Some Best Secrets Are Revealed, But (Dammit) Not Illuminated

Writes Geov Parrish for WorkingForChange.com:

I have a three-word response to the media frenzy that followed Tuesday’s revelation of the long-secret identity of Deep Throat.


      Downing Street Memo.


More below, with my fond critique of a WaPo column, “The Illuminating Experience of Being Kept in the Dark”:
Howie Martin sent me the Geov Parrish three-word one-liner via Smirking Chimp. Parrish continues:

Here’s what John Dean, key Watergate figure, wrote about Dubya’s case for the Iraq war in a June 2003 column for findlaw.com: “To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked… Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be a ‘high crime’ under the Constitution’s impeachment clause.”


That’s exactly what the Downing Street Memo, first reported a month ago by the Times of London, proves. …


And, from the WaPo column yesterday, “The Illuminating Experience of Being Kept in the Dark,” by Hank Stuever — so wonderfully written, it should be read in full just for the writing:

The idea of Deep Throat has slipped away. The man lives, according to Vanity Fair and confirmed by The Washington Post, reduced to just that — an old man, W. Mark Felt, with his moldered and complete Washington résumé, including a presidential pardon, living with his daughter in California, allowed two glasses of wine with dinner.


What’s gone is the last best secret, wrested from the grip of the select few who’d vowed to keep it. The hiding of Deep Throat’s identity took on a larger mythic status than any scoop Deep Throat provided, and much of Washington — media, officialdom, even tourists who snapped the Watergate complex — guarded the almost holy belief in Deep Throat. He was the perfect, nameless god. It was the idea that reporters (and their background sources) could save the world, and that trust was still trust, and truth was still true. People now go to parking garages to get their cars. …


“What’s gone is the last best secret …”

I respectfully disagree, Mr. Stuever.

That particular secret became mythical the longer it lasted. A movie, books, countless articles, endless theories and, most of all, time has added to its potency, just like the wine Mr. Felt is allowed to drink with dinner.


We have before us the unveiling of, I think, far more serious secrets, but the media barely tips its hat as it waltzes on by.