Thus the potential novelistic adventure of being with the author as he solves the mystery is short-circuited. This document stretches on (and on) for some 270 pages, and is chockablock full of repetitions, backtracking, noisy personal asides, wheezy theories on the nature of politics - all excessive verbiage of the highest order.Įarly on, we are told who the main suspect is: a lawyer and Nixon supporter by the name of John Sears. His name and extraordinary abilities gave a certain piquant air to the hearings, especially as several possibly more innocent Senators insisted on mis-naming him "Long John Silver," thus confusing piracy with pornographia.)īased on the structure of this book, if Garment is still practicing law, god help the hapless clients. Anita Hill claimed that Judge Thomas was intent on showing her films in which Dong - or, better, Silver - was the star. During Senate hearings over the appointment of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, another star with the sobriquet of "Long Dong Silver" became the subject of heated discussion. (Indeed, some enterprising graduate student might well do a study of how Washington politics merge so easily with pornography. To name a mysterious Republican mole Deep Throat says much about the character of politics in those days. Linda Lovelace was the star in a blue movie of the same title, famous for her ability to accomplish penetrating acts of laryngectomy to satisfy her needy clients. The very name, Deep Throat, is a fine and ironic one. In Search is Garment's attempt to pin down exactly who is (or was) Deep Throat. He met many times (in a seedy bar, in a parking garage) with Bob Woodward, one of the two reporters at the Washington Post in charge of investigating the Watergate. He was in the middle of what is now commonly referred to as "Watergate," and for some lunatic reason, years after the fact, has become obsessed with the identity of one Deep Throat, the man who essentially served as the spy within the Nixon government to help it fall apart. As the presidency began to unravel, he worked directly as Counsel to the President. Leonard Garment had worked with Richard Nixon over the years and was special consultant on domestic policy at the White House starting in 1969. It was a delight for the general public - and especially for those of us who doted on the Greek concept of the fatal flaw that must haunt those who are in power. With the help of the media, these events created a soap opera of the highest order, with characters as delightful and as ominous as could be found in any Philip Marlowe novel: Richard Nixon, Martha Mitchell, Bob Haldeman, Anthony Ulasewicz, Ronald Ziegler, Gordon Liddy, John Sirica, John Mitchell, Sam Ervin, Charles Colson, Howard Hunt. His associates, with his knowledge and compliance, participated in a series of burglaries, bribes, cover-ups and other scandalous acts that would have done credit to a banana republic. It took endless newspaper revelations, television stories, books, and a series of Senate and House hearings to connect Richard Nixon with some illegal activities that occurred under his watch. Starting in 1972, and with inexorable and agonizing pacing, a sitting president of the United States was revealed to be a scamp. Those who didn't live through what is now called the "Watergate" have no idea how compelling the adventure and drama of that era.
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