Deep Throat Co-Author Objects to Reviewer

This story from the New York Daily News appeared in my RSS reader via Bookslut within half an hour of my finishing watching the documentaries on the new All The President's Men Special Edition DVD:

The co-author of Deep Throat's book will lash out at The New York Times this Sunday for hiring Richard Nixon counsel John Dean to review it.

John O'Connor, who helped Mark Felt write 'A G-Man's Life: The FBI, Being 'Deep Throat,' and the Struggle for Honor in Washington,' based upon manuscripts written by Felt before he began showing signs of dementia, shot off a letter blasting Dean.

'It would be hard to imagine a reviewer more biased than Dean,' O'Connor writes. 'He was convicted of a crime and disbarred as a result of both Felt's investigation of Watergate and his role as 'Deep Throat.''

Felt was deputy director of the FBI even as he was feeding information about the infamous Watergate burglary to Bob Woodward at The Washington Post. The case led President Nixon to resign, as chronicled in Woodward's book with partner Carl Bernstein, 'All the President's Men.'

'The book ... deals sneeringly with Dean's lack of integrity,' O'Connor adds, 'and Dean himself has written two books assessing the identity and motives of Deep Throat, both of which were proven embarrassingly wrong.'

Actually, it seems to me that John Dean is one of the best people to review a book like this. As Dean's writings since he came out of prison show, he is not only a repentent participant but also a thoughtful commentator on the entire Watergate scandal. He has no delusions about the criminality of Watergate, and is a serious critic of the current Bush Administration's policies and activities, rising out of his desire to avoid another abuse of power on the Watergate scale. I am sure that the rationale for having Dean review the Felt book is that he is extremely knowledgable of Watergate and the Deep Throat mystery, especially since Dean himself was one of the people suspected as being Woodward's shadowy source.