Ed Morrissey has a very interesting look at Mark Felt’s admission that he’s Deep Throat–Felt tried to sell his story to People magazine three years ago, but People refused to pay him, and his family, for the scoop. But Vanity Fair did, for their upcoming July issue:
This puts an entirely different spin on Felt’s admission and the hesitation of Woodward and Bernstein to confirm it. If Foster’s report is correct, then Mark Felt has no capacity to make that decision for himself — and it looks like his family engineered the admission for some financial gain. Given that Vanity Fair eventually broke the story, one has to wonder what they paid the Felt family for the exclusive.
It also becomes more understandable why the two Post reporters initially stated that they would wait until the source died to confirm the identity. Woodward had visited Felt several times over the past few years and must have known of Felt’s incapacity. No doubt when he heard that Felt had announced his identity as Deep Throat, he and Bernstein must have questioned the veracity of the news, as Felt sounds incapable of making that decision, and probably the two must have known that it was out of character for a man who felt as conflicted as he reportedly did over his role.
Foster’s article suggests that this revelation is nothing more than perhaps the last tawdry event in a tawdry scandal, where eventually no one was a hero and Felt’s admonition to “follow the money” applied to everyone involved.
Read the rest.
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