How Many Peasants With Pitchforks Fit In a Parking Garage, Anyway?

Posted on June 19, 2002

So what with it having been the 30th anniversary of the Watergate break-in on June 17, there’s been a new rash of speculation about the identity of Deep Throat, the legendary anonymous leaker who guided Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein towards the truth about Richard Nixon.

Of course, speculating about who Deep Throat is/was is nothing new. What is new is a new suspect, who writer Joshua Micah Marshall fingers in his excellent political blog, the Talking Points Memo. He thinks the infamous leaker is none other than everyone’s favorite reactionary, three-time Presidential candidate and former Nixon White House speechwriter Pat Buchanan. And he makes a pretty compelling case for it, too (as do the students at the University of Illinois whose research pointed him in Pitchfork Pat’s direction).

Is Buchanan Deep Throat? He denies it, of course. But then, if you were a Republican presidential hopeful who had brought down a Republican administration, wouldn’t you?