DEEP THROAT

We would have to put ourselves into Felt's shoes and having to make the decision where to go with what he knew would be frustrating and actually scary. If anyone knew half of the stuff shuffled under the carpet about Nixon, we'd likely be even more astounded but also profoundly disillusioned. Machiavelli was right about his times and our times. It hasn't changed a smidgen.

i think ya hit the nail on the head there. o'neil, clark, wilson all got slimed when they spoke up about things. and since the ideologues in the gop are runnin' the show, nothing happened.

i still say that if there really is anything heinous with the bush crowd, it will catch up with them in a way that the majority of americans, regardless of party, are gonna be lookin' around for some tar and a bunch of feathers.

i've got a bottle of jack held in reserve for the occasion.

Dtom writes


You are right. Republicans don't control the press; in fact a substantial majority of the press is somewhat or blatantly critical and contemptuous of Republicans and anything on the right and critical and contemptuous of GWB in particular. There is no way the administration or the GOP controls the media.

IMO, if GWB is guilty of a crime, and the press puts it out there, you can be assured few members of Congress are likely to put their jobs on the line to protect or even defend the president. They sure didn't do it for Bush the elder when he broke his 'no new taxes' pledge.

The reason O'Neil et al haven't managed to make anything stick is a) they have been shown to have their own credibility problems; b) they haven't shown that any illegal act has been committed and/or c) if they have exposed errors and omissions, the previous administration is as tarred with them as the current administration.

I think people interested in objectivity and fairness see that. People blinded by vitriolic partisan ideology don't.

Yea, but foxfrye, we can't ever get any hearings to find out if Bush is guilty of a crime. And like I said, we don't have any deep throats to expose something from the inside.

I am not sure bush is guilty of a crime exactly unless stretching and deceiving the truth in order to go to war is a crime. Those have been exposed by the media and so far no republicans are getting excited about it. Even more than half country now believes Bush lied us into war. I guess the republicans get more het up about taxes than lies about wars.

Correction. It is only half of Americans that believe Bush lied about WMD in Iraq. It is over half who just generally disaprove of the way he is handling the war in Iraq.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000894970

(there might be a more recent poll, I am not good at googling)

Revel, Bush 'led us into war' with the consent of Congress and even your idol, John Kerry, voted to do it, and some, including Kerry, were writing to President Clinton to do it before 9/11. Every one of those people had access to the same intelligence used by the President prior to that vote. So if you're going to condemn GWB for putting us into a war, you have to condemn them all. If they hadn't voted yes, we wouldn't have gone.

the real question is; who gets the info first? the president or congress.

i'm betting that the whitehouse always has the first look.

Sometimes yes and sometimes no, Dtom. If a congressman or senator decides to do his own investigation, he gets the first look. The President does have jurisdiction over intelligence by virtue of his office, however, which is why the Clnton administration had virtually all the information that the Bush administration had. Remember that Bush had only been in office for eight months at the time of 9/11. Saddam had been thumbing his nose at the U.N. and the U.S. ever sine the first Gulf War. Plans to invade Iraq, with no specific plan to implement them, were already on the drawing board years before Bush took office.

Those members of Congress, mostly Democrats, urging President Clinton to get tough with Iraq, had access to all the intelligence available to Clinton. They weren't even thinking about a President Bush at the time.

are you sure about this ? i'm not. from what i've seen, it was touted largely by the reps, many of whom were in previous republican administrations. several of them are again, in the bush administration. along with a few that have current, high velocity appointments.

take a look at this, (probably not the first time, but hey, who's counting ?
:wink: )



newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter

but other than kerry or clinton, who've already been brought up, which other dems were pushing hard for a second invasion ?

Here ya go Dtom
You see that the issue isn't 'who's is blackest'. The issue is that Saddam was perceived as a threat by just about everybody and, it was only when it was perceived to be politically expedient by the Democrats that Bush became the lone villain to crucify.

U.S. Senate



Committee on Armed Services,



Washington, DC, October 9, 1998.


The President,
The White House, Washington, DC.

Dear Mr. President: We are writing to express our concern
over recent developments in Iraq.

Last February, the Senate was working on a resolution
supporting military action if diplomacy did not succeed in
convincing Saddam Hussein to comply with the United Nations
Security Council resolutions concerning the disclosure and
destruction of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. This
effort was discontinued when the Iraqi government reaffirmed
its acceptance of all relevant Security Council resolutions
and reiterated its willingness to cooperate with the United
Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) and the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in a Memorandum of Understanding
signed by its Deputy Prime Minister and the United Nations
Secretary General.

Despite a brief interval of cooperation, however, Saddam
Hussein has failed to live up to his commitments. On August
5, Iraq suspended all cooperation with UNSCOM and the IAEA,
except some limited monitoring activity.

As UNSCOM Executive Chairman Richard Butler told us in a
briefing for all Senators in March, the fundamental historic
reality is that Iraq has consistently sought to limit,
mitigate, reduce and, in some cases, defeat the Security
Council's resolutions by a variety of devices.

We were gratified by the Security Council's action in
unanimously passing Resolution 1194 on September 9. By
condemning Iraq's decision to suspend cooperation with UNSCOM
and the IAEA, by demanding that Iraq rescind that decision
and cooperate fully with UNSCOM and the IAEA, by deciding not
to conduct the sanctions' review scheduled for October 1998
and not to conduct any future such reviews until UNSCOM and
the IAEA, report that they are satisfied that they have been
able to exercise the full range of activities provided for in
their mandates, and by acting under Chapter VII of the United
Nations Charter, the Security Council has sent an unambiguous
message to Saddam Hussein.

We are skeptical, however, that Saddam Hussein will take
heed of this message even though it is from a unanimous
Security Council. Moreover, we are deeply concerned that
without the intrusive inspections and monitoring by UNSCOM
and the IAEA, Iraq will be able, over time, to reconstitute
its weapons of mass destruction programs.

In light of these developments, we urge you, after
consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S.
Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including,
if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraq
sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's
refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.


Sincrely,


Carl Levin, Joe Lieberman, Frank R. Lautenberg, Dick
Lugar, Kit Bond, Jon Kyl, Chris Dodd, John McCain, Kay
Bailey Hutchison, Alfonse D'Amato, Bob Kerrey, Pete V.
Domenici, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara A. Mikulski.
Thomas Daschle, John Breaux, Tim Johnson, Daniel K.
Inouye, Arlen Specter, James Inhofe, Strom Thurmond,
Mary L. Landrieu, Wendell Ford, John F. Kerry, Chuck
Grassley, Jesse Helms, Rick Santorum.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1067085/posts

Before going to war there was fresh intelligence and doubts raised and bush chose to ignore it and instead chose to go with old intelligence and even stretched intelligence like "mushroom clouds."

That is what makes Bush and company different.
They knew the truth and chose to go war anyway.

I have posted evidence in the past on other threads and see no reason to do it again unless pressed.

No, Revel, you have only posted mostly speculation by people who are so partisan they don't care about the truth.

The fact is, all old evidence and any "fresh" evidence was fully available to all members of Congress prior to any decision being made. Almost all of Congress were in agreement that Saddam Hussein must be stopped and they voted a green light to stop him.

Now you can disbelieve all the facts presented by both Democrats and Republicans and go right on believing the administration acted unilaterally and without the consent of Congress. You would be very wrong.

Or you might believe that the people you elected to office are so incompetent they didn't do their homework or so stupid they could not understand the intelligence available to them and were duped by the presumed (by some) No. 1 el stupido, George W. Bush. If that was the case, we have a whole lot more to worry about than a war in Iraq.

Or you can believe they all went with the best information available to them. If that is the case, then the right thing to do is to get behind the administration and the military and help to bring this to the speediest and conclusion. That will save countless billions of dollars and countless lives.

There will be time enough later to second guess the wisdom of entering into the conflict. The time to do that is not when we have people on the ground in harms way.

Foxfyre
Foxfyre wrote: "No, Revel, you have only posted mostly speculation by people who are so partisan they don't care about the truth."

Foxfyre, I can't restrain myself any longer. Of all A2K posters, there is no one more guilty of what you accuse Revel of being than you. Take a look in the mirror. It takes one to know one.

BBB

foxfrye in asnwer to your post. Bush mislead congress along with the rest of the world. So yes, they were dupes and do we have problems and we should get a whole new bunch in. I doubt it will happen in my lifetime if at all anyway.

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2004_cr/h031604.html

However, we have strayed from the main purpose of this thread and I am willing to leave at you think I am just partisan and have it in for Bush.

To bring the thread sort of back on course here:

I have a friend who was a senior agent in the FBI during the Watergate hearings though I did not know him until many years later after he had retired from the FBI. If he knew who "Deep Throat" was prior to the outing, he never mentioned it. He says there are many questions remaining about that whole sordid affair. He is unconvinced that John Dean told the whole truth and nothing but the truth in his session before Congress and he is unconvinced to this day that Nixon is guilty of all the allegations made against him. He does not defend Nixon in any way and thinks his resignation was the right thing to do. He also does not believe Nixon is anywhere near the worse president we have ever had.

Deep Throat is related to a larger issue I think. Should the media use 'anonymous sources' to attack people? What prevents a newspaper or radio talk show host or television news team from saying anything about anybody based on an 'anonymous source'? At the same time, having been a reporter, I believe in protecting sources. I just don't believe in quoting them anonymously.

Many Newspapers Forbid Anonymous Sourcing

By DAVID CRARY
The Associated Press
Wednesday, June 8, 2005; 11:54 PM

NEW YORK -- Editors at about one in four newspapers who responded to a survey say they never allow reporters to quote anonymous sources, and most others have policies designed to limit the practice. One editor said his paper's rules are so strict they would have disqualified Deep Throat as a source.

The use of anonymous sources _ people who give reporters information only on condition that their identities not be divulged _ has been much in the news recently, notably in a case that prompted a Newsweek magazine retraction. The issue came up again last week with the disclosure that Deep Throat, The Washington Post's legendary Watergate source, had been an FBI official.

The Associated Press and the Associated Press Managing Editors association decided to jointly survey American newspapers to find out what their practices are. The project, believed to be the most comprehensive of its kind conducted in recent years, drew replies from 419 publications _ about 28 percent of the nation's 1,450 daily newspapers.

Editors at 103 papers, nearly all of them in small and mid-size markets, said they do not ever permit reporters to cite anonymous sources in their articles.

"Our policy is to get people on the record. Period," said Eileen Lehnert, editor of the Jackson (Mich.) Citizen Patriot. "Once you operate from that standpoint, you rarely have to reconsider your position."

Newspapers that do allow use of unnamed sources include those based in large cities and operating bureaus overseas or in Washington, where requests by sources for anonymity occur often. Most of these papers say they have formal policies intended to minimize the reliance on anonymity.

"The use of unnamed sources is limited to the most compelling cases where an important story can be told no other way," said David Boardman, managing editor of The Seattle Times.

Carl Lavin, deputy managing editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, said that his paper discourages the use of unnamed sources, but "this needs to be balanced with the need to present vital information to the reader that cannot be obtained by other means."

Ken Stickney, managing editor at The News-Star in Monroe, La., said he bars his own reporters from using unnamed sources, but will carry news service stories with such sources "because sometimes you can't get anything out of Washington without them."

Phil Lucas, executive editor of The News Herald of Panama City, Fla., said his paper has quoted anonymous sources only about once every three years, under restrictions so tight that "we would not use a source such as Deep Throat," who turned out to be former FBI official Mark Felt.

"We do it only if the information is compelling. ... and if we understand and can justify exactly what ax the source is grinding," Lucas said. "The internal politics of the agency he (Felt) worked for, what his motivation might be _ that would be an issue for us."

Many other editors say they have similarly narrow limits on anonymity, allowing it only when someone could lose his job out of retribution, or to protect the identity of a rape victim, illegal immigrant or someone suffering from addiction.

The AP's own policy permits use of anonymous sources only when the material is information _ not opinion _ vital to the news report; when that information is available only under the conditions of anonymity imposed by the source; and when the source is reliable and in a position to have accurate information.

The survey arose from a long-term APME project examining issues of newspaper credibility, and its timing dovetailed with the heightened debate over anonymous sources.

In the most publicized recent case, Newsweek magazine came under criticism from the White House and retracted a story regarding alleged desecration of the Quran by U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay. The story was based on information provided by an anonymous source who later told the magazine he could not be certain he had read about the alleged Quran incident in the government report Newsweek cited.

Geneva Overholser, a professor based at the Washington bureau of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, welcomed what she described as a "dramatic tightening" of anonymity policies.

"Of course I worry whether stories will be lost," she said. "With this very important tool of journalism at risk, we have to protect it by being more disciplined and cautious about when we use it."

Many papers require information from one anonymous source to be corroborated by at least one additional source. Many require that at least one senior editor be told the source's name and, in some cases, require an editor to speak with the source.

"The executive editor or editor must know the names of the sources," said Tonnya Kennedy, managing editor of The State in Columbia, S.C. "We try to print enough information about the sources that signals to the reader, 'This person is real,' without giving away their identity."

Several editors said they would consider allowing anonymous sourcing under exceptional circumstances but in practice have done so rarely or never.

"Over the last 10 years we have not used a single anonymous source," said Ana Walker, editor of the Longview (Texas) News-Journal. "We might as well be writing fiction if we cannot give our readers a source."

Several editors said they are considering applying their papers' tough policies not only to staff-written stories but also to stories obtained from wire and syndication services.

"Our policies for locally written stories. ... are stringent," said Elaine Kulhanek, executive editor of the Great Falls (Mont.) Tribune. "We are getting more demanding of wire stories and are less likely to use material with unnamed sources, although decisions are made on a case-by-case basis."

Asked whether they share details of their policies with their readers, 164 editors said yes. This is done through editor's notes, columns and other means, they said.

Editors at 35 papers said they are currently considering toughening their sourcing policies. Rick Hall, managing editor of The Deseret News in Salt Lake City, said he is part way through drafting a new policy; Louise Seals, managing editor of the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch, said a crackdown is under way on "casual and lazy uses of unidentified speakers in features, columns and other subject areas."

APME is an association of editors at AP's member newspapers in the United States and publications affiliated with the Canadian Press in Canada.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/08/AR2005060802012_pf.html

BBB writes


I accept that this is your opinion BBB. And you're right that it takes one to know one so when you look into a mirror, you see.....what?

(P.S., Coulter has an awful lot of stuff in that column that objective people might be curious about. So far as 'smearing Felt's family', they have publicly admitted that their motive for outing Felt was money.)

oh, i didn't say that their were no dems ringin' the bell. seeing lieberman, feinstein and landrieu is no surprise to me. bob k. either and if nothing else, seeing john k's name here can either be used to play "flip flop" or to reinforce the idea that he's historically pro-defense. hate to say it, but in this particular discussion, he's sorta both...

but it does look like it's somewhat heavier on republicans. whatever.

there is some case for new info being ignored or massaged, as revel says.

one example being the use of the niger/yellow cake letter. remember what we've learned; it was cut from a bush speech in october of 2002 on advise from tenet that it was a forgery. but then the letter was used as evidence in the run up and the 2003 sotu. even after the announcement that it was a forgery.

same thing with "the very fine document" from brit intel that colin powell went over at the u.n. it was proven to be, not only 10 years old, but also a thesis written by a california university student copied nearly word for word. it was discredited wa before the first shot was fired.

it's that these things continued to be trumpeted even after debunking that makes the administration look dishonest or agenda driven or whatever. let me play devil's advocate; let's say that bush was 100% spot on and acted correctly. the question, did he tell the truth or did he lie is going to hang over this in the history books, don't you think ?

I don't believe he lied. He was apparently wrong on some of the facts, but I don't believe he lied. On the yellow cake forgery, for instance, those who dislike, even hate, George Bush are of course going to say he knew it was a forgery and used it anyway. There is no proof for that, of course, and nobody has been able to make that charge. Therefore, I pretty much dismiss accusations that are purely partisan and put them more in the category of lies than I do an honest mistake committed by any politician on either side of the aisle.

Is that because there is a difference between a lie and untruth? Does the difference, if there is one, matter if the motive behind the utterance is to further a pre-ordained mission such as the one outlined in the Downing Street Memo? Doesn't the final result matter more (Saddam is gone) than whether or not any of the utterances were factually accurate?

Joe(Just asking)Nation