Le Show; 2017-05-28

From deep inside your audio device of choice. Ladies and gentlemen, what is it? Was it only a week ago already that President Trump was in Saudi Arabia holding hands. Was he? He wasn't holding hands with Melania. Maybe he was holding hands with the king. Certainly touching the glowing orb together with the king. I don't know what that was, but it got me hot. So he flew away from Saudi Arabia. And then this, a court in Saudi Arabia, has upheld a death sentence for a disabled man who was arrested after he attended a protest. Munir Al-Adam, 23 years old, was beaten so badly he lost hearing in one ear. Well, you know, you could be a beach boy after doing it. During demonstrations in the she-addominated east of the country five years ago, human rights campaigners have slammed the decision calling it shocking, demanding the White House of Dervine. This is them holding their breath. Adam was sentenced to death in a secretive trial in the country's specialized criminal court last year. And a pellet court has now decided the sentence should be carried out despite international criticism.

He only has the opportunity to appeal the decision once more before the king. King Salman, I didn't even know he was in season, signs his death warrant. Adam was tortured by police despite his medical records detailing his disabilities and forced to sign a false compassion according to campaigners. He already suffered impaired vision and hearing, stemming from a skull fracture after a childhood accident. He was charged with violent acts at a protest, according to a spokesperson for the human rights group Reprieve. But no evidence was produced at his trial, other than the signed confession which activists say was made under duress. The authorities accused Adam of sending texts, but he was a manual worker and apparently too poor to own a phone. Our freedom-loving friends in Saudi Arabia ladies and gentlemen, I am here in New Orleans. I didn't kiss the ground when I arrived because I didn't know yet that the same airline that flew me here from London on Friday wasn't flying anybody anywhere the next day. So I made a choice to come here. The choice was Warsaw or New Orleans. I know. It's a coin toss.

But just the opportunity to go to Warsaw reminded me of a time just about almost 20 years ago when Michael Jackson went to Warsaw, fell in love with a place according to what we were told then. It was going to buy a home, was going to build an amusement park to rival Disney World, was going to make Poland his new base of operations. None of that ever happened, but you know, it lives on in song. Hello, welcome to the show. I love my children there, I ate alone, I slept in Casino, a place beyond compare, my preparation, my crime, my love, it's first to my soul. They love Disney, they think I'm white, it's an animal.

Here's the place where the past is a future where dead lights don't hold sway. Choose always point out that they're ones but they get old. My life's to get old every day. Poland, that is a dream. Poland, swimming upstream. Poland, can you be free? Can you love me? They got the proof, they got the sausage, the magic's on its way. I only do it for children, no matter what they see. Here's the place where the past is a future where dead lights don't hold sway. The Jews always point out that they're ones but they get old. My life's to get old every day.

Poland, that is a dream. Poland, swimming upstream. Poland, can you be free? Can you love me? Can you love me? Can you, can you, can you love me? From New Orleans, I'm Harry Scherer, welcoming you to this edition of the show, and now it is the Devilman, the Apologies of the Week.

Well, he slugged a reporter and then one of the congressional seats in Montana, and then Greg Gianforte apologized, quote, when you make a mistake, you have to own up to it. I should not have responded the way I did for that. I'm sorry I should not have treated that reporter that way. And for that, I'm sorry Mr. Ben Jacobs, he name checked the guy that he hit. The TV station, one of the TV stations in Montana also has apologized for being the only news medium apparently on the planet not to carry the audio of the assault. We clearly made a mistake. It was unintentionally. We apologize said Tammy Wagner, the general manager of NBC affiliate KECI. We did not error the recording, however, we did report the incident, including the press release from the sheriff.

New York magazine reported that the news director of the station, Julie Wendell, had refused to cover the alleged assault when contacted by NBC News, saying she thought that Jacobs, quote, is a reporter for a politically biased publication. The station was recently bought by Singh Claire, which is a right leading leaning media group that reportedly has told the stations to lean right, but that sale is not yet been finalized. So who knows, a Harris County, Texas sheriff's canine dog is still on duty as is his handler after the dog was sent in after the wrong person in Tom ball, Texas, you know, Tom ball. Not Dory, the dog attacked team young during a search for a car thief leaving him a serious wounds in the incident earlier this month. He's facing months away from work to make him well, mounting medical bills, of course. I apologize said Sheriff Ed Gonzalez. It's always traumatic for anyone to be bit, especially if it's not the target we're searching for.

I have to at this point believe the deputy didn't they're training what they thought was appropriate. Gonzalez said he says the deputy gave ample warnings. That's disputed by the victim and some witnesses. He hasn't take the sheriff hasn't taken the dog or his handler off the street, believing the deputy followed his training attack. The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, St. Paul is the executive director expressed regret to Minnesota's American Indian communities over tensions raised by a new sculpture scaffold. A work inspired by the gallows based in part on the hanging of 38 Dakota tribe members in Mankato, Minnesota in 1862. I should have engaged leaders in the Dakota and broader native communities in advance of the works, citing that I apologize for any pain and disappointment the sculpture might elicit said the executive director. It's five generations ago. We really have to realize 1862 was not that long ago said the Dakota member. I think it should probably be to be taken down so we can see it come down. This scaffold is by Sam Durant of Los Angeles. It looks as well. It is actually a composite of the gallows used in seven US government executions from the 1859 hanging of John Brown to the 2006 execution of former Rocky president Saddam Hussein.

The hanging of the Dakota 38 was the largest mass execution in the United States history. British Airways, as I mentioned, cancelled all its flights from London to biggest airports this weekend. All of our check-in on operational systems have been affected. We have cancelled all flights. The Alex Cruz, chairman and chief executive of BA said we're extremely sorry for the huge inconvenience. This is causing our customers and we understand how frustrating this must be, especially for families hoping to get away on the holiday weekend. Said the airline's IT teams were working tirelessly to fix the problem. There was no evidence of any cyber attack. Just a big ol' oops. One of England's biggest examination boards has been forced to apologize after thousands of students took an English literature exam with a mistake in it. The error appeared in a question about the character Tybalt from Romeo and Juliet. It implied he is a Montague. He is in fact a Capulad.

A spokesperson from the exam board said we're aware of an error. We apologize and we'll put things right when the exam is marked and graded so no student need worry about being disadvantaged. We are investigating as a matter of urgency how this got through our assurance processes. He speaking of King Salman. It is in season. The reigning King of Saudi Arabia has apologized. No, not to the disabled guy. No to leaders including Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for not giving them a chance to address last week's Riyadh summit. Pakistan's foreign office spokesperson informed the press that 30 leaders of the Muslim world could not address the summit due to shortage of time. The hosting monarch has apologized to all of them. The Pakistani media frowned as Sharif was not given the stage for speech, branding it as, quote, national humiliation. Well, what about a national humiliation day? Make a thing of it. A Russian fighter jet recently conducted an unprofessional intercept of a US-KC-10 tanker aircraft in the sky over Syria. Russian officials have apologized. Lieutenant General Jeffrey Harrigan told Pentagon reporters this week.

The Russian fighter had performed a barrel roll over the US plane. The USS SS is the pilot who was acting on his own initiative in performing the action. And the premier of Victoria state in Australia has apologized to the state's Chinese community for the racism and unjust policies their ancestors endured during Australia's gold rush. Who knew? Premier Daniel Andrews issued the apology to a crowd of Chinese community leaders including several descendants of the first wave of Chinese miners to come to the state 160 years ago. It is never too late to say sorry, Andrews said, in a better accent. To every Chinese Victorian on behalf of the Victorian Parliament on behalf of the Victorian Government, I express our deepest sorrow and I say to you, we are profoundly sorry. In the 1850s, Chinese migrants were charged 10 pounds each when they disembarked. There would be many years' wages in those days. Those who did pay the tax were often left facing massive debts. Very much like slaves, they had to work off the amount of money.

They were loaned to come to Australia to avoid the tax many miners disembarked in South Australia than marched hundreds of miles through the wilderness to the Victorian gold fields, some dying of starvation or exhaustion on the trip. The apologies of the week, ladies and gentlemen. Copyrighted feature of this broadcast. Do you know what Google knows about you? In a move with echoes of fiction, Google has begun trawling through billions of personal credit card receipts, matching them to your browser, location, mail and advertising histories. If you bought a TV on the line, Google would match your credit card history to your ad profile, containing your GPS record and your browsing data to prove to the merchant that you did or didn't see one of its advertisements. To accomplish this, we developed a new custom encryption technology that ensures users' data remains private secure and anonymous as Google. But the mere fact that Google and Facebook mingled their own exhaustive personal data records, search history, YouTube viewing history, GPS location, with information gleaned from large third party online and offline databases, which sell your data for money, may come as a surprise to billions of users.

This is a part of a gradual process as the British tech journal, The Register, by which our every move is digitally recorded and the data then traded and mixed. The giant ad duopolists, Google and Facebook, are in fact basically consumer data processing companies. The search or social network or operating system is in each case merely another data acquisition source. The real business is in the processing, mixing and selling of personal data to advertisers. The credit card companies began to monetize their histories a few years ago. Facebook sign deals with data companies including experience and allowing it to mingle third party online and offline data, something it calls as Google does of its new system, closing the loop. Last year, Google created super profiles of its users, breaking an earlier promise, breaking an earlier promise never to mingle data from your search history, YouTube viewing history or GPS location, with double click cookie information, double click is owned by Google, it's an ad serving function, if you consider that being served.

Unless you explicitly opted in, super profiles have prompted an antitrust complaint from Oracle arguing that the combined data horde creates an insurmountable barrier to entry for any competitor to Google. Google knows where merchants customers are before the merchant itself does location data also allows Google to insert itself into every transaction. Users consent to Google's terms when they boot their Android phones or use Google Maps or click through a privacy pop up on a Google website. Users can delete the data and reset their ad ID but can't stop the data being collected or come mingle that starts all over again immediately. You know how to open the loop again? Pay with cash.

Google's a fee or when you're coming, when you're coming, when you're coming, when you're coming, no. Google's a fee or when you're coming, when you're coming, no.

You should never show yourself And choose a fear When you're coming home And choose a fear When you're coming When you're when you're gone And home I said choose a fear When you're coming

When you're gone And home When you're gone Now news of emoluments Those are those things that the wig wearing founders Thought shouldn't be paid to any federal government official by foreign government This week in the welter of all the news about President Trump's trip and other stuff You may have missed that he got permission from the Chinese government To get trademarks on a number of lines of business This has been brewing for some time but it was approved this very week

And among the lines of business clothing and underwear Now obviously ethics considerations and constraints Would prevent the president from actually doing any kind of advertising or promotion Of any of those businesses going forward But that may not have prevented him from uttering a word or two that could be edited into an existing ad When it comes to great underwear I've just raised the stakes Trump's briefs and boxes are the world's greatest briefs and boxes and I mean that in every sense of the word And the sharper image is the only store where you can buy them Trump underwear So by far the best tasting most flavorful beef you've ever had Truly in a league of their own There's nothing better than that It's the best of the best Until now you can only enjoy the underwear of this quality in one of my resort restaurants America's finest steak houses

But now that's changed Today you can enjoy the world's greatest briefs and boxes in your own home with family, friends, anytime Trump's briefs and boxes Derage to perfection to provide the ultimate intendedness and flavor If you like underwear you'll absolutely love Trump's briefs and boxes Treat yourself to the very very best life has to offer And as a gift, Trump's briefs and boxes are the best you can give One bite and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about And believe me, I understand Underwear, it's my favorite food and these are the best This is a show And if any event could be said to be devil Almost every American president equally if not infuriate him It is the onset of leaks From those within his administration I think this started

At least it became public that the president was infuriated with leaks Around the time of the Nixon administration I don't recall any of his predecessors I'm not old enough to remember all of his predecessors but I don't remember the ones I was around for publicly invading against leaks to the extent that Nixon did Ever since, of course, presidents have become more and more agitated about the problem of leaks President Obama recently had a fairly serious trip on the warpath And now we have what's going on currently with President Trump So I think it's an appropriate time to invite to the program The author of a book which has just been released in paperback With the highly topical title leak It's the story of Mark Felt The man who actually was deep throat And Max Holland, the author of the book is here with me Max Holland graduated from Antioch College

He is a contributing editor to the nation and the Wilson Quarterly And sits on the editorial advisory board of the International Journal of Intelligence And counterintelligence So I guess he's recording as well as I am Max, welcome to the show Thank you Good to be here So let's start at the beginning Who was Mark Felt? Mark Felt was a career FBI executive Who spent most of his time in the what they called the seat of government IE FBI headquarters of Washington So he was not, except early in his career, he was really not out in the field He was in the seat of government which was a very politicized part of the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover And basically Hoover turned 65 I think in 1964, 1966 And after that he had to get an annual waiver from the president to serve

And towards the end of his life he died in 1972 Just before the break-in at the Watergate DNC headquarters So towards the end of his life he really wasn't the same man he was You know the fabled J. Edgar Hoover of the 30s, 40s and 50s He took a lot of naps And Mark Felt was essentially running the FBI for all intents and purposes Over the last two or three years that'd be from 70, 71, 72 Now the switching over to the Watergate story for a moment These two threads will meet What we I think in the popular culture know about Watergate is that Woodward and Bernstein who were reporters at the Washington Post had a source Which was named deep throat In some kind of homage to a then popular porn movie Starring Linda Lovelace as I recall

And the role of deep throat was not so much to give them information as to be sort of a function In some way almost as a fact checker they would bounce leads that gotten off this source And he would give them winks and nods as to whether these were on the rails or not How closely does that version of events Hue to what you found out about what really happened Not pretty close at all I mean Woodward and Bernstein have said Well let's just stick to Woodward because Bernstein actually never met Mark Felt In 1972, 1973 during the height of Felt's usefulness as a source He only met him actually shortly before he died So it's Woodward who had the relationship with Felt And he said a lot of things about Felt He's called him the ultimate truth teller

You know in a sea of Mendacity that is Washington He's sometimes minimized his role a little You know said he's been blown out of proportion He wasn't as important as he's been made out to be But basically what I found is that Mark Felt gave Woodward the confidence that there was a story At a time when a lot of reporters didn't believe that higher-ups particularly in the White House were involved with the break-in So he gave him facts on occasion that you couldn't find anywhere else But the FBI knew them through its investigation He gave him the confidence to pursue a story which is very important when everybody else is just believing He gave him a wink and a nod sometimes But a lot of the time he also gave him untruths And that's a very important part of the story. He told him lies

Things he didn't know or things he wasn't in a position to know Okay now having sort of set the table We get to what to me is possibly the most apropos part of the story Since we are awash in what one might call the golden shower of age of leaks The question of motivation Why was Mark Felt leaking to Bob Woodward? Well that's always important as a reporter you have to know The reason your source is providing you with information or misinformation or disinformation And in the case of Mark Felt I believe that he was leaking for solely one purpose which was to ascend to the directorship In other words by leaking he threw shade on El Patrick Gray who was the interim FBI director Possibly someone who Nixon was going to nominate but possibly not

Felt had run the bureau as I said for the last two or three years of Hoover's tenure He felt that he should be the director and rather than leaving like some of the old Hoover Hoover rights did after Gray was appointed Felt stayed on but then he undermined or attempted while you know patting Pat Gray on the back And throwing his arm around him telling him what a great director he was He was also leaking information about a politically sensitive investigation And he wasn't only leaking the Woodward more importantly he was leaking the guy named Sandy Smith at Ty magazine And it was all to show that Pat Gray did not have control over the bureau Felt knew that Nixon White House which was you know incensed by any leaks would be totally inflamed by dribbles of information Which they would certainly identify as coming out from the FBI

And he knew that that would make Gray's nomination by Nixon you know something that was not going to happen At the same time he was making sure through some leaks that if by some chance Gray did get nominated He probably wouldn't get past the Senate Judiciary Committee which was still going to be run by the Democrats So basically he was leaking not because he was upset by the Watergate break in not because he wanted to get rid of Nixon Or was upset by the lawlessness or the unethical behavior of the Nixon White House But simply to throw his rivals for the directorship you know to put them in a bad light in Nixon's eyes Several questions occur one you said almost more importantly than Woodward Sandy Smith at Ty magazine We don't know his name or his reporting do we?

No not really Sandy Smith was kind of the opposite the anti-Woodward I mean he was so protective of his sources he was notorious for being protective of his sources He said actually written into his contract with time life that if a story of his ever became part of a court proceeding He would not have to reveal his sources in the court proceeding He would rather than take calls from sources he would go outside to a pay phone and talk to them He was a correspondent originally in Chicago for the Chicago newspapers became very well known for his investigations of the mob Seymour Hirsch really looked up to him as a young reporter as a model of the investigative reporter He even didn't like his bylines on you know back in those days time Didn't have bylines really but in the front of the magazine they would acknowledge reporters work He didn't even want that he loved toiling an anonymity and to him the big thing was the story Now because of his work on the mob he had gotten very close to the FBI

I mean agents would give him information that they knew could not be used in court But they would feed it to him knowing that he would work into a story and disguise it so much that you couldn't really tell where it came from Anyway I felt originally started leaking to Sandy Smith, the first big story that appeared after the break-in appeared in time And it indicated that the FBI investigation was going to be something of a whitewash That was felt leaking to Sandy Smith And if it was a whitewash of course then Pat Gray was not going to get past the Senate Judiciary Committee That was the first story that he leaked but then Woodward came around He had met Felt when he was a young naval lieutenant and he would go to the NSC He met Felt and he had also last talked to Felt about the attempted assassination of George Wallace

And he came around to Felt in August and asked him about this Watergate story and that's when their relationship started The next question that occurs to me is you said Felt told Woodward things that weren't true Did any of those see print? Well the most interesting ones saw print in the book all the Presidents men and never was printed in the Washington Post Although it should have been because it was certainly a newsworthy story And this was the allegation that Pat Gray, if we fast forward a little, we're talking about January 73 now And Pat Gray despite everyone's expectation that he would not be nominated by Nixon is suddenly nominated And it puzzled a lot of people and Woodward during one of his meetings went to Felt and said why did President Nixon nominate Pat Gray And Felt said well Pat Gray blackmailed him into nominating him

He went into the Oval Office and said if you don't nominate me I'm going to spill everything I know about Watergate Now Woodward was told this by Felt in late January or early February 73 He didn't write that up as a new story because presumably because it maybe came too close to identifying the source But he did use it in his book all the Presidents men And that was an untruth. We have the tape recording of Pat Gray's meeting with John Erlichman and Richard Nixon Where Nixon tells him I've decided to nominate you after all Pat and there's no blackmail whatsoever Well the interesting thing about that of course is unlike other Presidents who've recorded Nixon never had to turn the recording apparatus on or off it was rolling all the time So there was no opportunity for a pre-recording meeting to have set the table And then he turns the record switch on for that conversation that couldn't have happened that way So let's back up a little bit

Both Woodward and Bernstein are reporters on the Metropolitan desk of the Washington Post They do crime stories, they do other kinds of local news Restaurant closings, that was a big specialty of Woodward's Who was close for mice in the kitchen So they had not had any experience, I'm guessing, with leakers of any stripe, right? Not exactly. Woodward was this Yale graduate, he couldn't write, he couldn't write inverted pyramid story if his life depended on it But it was very well educated. Bernstein was the opposite. He had dropped out of college, University of Maryland And he had newspapers in his butt, he came up the old way, which is he got a job, I think when he was 14 at first And he just wanted to be a newspaper man, and he fancied himself a great writer, sort of his generation's Norman Mailer And he worked at the Washington Star, he was on the copy desk, I think, at the time of the Kennedy assassination already Taking dictation, and then he came over the post, and he was an enormous screw up

He was about this close to being fired by the time the break had occurred He would do things like Renekar, you know, go to Virginia, he was covering Virginia State politics, I think, at the time He'd Renekar, you know, wouldn't check it back in, so it'd accumulate all this extra overages in the airport parking lot And they were just about this close to firing him when the break had happened But my question was aimed at this, these guys did not have a wealth of experience in evaluating the motives or intentions of somebody leaking to them, right? Woodward is a novice reporter, that's true, I think Bernstein, you'd have to say, yes, some more experience than an novice But he'd actually written one story about the FBI that pissed off the guy named Tom Bishop, who did the Bureau's PR So he did occasionally write high-level stories, now he didn't, nothing of this magnitude, certainly

But I wouldn't call him an inexperience, he was a good writer, and he'd already had what he was in his late 20s So he had a good 10 years of experience in the newsroom by then Mark felt was not known publicly to be deep-throat until very late in his life, right? And he outed himself? Well, yes and no, I mean, first of all, when all the presidents' men came out in May of 1974 There was an article in the Washingtonian, which was spot on, it said, you know, think about all the people who could have been deep-throat, which is Washington's big new guessing game Think about a little, who knew all the information? Who might have a motive to get it out there? Why Mark felt, of course And that was the first denial, the next month, the Washingtonian, which came out monthly, published a flat denial by Felton Is not high, I would never do such a thing

So he was the first person fingers of deep-throat then, you know, over the next four decades, just everybody under the sun His, you know, Pat Grace fingered his deep-throat, Fred Fielding, John Dean, et cetera, et cetera, Alex Hague, but Felton was not outed until 2005 And he's not exactly compass menace then, so I think, you know, on one day you talked to him, he did many, he was deep-throat on the next day And the next day you'd go back to his, you know, standard denial When your, when your book came out, the first edition of it, did either Woodward or Bernstein have any public comment about your explanation of Felton's behavior? Yes, they did. They were asked in the Daily Beast in an article by Lloyd Grove about it. They were also asked by a journalist named Alicia Sheppard In both instances, they tried to suggest that my book belonged to the revisionist works of Watergate, which were completely unreliable and not to be believed And by revisionist works, I'm talking about books that claim, you know, the break had happened because John Dean's wife was a call girl, et cetera, et cetera

And so they were trying to marginalize my book because, frankly, it doesn't comport with their fairy tale Let's go back to this story then. What is the basis in your book for this explanation of Felton's behavior? You didn't have felt admitting to it? What exactly did you have? Number one, you had his autobiography, which at the time was a total dud, but it's a very revealing book, kind of if you know what to look for His arrogance and his pride at being the only person within the bureau to ever be director, even if it was only for two hours and 47 minutes, I think it was exact You know, are so self-evident that it's very clear that, and talking to other FBI executives and agents, it was very clear that he wanted to be the director He felt that, not to make a pun, but he had moved, I don't know, 15 times during his career early on before he settled in at the CEDA government

He sacrificed his family, his wife was said to be measuring the drapes for his office as director That was his life's ambition, and he had worked under Hoover for decades, put everything else second, and he felt that he was entitled to that position And he wanted it, and he was of a generation where he didn't think there would be another FBI director in his lifetime I mean, his whole life there had only been Hoover Probably the best insight I got from Jack McDermott Jack McDermott was the special agent and charge of the Washington Field Office, which was the office that was actually mounting the Watergate investigation And Jack knew all these people, he knew Felt, he knew William Sullivan, who was another rival for directorship And he had stayed away from the CEDA government because he considered it sort of a place of pestilence

He liked investigating, catching the bad guys, et cetera, et cetera And he saw the CEDA government as, you know, rife with politics more than anything else in people with sharp elbows And solving crimes was, you know, separate matter, putting the FBI in the best light was the most important thing in kissing Hoover's ass It was the most important thing of all So he stayed clear of that, but he knew all these people And probably my interview with him was the most revealing Because he was, you know, he was the top guy in the Washington Field Office starting in October 72, which was early on in the Watergate investigation And he was furious about the leaks He regarded as a betrayal of the FBI's, you know, the way it should operate And at first he thought that deep throat was a composite, you know, that woodward was trying to muddy the waters

It was actually a bunch of people But then when felt was out in 2005, either by himself or by his family, McDermott was furious because he immediately recognized why felt had done it Which was for the most self-serving of reasons Who had initiated the FBI's investigation into Watergate? Well, as soon as the metropolitan police in Washington discovered these electronic devices They called in the FBI because they thought it would be a breach of federal law Wiretapping law rather than a burglary, which is their original reason they went to the Watergate Third rate burglary Now we are in a moment where the FBI has been investigating It looks like both of the major party candidates or their organizations in the last election The FBI director has been mired in controversy, pardon me, and removed

And we've heard stories in the media about rivalry and politics Particularly situated in the New York Field Office of the FBI As almost a fiefdom, do you hear echoes of the Watergate era in what you're hearing now in terms of how the FBI is behaving? Yes and no, I mean you're absolutely right, the New York Field Office is a fiefdom It's kind of the reverse situation of the New York Times, Washington Bureau and the New York Times I mean the Washington Bureau and New York Times headquarters has always had this contentious relationship about how to cover national politics And Washington Bureau has an unusual power for a bureau and it's similar in the FBI, the New York Field Office is huge It does, you know, many of the most important cases And so there's always been, it's been strangely independent of the bureau's headquarters and sort of

And that's, you know, somewhat true of other large bureaus but nothing like New York and Washington headquarters and FBI In terms of what's happening today, I mean the report that New York agents were leaking or poised to leak information about the Clinton Foundation You know, that's certainly possible given, you know, the New York Field Office's reputation for independence Another thing that I thought that went on that wasn't really understood well was this business of Komi, you know, declaring Hillary Clinton, you know, innocent of any criminal wrongdoing was back in July You know, that was extraordinary for an FBI director to do, I mean not even Hoover ever did that In Hoover, you know, regarded the Attorney General as a mere appendage, you know, he reported directly to the president and he didn't, you know, go through Attorney's General

So the desire of the Justice Department to, you know, keep the director sort of under their control is very strong And that's why this letter by Rosenstein, I thought was actually entirely explainable in those terms The prerogative of the Attorney General or the Deputy Attorney General is to decide if there should be a prosecution or not It's not the director's decision to make and what Komi did really rubbed a lot of people wrong, you know, who had served in those positions So I saw that letter as more in the context of that struggle As far as the leaks that are going on, you know, I've often thought after being in Washington a long time that if you took the newspaper, you either the post or the Times on any given day and then took the front page of either paper and then wrote a story or stories about how each of those stories got on the front page

It would make for a very interesting reading because, you know, they talk about a newspaper, an old-fashioned newspaper war now between the post and Times over revelations As far as I can see, they're getting these revelations hand-fed to them I mean, these aren't enterprising reporters, you know, pounding the city streets looking for information You know, these are probably in a meeting or telephone call or who knows how, you know, this information is being provided on the silver platter It's the golden inbox They will give it to the Times, yeah, and next day we'll give it to the Post, let's alternate So you've got to keep in mind why these stories are appearing Now, all that said, of course, I don't think well of Trump and I'm glad this information's coming out You don't need, I mean, even in the case of Felt, you know, just because he has bad motivation

You know, you have to look at the information and evaluate it and see if it fits and corroborated, et cetera, et cetera So even as coming out for the worst of reasons, as a reporter, that's your duties to check out the information Where I fault Woodward and Bernstein is, you know, they perpetuated this fairy tale That they inadvertently created in their book and that was emphasized in the movie of a principled whistleblower Now, maybe they thought that in 72, 73 being sort of young and inexperienced But, you know, the FBI War of Succession, which is what was happening at the time And what really dictated Felt's behavior is something that became very apparent by the mid-70s When stories started coming out of all the turmoil in the Bureau

And by the early 90s when the Watergate documents became available And Woodward went to see them, he had to understand that Felt was playing a different game But he's, I think, never been candid about that Aside from what we've just discussed, what lessons does the story of Mark Felt and the reporting of his leaks? What lesson does that hold for us today? It shows that a reporter or a newspaper can take information which is leaked for entirely different reasons And it turned it to good effect, you know, the post is to be commended For the way they were following the Watergate story when most newspapers were publishing a lot less of it Not to be fair, the LA Times probably had the most important story of all

During the fall of 72, which is, you know, the interview with Alfred Baldwin, who had been monitoring the break-in from across the street in the Howard Johnson Motel Jack Nelson, who was a fabled investigative reporter, got to Al Baldwin and he told Nelson And they published in the LA Times before the election, you know, what was going on? And it didn't make any difference whatsoever in terms of Nixon's re-election Because Watergate, people forget now, but before the election, Watergate wasn't, you know, a pimple on Nixon's electoral chances But aside from what it tells us about, you know, the importance of leaking even for bad reasons, it also, I believe, should tell us that the news is what reporters and newspapers and TV come out with But it's the legal processes that really make the difference

And in this case, the Washington Post stories acted as sort of a prophylactic for the three prosecutors, headed by Earl Silbert, who were prosecuting the original burglars It kind of helped ensure that there would be no political interference with their prosecution, and there wasn't And before the election, Silbert gave one of the burglars, you know, an offer of immunity if he would testify to what nobody turned it down And so therefore they had no choice but to, you know, prosecute all of the burglars, they did that in January 73 And that's when the cover-up really began to crack with the letter to Judge Sirica, you know, that perjury had been committed during the trial And they are the ones really who brought the pressure that eventually brought John Dean and Jeb Brighruder in to their offices to confess all So they are the ones who cracked the cover-up, not the Washington Post

And they ought to get the lion's share of the credit, you know, the media played a role, it was an important role, you know, the story's influenced Sirica But he was known as Maxim and John, you know, already He didn't give these huge sentences to the burglars because he read a couple stories on the Washington Post So there's been sort of a disproportionate and, you know, everyone who likes to bask in the reflected glory of Woodward and Bernstein and Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman You know, likes to give a lion's share of credit to the Post But it's legal, really the legal processes And I think that's what we have to remember today Robert Mueller's investigation is going to count for a lot more than any of the stories in the post today tomorrow or a month from now Given what you've seen of the way a president who was seemingly fairly serious about wanting to short circuit the investigation of what went on during Watergate

And how that played out, are you optimistic that the FBI and the prosecution, prosecuting arm of the Justice Department will be able to fulfill their responsibilities in the way that your previous answer assumed? I think so, I mean, I don't know the guys in office today like I know the one, the players then, but if there anything like Angelo Lano, who was the case agent for Watergate or prosecutors like Earl Silbert, who's, you know, one of the most upright men I've really ever met You know, I think that we are in a good place because I mean, you know, the leaks come out of the bureau because there's a lot of institutional pride there I mean, they're not going to be dissuaded from investigating by some White House clown calling them up and saying don't do this or don't do that

I mean, if they would be so rash to do that, Nixon really did commit obstruction of justice. Now, I don't know if Trump is smart enough to know how to do that What you're saying suggests that the concerns about whatever's been going on sort of short circling the normal processes of Americans because, you know, multiferious power centers in the federal government might be overblown that those power centers are able to work in the way they're designed There's a lot of institutional norms that are broken only at great risk, you know, even clienteants, let's go back to Watergate You know, Gordon Liddy, a day or two after the break in, ran up to clienteants at a golf course in Burning Tree, I think it was in Maryland and Bethesda

Ran up to him, spilled his guts at exactly what happened and clienteants, you know, later to his regret because of course it was the reason why I had to leave the Attorney General's office Said, you know, I don't want to know about this, you know, you're asking me to short circuit the investigation, I can't do that, what do you think I'm stupid But of course then he never led on to the prosecution, what Liddy had told him So if that happened then, then I mean, I don't think similar things can happen now There's just, you know, when you're talking about the Bureau, you know, it isn't the director who's, it wasn't Komi who is doing the investigating It's dozens of agents with several supervisors over them reporting up the chain and to think that you're going to order some of them not to follow a lead That takes a lot of hootspa and, you know, you're more likely to read about it the next day in the newspaper than anything else

Especially when all this attention is focused on it, I mean, the press services are prophylactic against abuse of power This, this, uh, very much sounds like a slogan that the Washington Post could put on their under their master's Yeah, except instead of democracy dies in dirt That's right, we're prophylactic Max Holland, thank you so much for walking us back through these pages of history And making the process of leaking a little more vivid and alive since we're surrounded by it every day It's good to know this, this background, at least one of the most famous cases of leaking in American history Thank you, Harry, good to be with you Ladies and gentlemen, that's going to conclude this week's edition of the Show the Program Interns next week at the same time over these same stations Over the NPR World Wide Thread Europe, the U.S. and 440 cable system in Japan, around the world for the facilities of the American Forces,

network up and down the east coast of North America by the shortwave giant WBCQ, the planet on the 91 and 4 in Berlin, on the money, so who radio in London? Around the world by the Internet at two different locations live in archival, and if you want at harryshear.com, and K, sorry, www.no.org No, KCSN.org, both of them, have fun boys And it would be just like more leaks coming out this week, if you'd agree to join with me then Would you already, thank you very much, huh? Typically a show-shapote to San Diego Pittsburgh, Chicago, in Exxon and Hawaii desks, thanks as always to Pam Hallstead And to Jenny Lawson here at WWW, I know New Orleans, to Nick Cray at Delane Lee Studios in London And Brian Roth at Buzzies Recording in Los Angeles, for help with today's broadcast The email address for this program, play a list of the music heard here on, and your chance to get cars I talk T-shirts in time for the 4th of July All at harryshear.com, and me, I'm on the Twitter, at the harryshear.com

Thank you for your time, and I'll see you next time