DEEPTHROAT2

DEEP THROAT 2

NEWSWEEK (2008) 12/22

41-48/ ISIKOFF

Just this week, Mark Felt the DEEP THROAT of ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN died.

Felt was in a position to know that President Nixon and his administration had broken into the Democratic National Headquarters. The administration wanted to get information on Senator Ted Kennedy and other related material. They also wanted to make it appear as if it was a 3^rd rate burglary.

The men sent in were not the greatest and they were caught. From that time to the resignation of President Nixon there were but a few stories after the first few weeks.

The WASHINGTON POST kept doggedly working on the case. Two reporters named Woodward and Bernstein were given the task of finding out ( if anything) about the burglary.

Before his resignation, President Nixon put up an ardent defense, but he believed that any tapes that he made of conversation in the Oval office were the property of the president. However, a number of tapes were released and even lately  more have been open to the public. Nixon was probably the most Liberal Republican President in our era and a number of his programs were put into action that was clearly progressive. However before he was elected, he was the hit man for President Eisenhower and smeared Helen Douglas for a senate seat. He called her the PINK LADY. He insinuated that Douglas and other Liberals were essentially only a step away from Communism. It worked for years. So Nixon had many enemies before he came into office.

Mark Felt who died recently was DEEP THROAT and this was revealed when he was still alive in 2005. He would meet in a parking lot where he would give suggestions to Woodward about where to look next. He did not tell him directly, so that he could claim deniability. For years, there were various guesses about who was DEEP THROAT. Most were wrong.

Now we have DEEP THROAT 2 named Thomas Tamm an FBI man from the start of his life. His father and uncle were FBI and he Thomas even played under J. Edgar Hoover’s desk. There is a picture with Hoover and the Tamm family.

After Tamm joined the FBI he enjoyed a very credible career until the present President George W. Bush came into office. He noticed that  capital punishment was unusually increased on some questionable individuals, but that he was given an assignment that was clearly illegal under the constitution.

He discovered that allegedly, he was doing work on warrant less wire taps. There were at least two areas. One was personal wiretaps on individuals and the second  a creation of metadata of individual calls from a potential terrorist to family, friends, and associates. All of that activity was illegal and his superiors said they knew it. So do you follow the law of the land or the law of the current administration? Tamm’s decided to go public. He knew directly what others in his situation guessed. You may get away with it, but you probably would be upset, miserable, and broke the rest of your life. That family and friends would be watched and that what ever freedoms that should apply to all of us, does not apply to you.

In other words, doing the right thing is doing the wrong thing. It changes your life completely. It does not happen just in the USA but probably in most countries. Nor does it happen just in the public sector, it happens often in the private sector. So? You keep your mouth shut because you are happy to have a job and you socially and emotionally distance yourself from the law breaking. For some it is incredibly difficult for others it is not a problem. Tamm who is on the cover of NEWSWEEK (12/22) found it to be a problem.

Since he first went public a number of years ago, he has been miserable. He is harassed and yet indicates that this was his choice and that he is accountable.

He will face trial within the next year, however, a prominent conservative and a nemesis to President Clinton, has asked that the government show “discretion” and drop the investigation.

Incidentally, most of us including this writer, would probably look the other way. That is why Tamm is on the NEWSWEEK cover and we are not.