2 August 2005

Great White Whales

--by Mike Murray

Stephen Stills might well have had America's left-leaners in mind when he penned the words to Buffalo Springfield's 60's hit, For What It's Worth. Many among them just keep "...Singing songs and carrying signs / Mostly say hurray for our side..."

Ever since their signature political success -- achieved via the sometimes-maligned, sometimes-praised vehicle of "leaks" -- liberals in the press have been in constant search of another "monstrously big" whale to harpoon. They just keep hoping for another Richard Nixon to arrive on the political scene; they just keep hoping for another Moby Dick to swim into range.

Back in the glory days of Watergate, intrepid Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward communicated surreptitiously with secret-leaker "Deep Throat" in pursuit of a story of political skull duggery. We are told that the now-revealed source (Mark Felt) violated his oath of office, sundry FBI procedures, and maybe a few federal statutes because of his concern about Nixon's presumed "obstruction of justice."

That is to say, he wanted to stop unlawfulness by becoming, himself, unlawful.

We are also told that he wanted to thwart the imagined harm that would come to the country as a result of Nixon's having appointed a "political hack" to head the FBI rather than, say, hiring from within the agency. The public is now expected to swallow the notion that Nixon was unique in having appointed someone with whom he felt comfortable.

Please. No less than the beloved John F. Kennedy appointed his own brother, for crying out loud, to be U.S. Attorney General. (The practice has since been forbidden by law, which is all that kept Bill Clinton from appointing wife Hillary to a cabinet-level post within his own administration. Hillary was instead awarded the unofficial -- and ineffectual -- position as head of a group charged with achieving health-care reform.). JFK not only engaged in nepotism and cronyism of the most extreme kind; he tried to control the activities of the FBI by making its top officials subordinate to a Justice Department headed by his own sibling. Remember?

The television show that gave the public a look at the FBI through rose-colored glasses is a distant memory. J. Edgar Hoover is now largely discredited. These days most of us realize that old J. Edgar ran the investigative agency less in the idealized manner portrayed by the show that starred Efrem Zimbalist Jr., and more in the way Al Capone might have.

And guess who just happened to be high up on Hoover's staff? Guess the identity of the "career professional" of the type many in the mainstream media would now have us believe would have been a better choice to succeed J. Edgar than a political ally of Nixon?

Why, none other than Mr. Cloak-and-Dagger himself: Mr. Rule Breaker, Mr. Deep Throat -- the Hoover-trained flak who was likely schooled in the ways of accumulating dirt, of maintaining files on politicians and other public figures for the direct purpose of wielding power, of exercising influence.

If that seems an extreme statement, consider the history of J. Edgar Hoover. Read the many documentations of his smarmy methods. Then ponder the reasonableness of elevating a senior member of his administration to the top post at the FBI. By comparison, Nixon's "cronyism" (which, again, was characterized differently by the press when practiced by Kennedy) seems something less than egregious.

No one can know for certain that Mark Felt would have acted as Hoover did. But Felt revealed much via his Deep Throat personification. His leaking of information harmful to a political foe was right out of the Hoover playbook. Felt was trusted by Hoover; he was promoted to a high level within the bureau by the dishonorable director. And Felt just might have broken several federal laws. At a minimum, he engaged in (by his own admission) serious ethical breaches of conduct.

Nevertheless, many in the media gushed over him and hailed him as an "American hero" when he revealed his identity as Deep Throat. Revealed it for the purpose of financial gain. (Felt's own family members openly stated that the motive for disclosure was to pursue a lucrative book deal.)

Much was also revealed by the mainstream media's behavior during the Watergate affair, and by its handling of subsequent presidential scandals. Management decisions at the Washington Post seem especially questionable.

When Bob Woodward and, eventually, Carl Berstein worked on the Watergate story for the Post, the paper's leadership evidenced a willingness to go way out on limbs in pursuit of sensational copy. If only that daring persisted. If only that sense of duty had continued, regardless of which political party controlled the White House.

The sad truth is this: While the late, venerable publisher of the Washington Post -- Katharine Graham -- was willing to risk harm to her very body parts to keep the public informed during the Nixon fiasco, boobs had nothing to fear from wringers during Democrat scandals. Quite the contrary.

Consider the handling of Bill Clinton's mess. Michael Isikoff of Newsweek (a Washington Post subsidiary) worked on a bombshell Clinton scandal for roughly eleven months -- that's nearly a year, folks -- without having gone to print a single time. It took a tip to the Internet's Matt Drudge (later nicknamed "Sludge," all leakers and beneficiaries of leaks not being equal, you see) to bring the story to light.

Once the tale of Monica Lewinsky was out, however, the Post fell all over itself in its rush to publish its version. It did not even do Newsweek the courtesy of letting Isikoff run it there first -- the story instead appeared in the parent publication (under Isikoff's byline) only a few short days after it showed up at Drudge's web site. (Isikoff's Newsweek report ran a few days later.)

One wonders how long the Washington Post would have sat on the story if it hadn't leaked out. (Those pesky, pesky -- sometimes, anyway -- leaks!) The Post's executives' position was that they didn't want to rush the story, that they wanted to get all of the facts straight before going to print. Sure. That was the standard (due diligence, no matter how many months -- or years -- it takes!) that they adhered to when covering Watergate, right?

It matters little that Clinton's transgressions in the early stages of "Monicagate" were relatively minor. It makes no difference that his serious violations (accusations of perjury and suborning perjury) grew out of later attempts at cover-up.

Watergate unfolded in much the same way; Nixon's impeachable acts resulted from a similar attempt at keeping a lid on a scandal, not from the original act itself. That fact, however, didn't stop the Washington Post from aggressively pursuing the Watergate story from the get-go.

And now, in a desperate attempt to hang a second-term embarrassment on a Republican president, many Democrats -- aided and abetted by left-leaners in the media -- seek to conjure up a monster. A monster that embodies all the awfulness that lefties ascribe to a "vast, right-wing conspiracy." A monster lurking under beds that will scare voters into switching parties in the mid-term election in 2006 and the next presidential election in 2008.

Which brings us to Karl Rove, a senior Bush administration official who, we are told, "leaked" (leak is bad here ..."good" leaks hurt Republicans; "bad" ones harm Democrats, got it?) information to reporters that outed a super-secret-agent woman. A Jane Bond, if you will. License to kill, and all that.

Once again, the Post and like-minded media outlets had something to sink their teeth into: "What did Karl Rove tell, and when did he tell it?"

Great stuff, that. Democrats in Congress gleefully (sorry, is that camera rolling?) somberly intoned that, "This is worse than Watergate." Phrases like "obstruction of justice" and "abuse of power" fairly flew out of their mouths, and off the keyboards of ravenous, left-wing reporters. Liberals have trumpeted charges of Republican misconduct so often over the past three decades that they have lost nearly all credibility. Mimicking the boy who cried wolf more than a few times too many, Democrats have rendered their dire warnings impotent.

And those juvenile ankle-nippers in the White House press corps. Junior-high delinquents have nothing on them when it comes to undisciplined behavior. If they were your kids, you'd be issuing time-outs and groundings at warp speed. The most respected in the group make their bones by behaving the worst. Giggles erupt in the room when one issues a particularly smart-mouthed accusation that masquerades as a question. (For a few yuks of your own, tune in to C-SPAN some day to witness a full, unedited session.)

Never mind that Karl Rove was merely answering reporters' questions (secondary questions, on "background," and "off the record") as a courtesy -- in order to prevent misleading stories from running. (Joe Wilson was not on assignment at the behest of Vice President Dick Cheney, for example, as Wilson publicly proclaimed. Just one of the numerous fibs that have emanated from the media's latest poster boy.)

Never mind that Rove was doing the reporters he spoke with a favor by cluing them in to false information that could have wound up as egg on their own faces. Never mind that the reporters pursued him. (This was not Mark Felt wearing a trench coat in a darkened parking garage whispering, "Pssst. Hey buddy, wanna know a secret?")

None of that matters. A media with a malicious motive and a taste for blood is not easily deterred. Many within the mainstream of that once hallowed fraternity detect an opportunity -- yet again -- to attempt to bathe themselves in glory and to influence political events.

Smelling land where "there be no land," the Ahabs among them bellow, "Thar she blows!"

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