Was Rehnquist Deep Throat? 

Was Rehnquist Deep Throat?

I'm not an aficionado of theories about Watergate, but this one intrigues me.

John Dean is reporting a rumour that the person who was Deep Throat, leaking information to Woodward and Bernstein, is ill; if he (or she?) dies, the whole story will finally come out. (via Kevin Drum)

So some are wondering: Was William Rehnquist Deep Throat?

He doesn't seem to fit in that he wasn't in "the executive branch" during the year before the 1972 election. As a commenter on Kevin Drum's blog says, he "wasn't in the loop." But he would have known some of the secrets of the Nixon White House.

Rehnquist practised law in Phoenix from 1953 to 1969. In 1964 he was legal advisor to Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign--which no doubt allowed him to make many contacts with "true blue" conservatives.

After Nixon was elected in 1968, Rehnquist "served as Assistant Attorney General of the Office of Legal Counsel from 1969 to 1971. In this role, he served as the chief lawyer to Attorney General John Mitchell." (Unless stated otherwise, facts and quotes from Wikipedia). Mitchell was at the centre of the fund-raising part of what was revealed by Watergate, and Mitchell was known to say these dubious activities went on for four years, not just the year before the 1972 election. Testifying before the special Senate committee, "John Mitchell, the former attorney general, campaign manager, and Nixon law partner, acknowledged the 'White House horrors' of the previous four years and added that he would have done nearly anything to ensure Nixon's re-election." (Stanley Kutler on Slate).

Nixon didn't really know Rehnquist. "President Nixon mistakenly referred to him as 'Renchburg' in several of the tapes of Oval Office conversations revealed during the Watergate investigations. Nixon nominated Rehnquist to replace John Marshall Harlan II on the Supreme Court upon Harlan's retirement, and after being confirmed by the Senate by a 68-26 vote on December 10, 1971, Rehnquist took his seat as an Associate Justice on January 7, 1972."

How did Rehnquist get elevated this way with no experience on the bench, and very little experience with constitutional issues? One of Dean's books is called [link=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0743226070/blogeasy-20]The Rehnquist Choice[/link]. Dean emphasizes that Nixon had tried two or three nominations of Southern crackers, each more embarassing than the one before, all rejected by the Senate. Finally Rehnquist's name came up--Dean takes some credit for this, as he had worked with Rehnquist for a while at Justice. The time from first mentions of Rehnquist to nomination was incredibly short. Nixon was presumably happy to have a "true conservative" who could be confirmed fairly easily. It's even possible that Rehnquist not only lobbied among his conservative friends, but put the appropriate bug in Dean's ear.

UPDATE Feb. 12: I've mixed things up a bit here. Thanks to David Greenberg.

[blockquote]After these two hardball plays [Republicans blocking Abe Fortas for Chief Justice, then (with a memo drafted by Rehnquist) forcing Fortas to resign over financial dealings)], Democrats struck back. Although they didn't contest Nixon's first nomination, that of Warren Burger as chief justice, they blocked his first two choices for the Fortas seat: Clement Haynsworth, ostensibly on the basis of his own ethical shortcomings and segregationist background, and G. Harrold Carswell, who was considered a glaring mediocrity with a segregationist record much worse than Haynsworth's. Irate, Nixon backed off his vow to appoint a Southerner and selected Minnesota's Harry Blackmun, a boyhood friend of Burger's, who sailed to confirmation.[/blockquote]

[blockquote]... when Nixon suddenly found himself in September 1971 with two more openings---his third and fourth---he had a narrow needle's eye to thread. [snip] We learn, for instance, that Rehnquist was not Nixon's first choice for the job but his seventh or perhaps eighth, depending on how seriously you take Nixon's consideration of Senator Robert Byrd (whom Nixon liked because he seemed likely to win approval from fellow Senate Democrats yet also to vote with the Court's conservatives on racial issues). Rehnquist was chosen at the last minute, after others had crashed and burned. One of his most ardent promoters was John Dean.[/blockquote]

Would any of this make Rehnquist want to bring Nixon down? Maybe the lawlessness appalled him, and he wanted to see the system work by putting Nixon through an impeachment, and possibly removal from office?

So: not in the executive branch during the months when Watergate unfolded, but a former member of the Executive Branch who had worked closely with Mitchell. Not a Nixon loyalist--more a conservative true believer like Buchanan, whose name has also been mentioned. The scenes in a parking garage are unlikely, and I don't know about the detail of smoking cigarettes.

UPDATE: Aha! "Chief Justice Rehnquist has been a lifelong smoker." Pat Buchanan has been known to point out that he quit smoking some years before Watergate, and therefore he can't be Deep Throat.

UPDATE Feb. 8: Here's Barry Sussman, who was the Washington Post's editor in charge of the Watergate coverage:

Deep Throat's contributions were infrequent. As I wrote in The Great Coverup, "Woodward could never count on seeing him, and they seldom met at all. Generally, Deep Throat confined his help to telling Woodward whether information we had was correct or explaining what seemed to be the philosophy behind the Watergate spying without getting into the individuals responsible for it."

Deep Throat may have known a lot but he didn't give much away. As a mole he was pretty feeble; I can't recall any story we got because of him. True, he offered encouragement that Watergate was important at a time when hardly any other news organizations were going after the story. That was nice, but we knew it on our own.

Deep Throat also could be decidedly unhelpful. In December, 1972, he diverted us from a perfectly good story, one saying John Mitchell was ruined politically because of Watergate. Looking back, nothing could have been more obvious. But as we were preparing the article, Deep Throat criticized it, according to Woodward, saying its premise was wrong.

It may be that Deep Throat wanted to shield Mitchell. That wouldn't be surprising, as over time a number of people, including a chief prosecutor at Mitchell's Watergate trial, expressed admiration for the former attorney general. John Dean spoke of Mitchell as a father-figure.

I have always thought Deep Throat was someone in the Justice Department who may have had warm feelings for Mitchell. Possibly there was a sense of "kinship," a desire to "draw a line" at some point in the Post's coverage.

... the account is surprisingly balanced: anyone expecting a "liberal" flogging of an increasingly conservative court will be surprised, on the one hand, by the authors' depictions of the increasingly unfit and ornery Douglas and the unsophisticated yet affable Marshall and, on the other hand, by their open admiration of Rehnquist, who comes across as (by far) the most likeable and amiable of the justices.