THE 'THROAT' MYSTERY DEEPENS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91B00134R000400130047-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 4, 2009
• Sequence Number: 47
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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STAT
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"There's no way we're
going to find the $20,000 it
would take to repair it,
said Edith Potter, chairman
of the board of selectmen.
"So I'm quite serious. If
someone was crazy enough
to buy the London Bridge,
why not this one? I don't
see why we don't auction
it off to the highest bidder
and use the money to build
a dike."
The matter will come be-
fore a town meeting later
this month.
LOCAL AUTHORITIES ON
Martha's Vineyard. are mull-
ing a new way to make
money: selling the notori-
. ous Dike Bridge on Chap-
paquiddick Island.
The bridge, scene of Sen-
ator Edward Kennedy's
1969 auto accident, which
took the life of Mary Jo
Kopechne, was closed to
auto traffic because of rot-
ting support pilings last
month, and officials in nearby
Edgartown say they can't
afford to make repairs.
Media Notes From All Over
Henry: Defecting.
WILLIAM HENRY TRIED TO
imagine how much fun it
must be to work at the
Daily News and found out
it wasn't all he'd hoped.
Henry, the Pulitzer Prize-
winning television critic
hired away from the Bos-
ton Globe by the News's
"Tonight" edition last year,
is defecting later this month
to write for the "Nation"
section of Time magazine.
"I don't want to air a great
deal of dirty linen," Henry
U
Jin
TELLIGENCER
Wanna Buy a Bridge? The ~T~broa~t M~yst~ery Deep ns
said last week, "but I left
Boston, where I had as
much freedom as I wanted,
where the Pulitzer commit-
tee judged me foremost
among my peers, to come
here, and they pulled a bait
and switch on me. As soon
as I started working here,
I ceased to be a columnist
and became a glorified fea-
ture writer, and that wasn't
my understanding.". . . In
the tempest over Mike Wal-
lace's efforts to derail a
planned 60 Minutes report
on Haiti, stories haven't in-
dicated the full extent of
Wallace's interests in . that
country. It's been reported
that Wallace's wife has
cousins who live there and
that she is a part owner of
a small arts-and-crafts store
in the country. But there's
more: Mrs. Wallace also
owns a house in Haiti,
which she bought in 1951,
before she married Mike.
CBS news executives have
decided to go ahead with
the report.
IN AN OUTPOURING OF JOUR-
nalistic sleuthing about
journalistic sleuthing, at
least three books are in the
works by authors who
think they've got a lead on
the identity of that elusive
Watergate informant, Deep
Throat. -
But don't expect the mys-
tery to be settled for all
time: These latest theorists
don't entirely agree with
one another.
Wilmington News-Jour-
nal reporter Joe Trento is
preparing a manuscript that
contends the famous snitch
was a composite of sources
for Bob Woodward and
Carl Bernstein, the Wash-
ington Post team that
.helped crack Watergate.
"Some people are claim-
ing that John Paisley was
Deep Throat," confided
Trento, referring to the CIA
agent whose body was
found floating in Chesa-
peake Bay in 1978 and who
will be the focus of his
book.
"It's clear that Bernstein
and Paisley were at the.
same private parties during
the Watergate period. But
I'm inclined to believe
there's no single Deep
Throat."
Trento's theory coincides
to some extent with an
account being prepared by
two ex-CIA staffers, who
will write that the Post's
scoops "evolved out of - a
wife-swapping ring of CIA
officials and prominent
Washington journalists," ac-
cording to a report by Jeff
Stein in next month's issue
of The Progressive. They
claimed to Stein that they
can show the agency ma-
nipulated the Post through
Deep Throat in order to de-
throne Richard Nixon and
his private band of spooks,
the plumbers.
The third book is being
prepared by Random House
writer Jim lHougan, who
says he is surprised at the
CIA-sex theory. "My book
will name as Deep Throat
someone who most people
have never heard of," he
said.
Woodward wouldn't com-
ment, and Bernstein was on
vacation. However, another
Watergate theorist de-
nounced the wife-swapping
talk as "a basement ru-
mor." One former Deep
Throat suspect, David Ger-
gen, an ex-Nixon speech.
writer now with President
Reagan, said, "When they
get through naming all the
candidates for Deep Throat,
we'll have ? an annual re-
union in Yankee Stadium."
That New D'Amato Intern
D'Amato, Sinatra in Daily News photo: Famous grandpa.
SENATOR AL D'AMATO'S NEW
Capitol Hill intern, as re-
ported last week, is named
Frank Sinatra and, no, he
can't sing. But the 22-year-
old student does have a
famous relative. His grand-
father is reputed Mafia boss
Carlo Gambino.
D'Amato's press secre-
tary, Ed Martin, 'said, "We
found this out after we'd
hired him. When we asked
him about it, he wanted to
know if it would affect his
internship and said he
didn't want it held against
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he chill wind blowing in Wash-
ington did not begin with
Ronald Reagan's inaugura-
. tion. There was an early blast about
two years ago, when right-wing
scholars and journalists, affiliated for
the most part with the Georgetown
Center for Strategic and International
Studies, began peddling the notion that
the Government was infested with
"moles"-American officials recruited
long ago by Soviet intelligence.
The talk of `.`moles" in the Govern-
ment has simmered down since
.Reagan entered the White House, but
there is reason for concern about a pos-
sible recrudescence of McCarthyism.
Reagan transition, officials said they
would take "a close look" at recom-
mendations by the right-wing Heritage
Foundation to investigate "subver-
sives," and the Senate reestablished an
Internal Security and Terrorism Sub
committee.
"Terrorism" is the key word, of
course: It has replaced "communism"
as the all-purpose menace which pro-
vides the rationale for political repres-
sion. A recent piece by syndicated col-
umnists Rowland Evans and Robert
Novak illustrated the new shape being
given to the old theme of red-baiting.
A look at it also allows us to feel what
it's like to be on the short end of a
witchhunt.
Stephen R. Weissman spent the first
weekend of February worrying. He is a
quiet, carefully articulate political
scientist, thirty-nine years old, with a
Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
Jeffrey Stein is The Progressive's con-
tributing editor in 'Washington.
12 / APRIL 1981'
For two years he worked under Demo-
cratic Representative Stephen Solarz
on the House Foreign Affairs Commit-
tee, specializing in U.S. policy toward
Africa.
During
years, the' Commit-
tee had backed the Carter Ad-
ministration's sanctions against
Rhodesia until a peaceful transition to
majority rule was, accomplished, had
developed legislation prohibiting the
CIA from engaging in another secret
war in Angola, and had generally
looked for ways to carry out a humane
and progressive foreign policy
divorced from past entanglements with
the white supremacists in South Africa.
Late in January, Stephen Weissman
received a call from columnist Evans,
who inquired about two matters: First.
an article by Weissman, "The CIA and
U.S. Policy in Zaire and Angola," that
had been reprinted in a book called
Dirty Work (ll), issued by an anti-CIA
group in Washington affiliated with
former CIA agent and critic Phillip
Agee; second, some remarks critical of
Zaire that Weissman had made at an
academic conference in Philadelphia.
Evans seemed polite, and Weiss-
man explained. First, he said, his arti-
cle had originally been written ex-
pressly for, and printed in, a book of
scholarly articles on Southern Africa.
It had later keen. reprinted in the
august Political Science Quarterly. 1-le
had given the editors of Dirty Work (11)
permission to reprint the piece, as had
other authors from the Defense De-
partment and The New York Tunes.
Weissman also explained that he had
complained to the editors of Dirty
Work (II) when lie found out too late
that their book would include an ap-
pendix listing the names of hundreds of
CIA agents.
As to his remarks at the Philadel-
phia conference, Weissman told
MikeKonopaeki' Evans, he had clearly-spoken for him-
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self on the panel, and his characteriza-
tion of Zaire as "a basket case" came in
the context of a lengthy and scholarly
exchange on that country's financial
situation. (In any event, as Evans
would surely know, Weissman's assess-
ment of Zaire would be shared by the
International Monetary Fund.)
During their telephone conversa-
tion, Weissman began to suspect that
Evans didn't really care, about his ex-
planations..When Weissman said a
tape recording was available of. the
Philadelphia meeting, Evans darkly let
it be.known that he had been briefed by
pril briefing
Pillow talk. Is it possible that The Washington Post's early and consis-
tent scoops on Watergate evolved from a wife-swapping ring of CIA'
? officials and prominent Washington journalists? Such is the contention of
two former CIA officials, one of whom.told me, in exchange for anonymity,
that the sex club provided fertile ground for CIA leaks on the story. A'hook
now in preparation, the source says, will show that the CIA deliberately fed
the journalists information damaging to Richard, M.. Nixon through the
ever-mysterious Deep Throat.
.Stay tuned.. .Radio stations across the country were treated to a toll-
free number they could dial to get recorded updates of inaugural events,
courtesy of the Reagan committee coordinating the festivities. In soliciting
their use of the service, the committee invited the stations to write if they
found it useful. In exchange, the. committee cheerily noted, it complimen-
tary letter would be put in the station's license renewal file at the Federal
,Communications Commission.
just like old times. . .The chief executive of Westchester County. New
York, apparently grappling with nuclear accident plans, recently discov-
ered an electronic bug in his office, perpetrators unknown. The Washington
Post reports, meanwhile, that an employe of the Department of Energy was
transferred to a lesser job when she balked at a suggestion by DOE.special
assistant Armand (Rock) Reyser that she monitor incognito it meeting of en-
vironmentalists.
Blind justice. Civil liberties defenders are alarmed at the growing
prospect that former Maryland Representative and current Prince George's
County chief executive Larry Hogan will he named head of the Justice
Department's civil rights division. I-logan's police force, said to be
infiltrated by members of the Ku Klux Klan, is popularly considered to be
the area's most brutal and racist.
Chile dogs. . ..Behind the successful push for the new Senate Subcom-
mittee on Internal Security and Terrorism has been the Washington-hased
"Committee to Restore Internal Security," it group of mostly cx-military
and intelligence officers. Its executive director. L. Francis Bouchey, regis-
tered as a lobbyist for the Chilean military junta in 1976, but according to it
Justice Department suit two years later, was part of a secret effort by
General Augusto Pinochet to funnel pro-Chile prop;lganda through an unre-
gistered front group. FBI sources told rile. meanwhile, that the Bureau will
work with the new subcommittee to develop "anti-terrorist legislation.".
Money bags. . .Wyoming Senator Malcolm Wallop is seeking to change
the 1977 Ethics Law,,adopted in part to.limit campaign donations to Con-
gressional office slush funds. Wallop, insiders say. wants to amend the law
so that colons can take as much as they can get. as long as they declare it.
Meanwhile, millions of dollars in "campaign contributions' hiive flowed
into Capitol Hill Republican coffers since the election, according to Com-
mon Cause, which will soon issue it book on corporate donations. '\lt's like -
betting on a horse after the race," says one expert there. .
which printed the Evans and Novak .. Representative Solarz, ca ;led the
column to print a correction; he isn't.' Evans and Novak column "a parody of
optimistic, but he's trying. As he said, McCarthyism." Was it a parody? it
a reputation is all you've got. -looked like the real thing.
his own source. When Weissman sug-
gested Evans check with an editor to
verify his story about his article on
Zaire and Angola, Evans took the
name, but never called. Over. the.
weekend, Weissman and his wife,
Nancy, fretted. Already nervous about
the reconstituted Committee's makeup
in the new Congress, Weissman won-
dered about going back .to teaching.
Jobs were tight, and as he later ex-
plained, "a reputation is the only thing
you have."
On February 2, The Washington
Post and some 350 other newspapers
across the country printed the Evans
and Novak column, "Still Going After
the CIA." It tarred Weissman with the
Dirty Work (II) connection, called him
a "symbol" of the anti-CIA "past," and
charged he had "used his subcommit-
tee position" at the academic con-
ference to "attack Zaire." To Zaire,
Evans grumbled, Weissman appeared
to be "a U.S. Government official" try-
ing "to destabilize their country."
With a vote scheduled to decide the
subcommittee leadership the following
day, Evans was apparently trying to de-
rail the candidacy for chairmanship of
Howard Wolpe, a pro-human rights
Michigan Democrat, who was backed
by Representative Solarz. By tainting
Wolpe through Weissman's employ-
ment on Solarz's staff, Evans obviously
hoped to make them all into security-
risk "untouchables."
Fortunately, it didn't work, and
Wolpe was elected. The Committee's
work will go on, and Evans and Novak
will go about their business of promot-
ing political paranoia. ,
Only Stephen Weissman will re-
main touched by the incident. He has
been trying to get all 350 newspapers
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