I find these old videos to be fascinating. This is just a
clip. You can watch the full video on Amazon. This particular episode is
interesting because you have 'former' CIA agent and founder of modern
Conservatism William Buckley interviewing Mark Felt aka 'Deep Throat' though no
one knew it at the time. This show takes place in 1976.
Felt is of course a complex and fascinating figure. Upon the
revelation that he was Deep Throat in 2005, many on the far Left were left
bewildered.
Deep Throat was something of a folk hero, a mysterious figure
who helped fuel the Watergate scandal which ultimately led to the downfall of
the great criminal and enemy... Richard Nixon.
And yet Mark Felt was viewed as the J Edgar Hoover crony who
helped to run the FBI's Counter Intelligence Program or COINTELPRO and had thus
wantonly violated the Constitution. There were many illegal aspects to
COINTELPRO. In fact the FBI was collaborating with police departments to murder
people, specifically members of the Black Panthers. But post-Watergate Felt was
in trouble for 'Black Bag' jobs, illegal burglaries conducted for intelligence
gathering.
In fact the FBI had been doing this for decades but Hoover
was gone, and post Watergate the Deep State was under attack and being (in
part) dismantled.
Mark Felt was a key figure in that Deep State and was reviled
by those on the Left.
And yet he was also... Deep Throat, the Watergate leaker to
Woodward and Bernstein.
This has led many to question his motives. Some believe it
was pure bitterness due to being passed over for the top slot at the FBI after
Hoover's death in 1972.
Others (like Woodward) believe his motives were more complex.
Felt was actually a Right-wing figure, very conservative, very patriotic who
was genuinely angry and concerned over what Nixon and his administration were
doing and specifically how they were manipulating the FBI.
There's a conundrum here, if Felt wants to appeal to the
Constitutional concerns regarding Nixon's actions he has a problem. Because FBI
conduct under Hoover and certainly during COINTELPRO was anything but constitutional.
And then to make the programme more interesting you have also
have attorney Roy Cohn sitting there, certainly another very complicated
figure. Cohn is perhaps most famous as Joseph McCarthy's assistant and protégé
and was reviled by many on the Left.
Cohn worked on the espionage trial that led to the Rosenberg
conviction and execution and was subsequently recommended by Hoover to Senator
McCarthy. Needless to say, Cohn was and is reviled by many in the United
States, and not just on the Left.
His politics were Right-wing to the extreme. Apart from the
McCarthy witch-hunts (a modern version of the Inquisition), he was a member of
such organisations as the John Birch Society.
He was reviled and known to be of dubious morality and
character and yet he was obviously intelligent, connected and retained a
certain degree of power and influence. He was 'in the loop' even during the
early days of the Reagan administration. A closeted homosexual who with
McCarthy had pursued and destroyed homosexuals he died of AIDS in 1986.
But in 1976, at the time of this video, Cohn's law office was
not only advising Republican politicians and Right-wing figures... here, he
defends COINTELPRO and all it stands for, while at the same time he was also
heavily connected to mafia figures and a young Manhattan businessman and real
estate developer named Donald Trump. Cohn was Trump's mentor, by some reports they
spoke by telephone multiple times a day.
Take away from that what you will. Others have probed the
nature of these relationships with greater detail. Connections don't always
mean collaboration and yet Trump's connections to Right-wing groups and mafia figures
are noteworthy. Roy Cohn seems to be one of the dots that connect the various
strands.
Of course Buckley had defended McCarthyism and many still do.
The Venona Documents are to many a vindication of McCarthyism though some have
pointed out that though there were indeed Soviet agents in the US, Joseph
McCarthy was a buffoonish demagogue and couldn't have found them even if they
were right in front of his face. McCarthyism was about McCarthy, not hunting
communists. In this sense there is a certain parallelism with Trump and his
presidential campaign.
The Red Scare under this understanding may have had 'some'
justification but it doesn't justify McCarthy or what he did.
The debate goes on.
Many also believe that Buckley in his capacity as a CIA agent
helped form the National Review and that in fact the CIA/Deep State was behind
much of the formation of what became the modern Republican Party. This was done
in order to protect the post-WWII status quo and to promote the new paradigm of
America as a Superpower. Buckley is the
key figure in the 'fusion' of Libertarian-Capitalism, Anti-Communism in the
form of robust militarism, and religious traditionalism in terms of social
morality.
This in essence was the creation of the modern Republican
Party. Previously these forces had not always worked together. The vision
reached its zenith with the election of Ronald Reagan who embodied this vision
in a way that Eisenhower, Nixon and Ford had failed to do.
It's on the record that the CIA worked with media
organisations in order to promote its agenda, with many reporters and media
figures being 'on the payroll'. William Buckley's name is usually one of the
first to be mentioned when one discusses Operation Mockingbird.
This question alone raises some other rather interesting
questions regarding the Graham family and the Washington Post's role in
Watergate but that's another topic.
All three of these figures are connected to the American Deep
State. One wonders how genuine this programme really was in examining the issues.
Was it just meant to be propaganda? Was 'Firing Line' a 'Mockingbird' project
all along?
It's probably not micromanaged to that level. Buckley also
would host other guests outside his circle and thus give them a voice. In many
cases I think his goal was to subvert them but it didn't always work that way.
There were the famous exchanges with Gore Vidal and Noam Chomsky but interestingly
Buckley also would allow figures like Al Lowenstein on the show to discuss
whether or not Robert Kennedy was actually murdered by Sirhan Sirhan. For
conspiracists, such a Buckley endorsed episode seems counterintuitive.
One wonders if the CIA doesn't do all it can to generate fog.
Of course Lowenstein was later murdered in a somewhat bizarre
fashion. That too is another story.
This clip of Ted Kennedy at his funeral with Buckley in the
background is also an interesting little nugget from the past.
Speaking of Robert Kennedy, his ghost sort of hangs over the
room when one looks at this interview between Buckley, Felt and Cohn.
Robert Kennedy was also a complicated figure and many have
forgotten that the Kennedys were very close with Joseph McCarthy and in fact RFK
almost had Roy Cohn's job. For many that's hard to fathom.
But people also forget that during the 1960 campaign JFK ran
to the Right of Nixon and attacked the Eisenhower administration for being soft
on Communism and allowing the 'missile gap' to develop, which in fact was not
true. The U2 flights had already confirmed that.
Both John and Robert Kennedy seemed to have undergone
transformations during the time in Washington. John's was after the Cuban
Missile Crisis and Robert's was in the wake of that event and the assassination
of his brother. While to many Robert is a liberal icon, his past and his views
are somewhat cloudy and conflicted. A great 'what if' is to consider where the
brothers would have gone had they lived.
Robert Kennedy initially gave the go-ahead for some of the
programmes that became COINTELPRO and approved the wiretapping of Martin Luther
King. The motives for this are a source of controversy. Did Robert Kennedy
allow the wiretapping because the administration was irritated by King's social
agitation? It was hurting the administration on the foreign policy and
narrative fronts. The Soviets could and did exploit US racism in the Third
World. Or, did Hoover essentially blackmail Robert Kennedy because John was
carrying on an affair with a woman accused of being a Stasi agent? This ties in
with the Bobby Baker scandal and Hoover's blackmailing of senators in order to
suppress the connection which would expose JFK. It's complicated but
fascinating.
The same sort of complicated questions come up with regard to
JFK's rather mysterious and dubious autopsy. On the one hand there was a great
deal of manipulation by authorities and doctors, on the other hand it would
seem RFK did intervene in order to hide the various and scandalous health
issues regarding his brother that they had so long attempted to keep hidden
from the public. The webs and motives are complicated.
But Felt wouldn't have been in trouble over COINTELPRO if
Kennedy had not allowed Hoover to get the ball rolling as it were. Much of the
controversy dates back to Hoover's paranoia and racial agitation regarding the
Civil Rights movement. Hoover, Cohn and McCarthy all went after homosexuals in
government during their tenure and while Cohn definitely was one himself, not a
few believe the same about Hoover (with Clyde Tolson) and possibly even
McCarthy himself, despite the fact that he eventually married.
Felt would go on to be convicted of his illegal activities
associated with COINTELPRO. Ironically Nixon testified on his behalf and
contributed to his defense. If only he had known what Felt had done to him. Roy
Cohn would also vigorously speak out in defense of Felt and under the urging of
Ed Meese, Ronald Reagan ultimately pardoned him.
I recommend Bob Woodward's book 'The Secret Man' if you're
interested in Felt's story and Woodward's relationship with him.
Robert Kennedy and Roy Cohn loathed one another, almost
coming to blows at one point. Although Kennedy would clandestinely attend
McCarthy's funeral in 1957, he remained out of sight of Cohn, VP Nixon and J
Edgar Hoover. In a famous incident at a NYC restaurant, RFK moved tables so as
not to be near Cohn. The Justice Department under RFK pursued Cohn who was
involved in numerous shady real estate, stock and banking deals.
When one considers the relationships of the Deep State
between the CIA, portions of the FBI, the mafia, Wall Street and international
banking etc... one looks to Roy Cohn and wonders just what exactly was his
role?
It seems evident that figures like Cohn lead complicated
lives with many relationships and overlapping obligations. Legality gets pretty
blurry and personal projects and quests for enrichment sometimes gets them into
trouble. They fear the FBI and the IRS... sometimes they can evade them,
sometimes they can't. Everyone betrays everyone and there are many who flip
sides and agendas and can quickly change with news events and shifts of the
political winds.
It's a game, a dance and yet those who master it can in the
end wield more power than elected officials. Cohn stated as much.
Who is a player and who is a puppetmaster? I would say the
figures of Felt, Cohn and Buckley are all players, not masters. They had people
they answered to. They worked as agents for more powerful interests and yet
wielded considerable power within their own orbits. Felt went down in flames. Cohn's power
imploded in the mid-1980s shortly before his death. Buckley survived and died
in 2008 a bit disillusioned. He was part of the Establishment wing of the
Republican Party, affiliated with men like GHW Bush and James Baker. He was not
keen on the methods of the Neoconservative wing and the direction they took the
party.
These men represent a generation that is now gone. They lived
in fascinating times and yet the world and the way in which power functions within
it, has changed. Apart from Cohn I don't know if they would have made it in
today's world.
Felt were he alive would probably be the most bitter. The
post-Watergate grief he suffered would be more or less unthinkable today. An
ally and admirer of J Edgar Hoover, the world of the Patriot Act and NSA spying
would have been something he approved of and it is an environment in which he
would have flourished.
For more reading on Cohn and his fascinating life:
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