide would have gone to prison
and that would have been an article of impeachment.

Conduct that
sent Nixon men to the penitentiary got the Post‘s men a stern
admonition. Welcome to Washington, circa 1972.

With the 40th
anniversary of the break-in coming up this June, Himmelman’s book,
well-written and revelatory of the temper of that time, will receive
a wider reading.

As will Max
Holland’s Leak:
Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat, out this spring and the
definitive book on why J. Edgar Hoover’s deputy betrayed his bureau
and sought to destroy the honorable man who ran it, L. Patrick Gray.

With
Bernstein’s primary source spilling grand jury secrets, and Mark
Felt leaking details of the FBI investigation to Woodward, both
of the primary sources on which the Washington Post‘s Pulitzer
depended were engaged in criminal misconduct.

At Kay Graham’s
Post, the end justified the means.

Redford is
now backing a new documentary, All the President’s Men Revisited.
The Sundance Kid has his work cut out for him.

May
25, 2012

Patrick
J. Buchanan [send
him mail] is co-founder and editor of The
American Conservative. He is also the author of seven books,
including Where
the Right Went Wrong, and Churchill,
Hitler, and the Unnecessary War. His latest book is Suicide
of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? See his
website.

Copyright
© 2012 Creators Syndicate

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