FBI DETERMINED TO KEEP THE WATERGATE INVESTIGATION GOING

So a retired FBI official says now that individual FBI agents and managers funneled their cumulative knowledge about Watergate through Mark Felt to Bob Woodward. Meet the Deep Throat-ettes.

Daly says that in the '70s, he was the Bureau's liasion with a Senate committee investigating the bureau and the CIA. It was then that Long told him that he, Bates, Kunkel — and others — would get briefings from their agents in the field, then meet with Felt at the end of each work day, and funnel to him all they had on Watergate.
      
And their motive? "It was done," Daly said, "so that the investigation into Watergate couldn't be contained, so that the news media that were recipients of the leaks would create an atmosphere that would allow the investigation to go forward... They wanted to protect the integrity of the FBI." They were looking to keep the Watergate investigation alive, by keeping the Watergate story alive, in the pages of The Washington Post.

Motives in such cases are nearly always mixed. But what's wrong with this picture, that our national police organization had to go outside the Department of Justice to complete an investigation into wrongdoing by the administration? Is anything different today? Where's the disposition of the Plame case? Where are the whistleblowers? The Watergate model is, to nail any Bushie for anything, we'll have to find a criminal case against some small potato and let it lead upwards. However, lacking a courageous and non-partisan FBI, and an independent, indefatigable press, it'll never go anywhere.