BEN BRADLEE: Not Such a Good Life

[Drew Phipps]

If you read Bernstein's article carefully, you will see that he makes distinctions between "formal arrangements" and other types of relationships. Some of those other types of arrangements are called "covert." I also suspect there is a qualitative difference between a CIA "relationship" with a newspaper, and a CIA "relationship" with an individual reporter, allowing the editor to be disingenuous with her (possibly literally correct) answer.

A "formal relationship" between CIA and newspaper may mean (to Graham) that the CIA owns a part of the newspaper, or perhaps has a written contract, which she can deny with a only slightly murky conscience.

[Albert Doyle]

If there's even doubt there should be a Congressional committee designed to outlaw CIA interference with the free press.

[Jim DiEugenio]

That might be a valid distinction Drew.

But I think from the very long article, Carl had access to someone who saw a lot of raw data.

In other words, I think he understood the real situation without letting Kate Graham deny it.

[Dawn Meredith]

In fact he was really kind of ersatz.

https://consortiumnews.com/2015/03/10/be...good-life/

I am really proud of this two parter. You can go to part 2 with the link at the bottom.

Thanks so much to Dawn, the interview with Harvey Y makes the second part.

Finally, this guy is exposed.

Only Bob Parry would print this. Kudos to him all the way..

Terrific piece, as always Jim. Also nice to see on of my favorite ex-boyfriends weigh in. Harvey also did a piece on the Sullivan shooting in NH. But neither of us recall now who published it. Very pre internet days.

Dawn

[Dawn Meredith]

Thanks to all. Like I said, I am really proud of this two parter because no one ever did anything like this on Bradlee before.

And I am grateful to Bob Parry for printing it since I do not think anyone else, including Salon, would have done it.

As per Ford, I did not know he thought Nixon did away with LBJ. I mean what is the evidence for that? Sounds off the wall to me.

Ford used to post here but he got so obnoxious they banned him.

See, from my information, through Tatro and Marrs, it was Ford and David Truby who unearthed the famous Rubinstein memo, about Ruby working for Nixon. Back in the nineties, I though this was a forgery based upon Paul Hoch. I had not completely wised up to Hoch at the time. Today I am not sure if it is.

When I printed the fact that those two guys surfaced it, and it was a likely forgery, and they both had intel connections in Probe, Ford went nutty.

He demanded a retraction. So, to be fair, I went back to Marrs, and he actually had his notes from his phone call with Ford. Which confirmed everything I wrote.

BTW, I don't now what he means about me being soft on Nixon. That part of the essay analyzes only some of the faults in the Bradlee-Woodward-Bernstein version of Watergate. I could have gone on for many pages more as to all the things wrong with All The President's Men in light of what we know today. I have little or no sympathy for Nixon as politician or president, I mean, come on, the secret bombing of Cambodia? But what ATPM tries to insinuate about him and Watergate is simply wrong. Nixon never really knew what was happening to him. He just played it badly from the beginning. And then Redford went ahead and made it all even worse by glorifying Bradlee, Woodward and Bernstein. And consecrating their self serving mythology about Watergate.

The best book about Watergate is still Secret Agenda. But I did read three newer ones for the essay, Holland's Leak, Rosen's The Strong Man, and In Nixon's Web by Patrick and Ed Gray. I thought the last two were both good, especially the Gray book, which I would recommend to anyone. It proves that both Felt and Woodward were liars. And that Deep Throat, as I and others always suspected, was a composite. What Bradlee did in that case for Woodward, that is letting him keep a major source utterly secret, was unconscionable. Bradlee then tried to CYA it all by saying Deep Throat never fabricated.

HA HA HA. In the article, I showed he had and Woodward wrote it down in his book.

The article got too long. So I had to cut out a very interesting section. See, I think Bernstein was a fairly honest reporter. Especially compared to Woodward and Bradlee. I think Carl later understood what had happened. He had teamed up with a spook, in Woodward, and been supervised by a spook alumnus in Bradlee. He then quit the Post and was very instrumental in exposing Mockingbird in Rolling Stone. I think he did this to expiate his soul a bit for what he had been unwittingly a part of. In other words, he had been duped. But he had been well paid to be so.

Jim Curious as to what you mean by "had not wised up to Paul Hoch"? . FWIW I stopped trusting him in the mid 80's.

Dawn

ps Re Felt, I don't blame him, he was totally out of it by the time he was named as "Deep Throat", which I agree was a total lie. Agree also about Bernstein and Woodward. That's why spook Woodward always has access to presidents, tv and the like. But Bernstein was honest about Mockingbird, to his credit, and I agree duped, at least to some extent, by the good spook Woodward. I will have to read this article again....you are just so very thorough. I hope you sent it to Harv.

[Jim DiEugenio]

Dawn:

Please send it to Harvey for sure.

I called him and then discarded the email address.

See, whatever my reservations about Hoch, I always thought he was a decent researcher who occasionally came up with some good stuff. So I took him seriously on this Rubinstein stuff, the whole thing about the zip code which should not have been there.

Well, in PIttsburgh, when Thompson showed the real results of the infamous Alvarez experiments, and Hoch knew about it, that was it for me and Paul Hoch. Gary Aguilar did the same. He will never invite him to another one of his salons.

So I went back and looked again at the Rubinstein memo. See, the possibility remains that the zip code was on an attached letterhead to the actual memo. Therefore, the zip code cpuld be irrelevant to the actual memo. HOch never considered that.

Tell Harvey I said thanks so much.