It seems the press isn't tired of hearing about the anonymous source used by Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward to expose the 1972 Watergate break-in and subsequent cover-up. Certainly not the Post.
Yesterday's Outlook section was inundated with a number of pieces on various aspects of the Mark Felt story. Among them was an excellent piece on the dichotomy of the status-quo that is unique to the Nation's capital:
The unmasking of former FBI official W. Mark Felt as "Deep Throat" has given the country a rare glimpse into the two separate spheres that coexist uneasily within the U.S. government...
When I refer to Talk Show World... I'm using the phrase to refer to all those prominent individuals who appear on television, or write articles and books, or go off on the lecture circuit to discuss what's going on inside the U.S. government or whatever administration is currently in power...
Most Americans mistakenly presume that their government is run by Talk Show World -- even though, in reality, the denizens of this universe may have no power at all and may have no more than a limited connection to the inner workings of government...
Mark Felt was a classic representative of that other sphere, Hidden World. It comprises bureaucracies and institutions through which the United States must operate day in and day out -- the FBI, the CIA, the armed forces. Hidden World is by its very nature faceless, but also permanent. Administrations come and go; the big organizations remain...
Admittedly, the story suffers from the tendency to make Nixon out to be the only president in recent history to have anything up his sleeve. That's because he was a Republican, and the others were all... you get the idea. But it is still a good analysis of how this town really works -- and occasionally doesn't. There's much more to read in that section, but that's the cream of the crop.
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