Rick Moran at RightWing Nuthouse has an excellent summary of the little-known Moorer-Radford affair. (Before Watergate, the military had been spying on Nixon, who called the ring "a federal offense of the highest order" when he found out about it, but eventually reliquished the matter to historical obscurity.)

Excerpt from Rick:

It just didn’t seem surprising that the JCS would have to spy on the executive in order to find out information they thought they were entitled to.

Some writers have taken this incident and run wild with speculation that the military somehow orchestrated Nixon’s downfall. What Moorer-Radford makes clear is that in the end, these guys weren’t clever enough to carry something like that off. Radford’s activities were amateurish and not very effective. Whether someone else was supplying the JCS with information is unknown to this day. Nixon’s idle speculation about Haig could very well have been a product of his penchant for paranoia with Haldeman and Erlichman as his chief enablers in this regard, always agreeing with him, always egging him on to more fantastic flights of fancy as to who was against him.

But one fact is undeniable and confirmed by Admiral Welander. Bob Woodward briefed Alexander Haig many times in the basement of the White House in the years 1969-1970. And when Woodward went to work for the Washington Post shortly after his leaving the military in 1971, he already knew where to go for information about the Nixon White House.

Bob Woodward's involvement with the same people who spied on Nixon should have raised many flags, but the guy's pedestal is built of composite material deriving strength from the many sources in the amalgam.

Sigh.

The problem with the Deep Throat saga is that it has served as a diversion. Instead of looking at the facts of Watergate (a burglary targeting the desk and phone of a particular secretary), people have obsessed for decades over the identity of a "single" (actually superfluous) source.

I think that's the whole idea.

UPDATE: In an odd coincidence, this report claims that Mark Felt conducted wiretaps on Radford without proper authorization. It's a small, spooky world out there....

MORE: Here's Edward Jay Epstein:

Woodward never mentioned Deep Throat in any of the newspaper stories he wrote in the Washington Post between 1972 and 1974. In these stories he consistently attributes his information to multiple sources. Consider, for example, his (and Bernstein's) 1972 revelation that at least "50 people" who worked for the White House and the Nixon campaign were involved in spying and sabotage. In the Washington Post (October 10, 1972, p A1), he attributes the information to multiple "FBI reports." In 1974, in All The President's Men (p.135), he puts the exact same information in the mouth of Deep Throat, saying "You can safely say that 50 people worked for the White House and the CRP to play games and spy and sabotage and gather information."

According to Woodward's own book agent, David Obst: "In the original draft of their book, Deep Throat was not mentioned. In the second draft he suddenly appeared and it was a better book for the addition, a much more exciting one." What Woodward perhaps did not antipate is that his character would take on a life of his own-- and 30 years later be adopted by the handlers of of Mr. Felt.

(Via Mickey Kaus.)

AND MORE: Also via Mickey Kaus, I found an interesting metaphor by David Greenberg -- who likens those who think Deep Throat was a composite to Holocaust deniers! (The wackos in denial include Henry Kissinger.... And if this story is correct, Mark Felt himself!)

Holocaust denial? Gee. All these years I thought Watergate involved a burglary which had never been fully explained.

MORE: Speaking of conspiracy theories, did Hunter Thompson beat Mark Felt to the punch?

PSSST! And speaking of cool conspiracy theories, how about that John Paisley? CIA liaison to the Watergate plumbers, he was suspected of being a KGB mole. His 1978 death was ruled a suicide. (Strapping on weights and jumping in the water while shooting yourself in the head strikes me as an odd way to commit suicide, but I try not to be judgmental. Or conspiracy obsessed.)

UPDATE (06/06/05): Via Daily Pundit, here's more on Radford from Jack Kelly:

Woodward said he met Felt when, as a naval intelligence officer on the staff of Admiral Thomas Moorer, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he "sometimes acted as a courier, taking documents to the White House."

Therein lies a tale which we in journalism have been reluctant to explore.

At the time Woodward worked for him, Moorer was spying on the White House. Navy Yeoman Charles Radford, who was assigned to the staff of the National Security Council, admitted to investigators he "took so darn much stuff I can't remember what it was."

It is doubtful that Radford, a junior enlisted man, would have been Moorer's chief spy, or that Woodward, Moorer's messenger, would have been unaware of what his boss was doing.

I'd love to know more about how Woodward and Felt became such fast friends!

UPDATE (06/08/05): More evidence that Felt alone could not have been Deep Throat (which tends to confirm the composite theory):

The FBI group, according to Daly, each brought snippets of information to the table. Felt, who was the bureau's second-in-command, would glean information from the others, and that was part of the reason FBI and White House efforts to find Deep Throat were thwarted. No one person could have known everything that Woodward and Bernstein were reporting, Daly and others have said.

In Felt's 1979 book, "The FBI Pyramid From the Inside," he acknowledged receiving daily reports from Kunkel. He also wrote that White House officials, including Dean, who was convicted of a felony for role in the Watergate scandal, regularly demanded access to the case information.

Gaines, who has reviewed more than 15,000 pages of FBI documents related to Watergate, said Daly's account has helped add intrigue to Felt's admission.

"The whole thing is kind of shredded in my mind now," he said. "Felt would not have known (everything that was being leaked), and someone else would've had to tell him. It seems to me it really impeaches what Woodward and Bernstein have written and said about Deep Throat being a one-person source."