Where is today's Deep Throat?

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Rep. John Conyers

59,000 Web Page Hits For Downing Street, Deep Throat Revealed, other Developments

It was an incredible weekend at johnconyers.com, and I am hopeful that President Bush is starting to feel the ground move under his feet and the “Downing Street Smoking Gun Scandal” is beginning to snowball.

First, on Friday, we launched our nationwide effort to obtain 100,000 signatures to an open letter to President Bush asking him to respond to the very serious charges of a pre-war deal between Britain and the U.S. The response has been overwhelming. We received so many signatures that it has thrown our web administrator for a loop, and they have been forced to use a special means of counting the signatures to deal with the overload. I spoke with them today and they told me they expected to have an actual count in about 48 hours. However, I was able to ascertain the number of “hits” to the Downing Street Memo sign-on portion of my web page – from Friday through Monday we received 59,607 unique IP hits. That is not to say every single person signed the letter, but it is certainly an awful lot of folks checking it out – an unprecedented number for my or any other congressional representative’s web site. I will get you the precise number as soon as I can, but in the meantime, please keep those signatures coming. I am also in the process of upgrading my web site so we will be able to handle the traffic more efficiently and disseminate information on signatures more quickly in the future.

Second, as previously blogged, on Sunday, I learned of what I refer to as the “smoking bullet” to the “smoking gun memo.” The London Times reports that in 2002, allied bombing activities spiked in an effort to provoke war with Iraq. Today, I signed a letter to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld asking him to respond to these charges. Whether he responds or not, we have another brick in the wall of evidence of misuse and abuse of power. Bradblog has the story on today’s letter.

Third, today we learned “Deep Throats” true identity – W. Mark Felt, the then Deputy Director of the FBI. If you have not already read the excellent article in Vanity Fair. As one who was a first hand witness to Watergate, I can only state humbly that this man helped bring our country back from the constitutional brink of an out-of-control White House and the entire nation is in his gratitude.


The lessons of Watergate are so telling and important today that it is eery, not to mention depressing:

– Back than we had an aggressive press corps – at least parts of it – willing to take a story and run with it, notwithstanding blowback from the White House. Today we have a paid government propoganda machine and a largely compliant press, although we do have a blogosphere attempting to lead – or shame – the MSM into dong the right thing.

– Back than we had men of courage, such as Mark Felt, John Dean, Leon Jaworski and Archibald Cox, who were willing to challenge authority and abuses of power. Today, when individuals such as Richard Clarke or Secty of Treasury Snowe step forward, they are subject to shame and ridicule by the White House.

– Back than we had a Justice Department that was willing to take an investigation wherever it would lead. Even before the infamous “Saturday Night Massacre,” the FBI and DOJ were aggressively pursuing leads. Today we have a Justice Department that sees or hears no evil when it comes to the Administration, and has operated as a willing accomplice to torture and rendition.

– Back than we had a Congress that was willing to hold real hearings and conduct real oversight of official misconduct – see Sam Ervin and the recently deceased Peter Rodino. Today, we have one party rule, and all too many in Congress simply take their marching orders from the White House, rather than stand up for what’s right.

That’s my opinion at least.