Washington Decoded

Cites & Mentions

 

“Dreamland Fantasies” (11 July 2011)

•     The review of Annie Jacobsen ’s Area 51 was cited by Jon Weiner in his list of the Worst Political Books of 2011.

 

The Lost Bullet (20 November 2011)

• Premiere of the NatGeoTV documentary on the shooting sequence in Dealey Plaza, and the theory that the assassination commenced before Zapruder restarted his camera.

 

“Kennedy’s Death Revisited, Old Frame by Old Frame” (18 November 2011)

• The New York Times published a review of The Lost Bullet, the NatGeoTV documentary about the “11 Seconds in Dallas” theory first published in Washington Decoded. 

 

“Post-Assassination Air Force One Recording Is Discovered” (16 November 2011)

• The Associated Press quoted Washington Decoded’s editor about the newly-discovered recordings.
  

 

“A Most Unlikely Agent: Robert S. Allen” (11 September 2010)

• Samuel Nicholson’s article on Allen’s activities as a Soviet agent in the 1930s was printed in the Fall/Winter 2010 issue of The Intelligencer, a journal published by the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.

“The Historian as Hustler” (11 March 2010)

• The article was ranked #2 in HNN’s “Roundup Top 10” for the week of March 15.

 

“Drugs, Corruption, and Justice in Vietnam and Afghanistan” (11 November 2009)

• This article was featured on HNN during the week of November 16.

• A translation appeared in KBC Hai Ngoai, the semi-official magazine of South Vietnamese Army veterans living in exile in the United States and other countries.

 

“Richard Nixon’s Own Deep Throat” (3 November 2009)

• The Washingtonian magazine published an excerpt from this article in its November 2009 issue.

• The article was ranked #1 in HNN’s “Roundup Top 10” for the week of November 2.

• The New Nixon blog highlighted the article on November 6.

• John Batchelor interviewed the author on his nationally-syndicated radio show on the evening of November 14.

 

CIA Is Still Cagey About Oswald Mystery (17 October 2009)

• An article in The New York Times about CIA documents alleged to pertain to the JFK assassination quoted the editor of Washingon Decoded.

“The Death of Conservatism-and Other Vital Center Illusions” (11 July 2009)

• This book review was featured on HNN during the week of November 9.

“Birthers, Truthers, and Buffs: The Paranoid Style” (11 August 2009)

• Jefferson Flanders’s article was featured in HNN’s “Roundup Top 10” for the week of August 10.

• A September 23 article in Slate by “ History Lesson ” columnist David Greenberg featured a link to Flanders’s essay.

 

“Why Did I. F. Stone Sidestep the Hiss Case?” (11 July 2009)

• This excerpt from a longer essay about I. F. Stone, published in the Summer 2009 issue of the Journal of Cold War Studies, was featured on HNN during the week of 6 July, and at the CI Centre news website.

• The longer essay about I. F. Stone, published in the Summer 2009 issue of the Journal of Cold War Studies, was mentioned during an exchange about Stone in the 17 December 2009 issue of the The New York Review of Books.

 

“In Denial: Round 11” (11 June 2009)

• The article by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr was posted in full on the Front Page magazine website, and excerpts appeared in Commentary and on HNN.

“Concocting the Dots” (11 January 2009)

• Brian Latell’s review of Brothers in Arms by Gus Russo and Stephen Molton was featured in the CI Centre’s Book News & Reviews on January 12.

 

“The Politics of Association: Ayers v. Kravis  ” (11 October 2008)

• The article was featured on Robert Greenwald’s Brave New Films website.

“The Secret That Wasn’t    ” (11 September 2008)

• The article was written up in Slate magazine by “Chatterbox” columnist Tim Noah. See “Deep Throat Unmasked, Circa 1973?”

• Robert Nedelkoff, in The New Nixon, wrote a commentary on the article entitled “Deep Throat and the Third Man.”

• HNN featured the essay for the week beginning September 29.

 

Gerald Ford’s FBI Files Released (11 August 2008)

• Washingon Decoded’s editor was interviewed on CNN’s “The Situation Room” about documents from the FBI’s files on former  President Gerald Ford, who was the last surviving member of the Warren Commission.

Editor Profiled in Washington Post (24 July 2008)

• The editor’s work on the Warren Commission was the subject of this article in the  “Style” section of The Washington Post.

“Indoctrination U” (11 June 2008)

• Don Bohning’s expose of the Spartacus website was printed in the Fall 2009 issue of The Intelligencer, a journal published by the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.

“Still Guilty After All These Years” (11 May 2008)

• Mel Ayton’s essay on the 40th anniversary of RFK’s assassination was featured in the CI Centre’s History News section on May 14.

• HNN linked to the article on May 15 in its “ Talking About History” section.

New LBJ Tapes Released (2 May 2008)

• Washingon Decoded’s editor was interviewed on CNN’s “The Situation Room,” hosted by Wolf Blitzer, about a new tranche of Johnson tape recordings from January-April 1968.

“Harvard Does Dallas ” (11 April 2008)

• HNN featured the essay for the week beginning April 21, in an article entitled, “Anatomy of a JFK Conspiracy Book by a Reputable Academic.”

“Road to Nowhere ” (11 March 2008)

• John McAdams’s review of The Road to Dallas by David Kaiser was featured in the CI Centre’s Book News & Reviews on March 12.

• HNN linked to the review on March 20, in an article entitled, “ Debunking JFK Conspiracy Claims Made by David Kaiser.”

• The Intelligencer, the journal of the Association for Intelligence Officers, reprinted McAdams's review in its Spring 2008 issue.

 

New JFK Document Trove (19 February 2008)

• The front-page article in The New York Times about the new documents and artifacts discovered in Dallas quoted the editor of Washingon Decoded.    

• Washingon Decoded’s editor participated in a February 21 discussion of the  JFK assassination on The Diane Rehm Show, a nationally-syndicated radio program.

“Civics Lesson” (11 February 2008)

• HNN featured this article in its “Historians in the News” section on February 14.

“Commission Confidential” (30 January 2008)

• Brian Ross’s investigative team at ABC News ran a story on this EXTRA the same day it was posted.

•  The Washington Independent, a new online news site, also featured this item on January 30.

• TPMMuckraker labeled the EXTRA “Today's Must Read” on January 31.

“Doubt and Disbelief in the Warren Report” (11 January 2008)

• HNN featured this article in its “Talking about History” section on January 14.

 

“McCarthy, According to Evans (and Novak)” (11 December 2007)

• History News Network featured this article in its “Historians in the News” section on December 11.

• The online magazine FrontPageMag.com republished John Haynes’s review of M. Stanton Evans’s history in its December 12 issue.            

“Credit Where Credit Is Due” (December 2007)

• History News Network featured this article in its “Talking About History” section on December 11.

“JFK’s Death Re-Framed” (22 November 2007)

• The New York Times published this article on its Op-Ed page 22 November 2007. On the same day, Instapundit, one of the most widely-read US blogs, highlighted the article.

• On November 30, the Kennedy Assassination Home Page, a widely-respected site edited by Marquette University Professor John McAdams, posted an article that supports the analysis that the Zapruder film did not capture the entire shooting sequence in Dealey Plaza. “Hidden in Plain View: The Zapruder Film and the Shot that Missed” was written by a Seattle lawyer named Kenneth Scearce.

“What Oswald Wrought” (11 November 2007)

• The Mary Ferrell Foundation featured this review in a selection of articles about the Robert  Stone documentary, Oswald’s Ghost. 

“What Did LBJ Know About the Cuban Missile Crisis?
     And When Did He Know It?” (11 October 2007)

• The CI Centre website featured this essay on 29 October 2007.

• HNN highlighted this article in its “Historians and History” section during the week of 4 November 2007.

 

“The Cuban Missile Crisis 45 Years Later” (11 October 2007)

• Sheldon Stern’s personal and professional essay of remembrance was listed on the “Roundup Top 10” articles on the History News Network (HNN) for the week of 8 October 2007.

 

 “Sins of Omission and Commission” (11 September 2007)

• Jeffrey Richelson’s review of Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA was featured in Steven Aftergood’s widely-read Secrecy News on 12 September 2007.

• On 1 October 2007, “The Corner,” a group blog on National Review Online, favorably mentioned Jeffrey Richelson’s review of Legacy of Ashes.

• Peter Earnest, executive director of the International Spy Museum in Washington, called Richelson’s take “the definitive review” of Weiner’s book, according to the 17 October 2007 CI Centre.

• Richelson’s review was reprinted in full in the Summer/Fall 2007 issue of The Intelligencer, a journal published by the Association For Intelligence Officers (AFIO).

• Jeff Stein, national security editor for Congressional  Quarterly, highlighted Richelson’s review in a 15 March 2008 column about the increasing controversy over Legacy of Ashes.

• Stephen Weissman singled out Richelson’s review for praise in a 20 March 2008 column in TPM Café about the Legacy of Ashes controversy.

“The Quiet Vietnamese” (11 August 2007)

• Merle Pribbenow’s review of Perfect Spy by Larry Berman, was featured in Weekly Intelligence Notes #32-07, which is published by the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO).

• “The Quiet Vietnamese” was also a feature review on History News Network (HNN) for the week of 3 September 2007.

• Pribbenow’s review was reprinted in full in the Summer/Fall 2007 issue of The Intelligencer, a journal published by the Association For Intelligence Officers (AFIO).

“Camelot and Cuba” (11 July 2007)

• History News Network (HNN) featured Don Bohning’s review of David Talbot’s Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years, during the week of 30 July 2007.

“A Word About Lee Harvey Oswald” (11 June 2007)

• Priscilla J. McMillan’s article was reprinted in the Fall 2007 issue of World Policy Journal as “JFK & Oswald: The Inconvenient Truth.”

“Deep Throat 3.0” (11 May 2007)

• Alicia C. Shepard, author of Woodward and Bernstein: Life in the Shadow of Watergate, called “Deep Throat 3.0” a “very detailed” article, “filled with the kind of minute details that only a Watergate geek like me could digest” during a 19 June 2007 online discussion at washingtonpost.com.

• Michael Miner, media critic for the Chicago Reader, called this essay “a closely observed analysis of one of the most mythologized chapters in the history of American journalism” in his 6 July 2007 column.

“The New McCarthyism” (11 April 2007)   

• John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr’s article was praised in Sam Tanenhaus’s new essay on the Hiss-Chambers case, “From Whittaker Chambers to George W. Bush: The End of the Journey,” which appeared in the 2 July 2007 issue of The New Republic.

• On 16 July 2007, Ronald Radosh took note of “The New McCarthyism” in “Alger Hiss: Once Again,” posted on a New Republic group blog, “Open University.”

• Ron Rosenbaum, who writes about culture for Slate, cited the critique Haynes and Klehr presented in Washington Decoded. Rosenbaum’s article, “Alger Hiss Rides Again,” was also posted on July 16.

• In “Still Seeing Red,” a 16 September 2007 op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, Richard Schickel, a TIME magazine film critic, seconded the argument first raised in “The New McCarthyism.” Schickel criticized those who would exonerate Alger Hiss by falsely accusing Wilder Foote, calling the effort “reverse McCarthyism.”

“11 Seconds in Dallas, Not Six” (11 March 2007)

• Prompted a special report on Channel 11 in Dallas/Ft. Worth, the local CBS affiliate. The segment was broadcast during the 10 P.M. news hour on 12 March 2007, and repeated throughout the next day.

The Secret That Wasn’t: Deep Throat Exposed in 1973

Editor’s Note: This week marked publication of a new book by Bob Woodward. The War Within is the fourth installment of his quartet on the Bush administration. And, as has been the case since 1974, when All the President’s Men was published, Woodward’s latest book contains headline-making revelations.

Washington Decoded first examined the Watergate roots of the phenomenon that is Woodward in a May 2007 piece entitled “Deep Throat 3.0.” The article below draws from newly-found evidence.

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By Max Holland

    Of all the legends about Watergate, perhaps the most enduring is that Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein religiously protected the identity of W. Mark Felt, aka “Deep Throat.” In fact, they did more to expose their fabled secret source than has ever been appreciated.

    One big fat clue escaped all notice during the many years of guessing. It appeared in The Washington Post on June 17, 1973, a year to the day after the break-in and 10 months before Woodward and Bernstein’s 1974 best-seller, All the President’s Men, introduced the American public to Deep Throat. If this clue in plain sight had been remembered, it’s unlikely that “Who Was Deep Throat?” would have ever surpassed “Whatever Happened to Judge Crater?” as the national guessing game. It all but pointed the finger at W. Mark Felt because it indicated where Deep Throat worked in the federal government: the FBI.

•                            •                                •                                •                                 •

    In the late spring of 1973, just as Watergate was bursting open, a distinguished Washington Post reporter named Laurence Stern got it into his head to write what turned out to be a most insightful article about the all-consuming scandal. Stern’s idea was simple: to juxtapose the first year of Watergate with what had been one of the most traumatic years ever at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

    Such a thoughtful approach was second nature for Stern, who had been “winning awards and cutting a wide swath in both American and international journalism” since joining The Washington Post in 1952. He had started off just as Bob Woodward had—on the metropolitan staff—and for nine years worked his way up through local, suburban, and state news beats. By the time of the Watergate break-in, Stern was the Post’s so-called “Dulles airport correspondent,” meaning he was available 24/7 to cover the latest cold war crisis anywhere in the world.[1] As the biggest home-grown star in the Post’s firmament, Stern had almost a free rein at the newspaper and moved effortlessly between national and international stories.

   During the latter half of 1972 and into 1973, as the Watergate story slowly gained hurricane force, Stern was preoccupied with other, seemingly bigger stories: the ongoing war in Vietnam and agonizing peace negotiations in Paris; the presidential election, including George McGovern’s ill-fated choice of a running mate; and the involvement of the IT&T Corporation in Chilean politics. 

    By late April, however, as Watergate began destroying the reputations of men and institutions, Stern’s involvement became inevitable. In May, he took charge of one of the story’s hottest elements: was the Central Intelligence Agency complicit in the June 1972 break-in? And had the Nixon White House attempted to circumscribe the FBI’s investigation by falsely invoking CIA equities? It already seemed as if the reputation, if not fate, of the Nixon presidency might hinge on that question.[2]

    Stern died from a heart attack in 1979, at the age of 50, so his reasoning cannot be retraced. But the idea for a story about the FBI and Watergate seems to have come out of Stern’s dozen or so articles about CIA involvement in the scandal. He interviewed several top CIA officials, including Richard Helms, the CIA director at the time of the break-in, for these stories, and it is highly likely that the one FBI article Stern wrote was inspired by something he gleaned from these conversations.

    The leaks to the media right after the break-in had been the subject of intense speculation among top CIA officials, and for good reason. Many of the disclosures kept pointing to some kind of CIA involvement, and that left the agency in the difficult position of trying to prove a negative. As Helms suggested in his 2003 memoir—published two years before Felt was unmasked as Deep Throat—CIA officials in 1972 thought that someone in the FBI was the likely culprit. Wrote Helms, “One question arose repeatedly: were the leaks coming from the FBI? In J. Edgar Hoover’s day this would not have been the case. But what about the new bureau administration? Was discipline as strong as it had been? We did not know.”[3]  

    During his career, Helms was widely regarded as an incisive analyst, a detached observer of men, institutions (including his own), and what was really going on behind newspaper headlines, out of the public’s eye or ken. And few officials were shrewder students of the FBI than Helms, owing to his first-hand exposure to the bureau’s machinations under long-time director J. Edgar Hoover. Helms considered Hoover “the most accomplished American bureaucrat of the twentieth century . . .  with a superb grasp of how things are done in Washington.” That description was not intended to be ironic.[4]

    One of Stern’s CIA articles, dated May 16, quoted Helms to make a penetrating and under-appreciated point about the bureau from an insider’s point of view. The break-in had occurred just one month after Hoover’s death in office, which had hit the FBI like the death of dictator: utterly predictable and incomprehensible at the same time. “Can you imagine the predicament of a new FBI director,” Helms said, “coming into office and having this thing break over his head?”[5] This remark suggests that the former CIA director shared with Stern his educated conjectures about what had really been going on. 

    The gist of Stern’s June 17 article on the FBI was that the Watergate scandal had “brought egg to [the FBI’s] face and demoralization to its ranks.” L. Patrick Gray III, the acting director who had the misfortune of succeeding Hoover, was only the most obvious victim of the wreckage. The bureau’s reputation and image, long the most unsullied in Washington, was in tatters. It stood accused of “leaking like a sieve, relaxing surveillance of domestic subversives, and turning its back on the rest of the intelligence community.” Bereft of Hoover, whom Stern aptly described as the “Compleat Bureaucratic Infighter,” the FBI faced more questions and uncertainty about its future than at any time since 1924, when Hoover, then 29 years old, inherited an agency steeped in scandal, political intrigue, and illegal activities.[6]

    Stern traced the stunning estrangement that had developed between the bureau and the Nixon administration. No president had seemed more likely to get along with Hoover than Nixon, who, 20 years earlier, had exposed Alger Hiss as a Soviet spy. Instead, Hoover’s advancing age, caution, and territoriality had been a continuous source of frustration for the Nixon White House, which felt itself (and the nation) under siege from violent radicals, shrill anti-war protesters, and black militants.

    This portion of Stern’s article was not exactly novel, as similar accounts had been published elsewhere. Rather, it was the rest of the article that was the real gem. It provided exactly the kind of insight that had given Stern a deserved reputation for writing about the news in a way that was unusually profound.