Watergate is the quintessential conspiracy, one that went all the way to the White House and took down a presidency. But it is a story that is almost always provided without context, and with no mention of certain key facts. J Edgar Hoover died only a couple of months before the Watergate break-in, so the FBI was in the midst of a succession crisis when they were hit with the most controversial investigation in their history. Did this lead their deputy director Mark Felt, passed over by Nixon for promotion, to leak the story to Bob Woodward under the guise of Deep Throat?
Alternatively, was Watergate the result of a CIA conspiracy? The White House 'Plumbers' were being overseen by a CIA liaison who knew what they were doing. He retired from the CIA once Nixon was removed, and died in an apparent suicide a few years later. As a consequence of Watergate the CIA-friendly Neo-Cons took over the White House, and the CIA became the undisputed premier US spy agency. Did they set up the Nixon White House to take the fall so they could remove the Nixon administration? Was Watergate a soft power coup d'etat?
Sources
George Friedman - The Death of Deep Throat and the Crisis of Journalism
FBI Files on Mark Felt / Deep Throat
John Arthur Paisley
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