rigorousintuition.ca

fruhmenschen wrote:That's how Watergate went down.
Mark felt wanted to be the new Director, eh?
see link for full story
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/03/09/ ... ory-right/

Weekend Edition March 9-11, 2012

Max Holland’s Page-Turner Explaining Deep Throat’s Motives
Getting Watergate History Right
by JOHN DEAN

As we approach the 40th anniversary of Watergate a number of books are being published to mark the occasion. Several of my friends report that they are reading Thomas Mallon’s novel, Watergate and they have asked me if Pat Nixon really did have an affair. To my knowledge, she didn’t, and it certainly was not possible that an affair could have occurred as Mallon describes it happening in the novel. A reporter also called me with a question about Don Folsom’s recently released Nixon’s Darkest Secrets: The Inside Story of America’s Most Troubled President, which, based on the questions the reporter posed to me, sounds more like fiction than Mallon’s work does, although I’ve not read it.

Strikingly, and ironically, as more information has become available about Watergate, more writers are getting this history wrong. I suspect this is happening because the record is so massive that it has become overwhelming for most. For this reason, it is nice to discover a writer who not only get the facts right, but actually sheds light upon this dark history as never before. That is precisely what Max Holland has done with his terrific new work, Leak: Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat. As the title indicates, this work is about why the FBI Assistant Director leaked key information about the Watergate investigation to the news media.

Because I was asked by the publisher to read Holland’s work in manuscript form, I do not consider this a review. Rather, I believe it is a pre-publication opportunity to call attention to excellent work, and to take note of how Holland tackled the massive, complex, and often confusing record. The short explanation is that he did so very carefully, which takes time.

To show how Holland effectively dealt with this difficult record, I will point out how another very able author fell short when recently writing on the same subject. Albeit, he wrote only cursorily and quite broadly about Watergate, unfortunately, he did so incorrectly...

By way of comparison, Tim Weiner, a former New York Times reporter who has won a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, and who has just published Enemies: A History of the FBI, has totally misread this history. Weiner, who appear to have only taken glimpses at some of the same terrain that Holland plows in depth, got it very wrong.

Getting It Wrong About Felt and Watergate

Tim Weiner is a terrific journalist, but he’s not a very good historian—at least regarding the material he has written with which I am personally familiar. He recently posted an except from his new book Enemies on the Huffington Post: “The FBI, Watergate And Deep Throat-What Really Happened When Nixon Fell.” While this except is a small slice of a large book, it is deeply flawed. It reveals a writer who does not really grasp the record...

John Dean's critique of Tim Weiner seems spot on. Tim Weiner and Dustin Lance Black have been on NPR's Fresh Air recently with their respective glowing words of admiration for the FBI and J Edgar Hoover.

Tim Weiner: The History Of The FBI's Secret 'Enemies' List : NPR

Dustin Lance Black: Crafting The Story Of 'J. Edgar' : NPR

http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/ ... 35#p437935