Now, for a bit of cognitive dissonance. Woodward's signature achievementà ‚¬"degrees-à ‚¬"degreesbringing down Richard Nixonà ‚¬"degrees-à ‚¬"degreesturns out not to be what we all thought. If that comes as a surprise, you have missed a few books, including bestsellers, that put pieces of this puzzle together. (Family of Secrets has several chapters on the real Watergate story, but there are others that present detailed information, including those by Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin, James Rosen, Jim Hougan and others.)
Here's the deal: Bob, top secret Naval officer, gets sent to work in the Nixon White House while still on military duty. Then, with no journalistic credentials to speak of, and with a boost from White House staffers, he lands a job at the Washington Post. Not long thereafter he starts to take down Richard Nixon. Meanwhile, Woodward's military bosses are running a spy ring inside the White House that is monitoring Nixon and Kissinger's secret negotiations with America's enemies (China, Soviet Union, etc), stealing documents and funneling them back to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They then give what they stole to columnist Jack Anderson and others in the press.
That's not the iconic Woodward of legend, of courseà ‚¬"degrees--à ‚¬"degreesso it takes a while for this notion to settle in the mind. But there's moreà ‚¬"degrees--à ‚¬"degreesand it's even more troubling. Did you know there was really no Deep Throat, that the Mark Felt story was conjured up as yet another layer of cover in what became a daisy chain of disinformation? Did you know that Richard Nixon was loathed and feared by the military brass, that they and their allies were desperate to get Nixon out and halt his rapprochement with the Communists? That a bunch of operatives with direct or indirect CIA/military connections, from E. Howard Hunt to Alexander Butterfield to John Deanà ‚¬"degrees--à ‚¬"degreeswormed their way into key White House posts, and started up the Keystone Kops operations that would be laid at Nixon's office door?
Believe me, I understand. It sounds like the "conspiracy theory" stuff that we have been trained to dismiss. But I've just spent five years on a heavily documented forensic dig into this missing strata of American history, and I myself have had to come to terms with the enormous gap between reality and the "reality" presented by the media and various establishment gatekeepers who tell us what's what.
Given this complicity, it's no surprise that when it comes to Woodward's latest work, the myth-making machine is on auto pilot. The public, of course, will end up as confused and manipulated as ever. And so things will continue, same as they ever were. Endless war, no substantive reforms. Unless we wake up to our own victimhood.
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