“It Helps Him on the Way to the Bank, I'm Sure”…

… ex-Editor of the Washington Post Ben Bradlee said when asked whether the Felt family's disclosure about W. Mark Felt being Deep Throat would help Bob Woodward. The question, posed in an article in the New York Times this morning, related to whether Woodward's reputation was enhanced now that the actual existence of Deep Throat had been proven. And outspoken Bradlee, at the age of 83, is still getting to the heart of the matter. Woodward is a millionaire, mainly because of his reputation as a journalist since he and Carl Bernstein broke the Watergate scandal in the Washington Post 33 years ago. Woodward has stayed at WaPo during the intervening years since Watergate. He's the assistant managing editor now and because of the power that comes with his status as investigative journalist par excellence, he can write at his own pace and he can break stories or hold them back. He also has written 12 books since his heady Deep Throat days. The identity of Deep Throat is a story Woodward had pledged to hold back. Even in the face of W. Mark Felt wanting to own up to being Deep Throat, Woodward had reservations about whether 91-year-old Felt was mentally competent to know what he was doing. Woodward clearly didn't want Deep Throat's identity to be divulged until Felt died. We're told the Felt family wanted money for the elder Felt's confession. We're told Woodward was in the process of writing his own story about Felt, to be published after Felt's death. We're told there were so many leaks about Felt being Deep Throat that it soon would have been impossible to plug the holes. In the end, there will be scores of books written about the true identity of Deep Throat. Many people will get tons of money. Bob Woodward will benefit, Carl Bernstein will benefit, the Felt's will benefit and a host of bottom-feeders will also be helped on the way to the bank, I'm sure. Fine. But the real benefit for us all is that a lying, power-crazed, criminal Republican president, Richard Nixon, was booted out of office because Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein followed a story wherever it took them. And they were aided by a man known as Deep Throat. W. Mark Felt was and is a hero. And it doesn't matter how many people make money off this saga. And a fringe benefit is the hilarious sight of Robert Novak, Chuck Colson and G. Gordon Liddy fulminating on-camera that W. Mark Felt should never have gone to journalists but should have made his information available to the powers that be in the GOP. G. Gordon Liddy and Chuck Colson went to jail because of their criminal activity on Nixon's behalf. And Robert Novak is so devoid of morals that he outed an undercover CIA agent, Valerie Plame, to punish her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, for telling the truth about the Bush administration. A good horselaugh is worth millions.