Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group

Creating a Positive View

By Ellen D.B. Riggle, PhD

As an academic researcher, I have typically taught and written  about things that would depress and scare ordinary people (actually, these things depress and scare me too):  depression and anxiety, psychological abuse, drug and alcohol abuse, violent attacks, discrimination and everyday prejudice.  I discuss these topics in the context of the stresses that people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) face and have to cope with.  It seems that in my academic training, I was taught to focus on negative issues.  Implicitly I was taught that if nothing is “wrong” then everything must be okay, and we don’t need to talk about that.

Focusing on “what’s wrong” is important.  For example, the current focus on the violence and psychological abuse associated with bullying is essential to providing all children and adults with a safe environment for living their lives.  We are all responsible for solving this problem so we all need to be talking about it.  But in focusing on what’s wrong, sometimes we forget to also focus on “what’s right.” 

 “What’s right” are stories that often get ignored or that just aren’t seen as interesting enough to make the news.  A case in point:  my friends, two women who have been partners for decades and are devoted parents and now grandparents, spend their time and energy acting as mentors and positive role models for young LGBT people and their allies in the pursuit of social justice -- they don’t make the news.  The Rhode Island Catholic Bishop who opposes marriage equality by stating that “homosexual activity is immoral, an offense to God, a serious sin” – he makes the news.  This creates an imbalance in the messages that we are exposed to and impacts the stories that come to mind when we think about LGBT lives.

If we are to successfully address issues such as stigmatization, bullying and other public health risks for LGBT people, we must create a culture that, on a regular basis, celebrates instead of denigrates LGBT lives. How do we change this imbalance of messages and create a celebratory culture?  One way to address this challenge is to share the positive stories of LGBT lives.  In our research with over a thousand LGBT people, we have heard stories of personal growth and life lessons that can benefit us all.  We have heard stories about the benefits of living an authentic life and how that brings people closer to their family and friends.  We have heard stories from many people about the importance of being flexible and creative in relationships with their partners so that both partners flourish.  We have heard about how people develop compassion for others and engage in work or volunteer activities to support and benefit people in need.  All of these actions come from positive qualities that people associate with their LGBT identities. 

Our personal stories have power over how we define our own lives and they have power when we share them with others.  Talking with others about the positive aspects of LGBT identities, recognizing the benefits of these identities in individual lives and the life of our communities, is an important part of creating a celebratory culture.  Sharing stories of LGBT lives will help to re-balance and re-focus the conversations that people have. 

Ellen D.B. Riggle is Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Political Science at the University of Kentucky.  She is co-author of A Positive View of LGBTQ: Embracing Identity and Cultivating Well-Being.  For more information about her research, go to www.PrismResearch.org.

Addicted to Addictions

By David J. Ley

A few weeks ago, a woman came up to me after a presentation I had given, on why I believed sex addiction was a dangerous myth. She was in tears, as she told me about her son whom she had lost about a decade ago to the ravages of alcoholism. She told me that near the end of his life, her son was in a very expensive private-pay treatment facility, and called her up to ask if he had ever been sexually abused.

As this mother told me this story, and disclosed this part, a look of anguish creased her face. “I told him that I didn’t think he ever was, and he told me that at the facility, therapists had told him that not only was he an alcoholic, but that he was a sex addict as well. And that his sex addiction must have come from being sexually abused.”

The lady’s son sadly died a few weeks after that, from complications related to his severe substance abuse. For a decade, this poor woman has lived with tremendous fear and guilt, guilt that her son might have been sexually abused, something she didn’t prevent, or even know about. She was anguished that the unknown abuse, and her apparent unknowing neglect, might  have contributed to her son’s tragic life and loss.

I was the first person this woman ever heard, who said that sex addiction was a myth, a moralizing and unsubstantiated label that people throw around callously and casually. I gave her some peace, she told me, because for the first time in a decade, she could see that her son probably hadn’t been abused, and wasn’t addicted to sex. These therapists were merely riding the train of sex addiction, throwing that diagnosis at anything they could lasso with it, regardless of the consequences. If they could convince her son that he wasn’t just an alcoholic, but a sex addict too, what did they get out of it? Who knows? Maybe money. Or maybe they just saw every problem in the young man’s life as a form of addiction, and threw that label around to impress themselves.

A few decades or so ago, therapists believed they could recover memories of abuse, uncover buried memories of sexual, physical and even satanic abuse, in their patients. Because they saw symptoms they thought were related to a history of abuse, it didn’t matter that the patient said “Hey, I wasn’t ever abused.” But it turned out the patients were right and the therapists wrong. Lives were ruined, people went to jail and families were devastated because of the therapist’s well-intended arrogance.

They thought they were helping. But hundreds of lawsuits and settlements have now shown that those therapists hurt people. The myth of sex addiction hurts people too. This is why I’m challenging it every chance I can get. To demand that these therapists be responsible with the power they wield over people’s lives and fears.

David J. Ley is a clinical psychologist in practice in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He provides clinical and consultative services in numerous other states. Dr. Ley currently serves as Executive Director of a large outpatient behavioral health agency in Albuquerque and maintains a current caseload of clients. He is the author of The Myth of Sex Addiction and   Insatiable Wives: Women Who Stray and the Men Who Love Them.

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

Oh, the Thinks You Can Think!

Today we celebrate the life of Dr. Seuss by sharing a great book which explores the philosophical and moral dilemmas often found in his stories. 

Since Theodore Geisel published his first children's book in 1937 under the pseudonym Dr. Seuss, children and adults alike have been captivated by the charming and laconic tales of whimsical characters and imaginative worlds. But Dr. Seuss' stories are more than just catchy poems; they often wrestle with serious philosophical and moral dilemmas, whether it is Horton discovering the very essence of life or the Lorax teaching us about morality. Dr. Seuss and Philosophy Oh the Thinks You Can Think! explores philosophical concepts such as the nature of the good life in Oh the Places You'll Go, the nature of knowledge in McElligot's Pool, Postmodernity in On Beyond Zebra, business and the environment in The Lorax, and moral character in How the Grinch Stole Christmas, among many others. Anyone who loves Dr. Seuss or is interested in philosophy will find this book to be intriguing and enlightening.

Learn more about the book, here.

The Messages in President Obama’s Spotify Playlist

By Benjamin S. Schoening and Eric T. Kasper 

Now that 2012 is upon us, so is another presidential election. Barack Obama is seeking a second term as the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for president, and four candidates are currently vying for the Republican Party nomination. There are many strategic decisions which these politicians make to promote their candidacies, including crafting inspiring speeches, offering eloquent answers to interview questions, and creating patriotic backdrops at campaign events. For as long as there have been American presidential elections, one of the candidates’ quadrennial considerations has also been selection of the right music.

President Obama made news on February 9th when he announced his campaign’s Spotify playlist. For those not familiar with Spotify, it is an online music service that streams songs to members of the website. President Obama released his playlist in 2012 in much the same way that he announced his iPod playlist during his 2008 candidacy. Playlists such as this can send powerful messages to the electorate, as they can transmit political ideas or associate a candidate with a notable musical celebrity. With this in mind, let’s have a look at a few of the 28 songs on President Obama’s Spotify playlist.

One of the more notable selections is Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.” President Obama previously sang the first few bars of this song at an appearance in the Apollo Theater in New York City on January 19th. Although originally written as a romantic song when first released by Green in the early 1970s, the song’s title and hook offer a powerful message from an incumbent president to the voters: vote for me, so that we can mutually continue along the path we are on now.

A second song choice by President Obama that musically asks for another opportunity to serve the country is U2’s “Even Better than the Real Thing.” In multiple places the overarching message is that the listener will be satisfied by giving the singer one more chance. The song goes on to refer to its audience as the real thing and even better than that. This can be interpreted as a way to “pump up” supporters of the President. Again, like “Let’s Stay Together,” the lyrics of “Even Better than the Real Thing” were clearly originally written with romantic intent, but the key catchy parts of the song can be co-opted to express relevant political messages.

REO Speedwagon’s “Roll with the Changes” exemplifies another important political theme for President Obama. The title of this tune harkens back to one of the President’s major campaign slogans from 2008: Change we can believe in. The lyrics go on to tell the listener that the singer is available when the listener is ready to move along with the changes that lay ahead. The lyrics also tell the listener that the tables have turned, and they imply that the darkest hour has passed. Certainly, one could see this as a message from President Obama that the economy is on the mend and things are getting better because of the changes he has implemented.

The songs a campaign chooses can also be used to thwart the message of the political opposition. One song on President Obama’s playlist that does this is “No Nostalgia” by Ages and Ages. Recently, Republican candidates have expressed a message that the country is on the wrong path, and only they can restore America to its past greatness. The hook of “No Nostalgia” takes aim at this notion, claiming that instead of looking to the past we should concentrate on the promise of what our country is now and can become in the future.

Of course, one must be careful not to read too much into these lyrics and song choices. Still, there is no doubt that President Obama and those working on his reelection campaign thought long and hard about which songs to release. Ultimately, song choice is an important consideration for presidential campaigns. The right song can become a memorable way to express important political messages. On the other hand, the wrong songs can muddle a campaign message, and key song omissions can lead to hurt feelings among those who were musically snubbed.

____________________

About the authors: Benjamin S. Schoening and Eric T. Kasper are the authors of Don't Stop Thinking about the Music: The Politics of Songs and Musicians in Presidential Campaigns.  Benjamin Schoening is Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Wisconsin-Barron County and music director of the Red Cedar Choir in Rice Lake.  Eric T. Kasper is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Barron County and the municipal judge in Rice Lake.

Too Big to Disclose

By Raymond Vickers

     Prior to the financial meltdown of 2008, America had the most elaborate bank regulatory system in the world. Despite eight decades of ever-increasing authority and regulatory agencies, the sheer magnitude of the recent banking crisis proved that the regulatory system, relying exclusively on regulators operating behind closed doors, cannot police the largest banks, which continue to threaten the global economy with a systemic banking collapse. The passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in July 2010 merely added to the already sweeping regulatory power.

     But once again the muscular lobbying of the banking industry continued to impose the prohibition of   transparency in the bank regulatory system. As Senator Richard Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, observed in a moment of unusual candor, in April 2009, “the banks—hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created—are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.”

     Soon after the S&L crisis of the 1980s and then again after the Enron debacle of 2001, Congress reorganized the bank regulators and increased their power. During the most recent speculative mania, regulators were armed with the power to stop the corrupt practices at the nation’s largest banks. Because Congress failed to provide regulatory transparency, the bankers were able to continue the plunder in secret.

     The banking secrets of the 1930s, which are now public records, reveal how bankers and businessmen violated their fiduciary duties in a desperate effort to save their personal fortunes. Those records contain many lessons for today, the most important of which is the urgent need to provide transparency in the bank regulatory system. The bank regulatory records should be available to the public through the Internet, so that a depositor or investor has only to type in the name of a bank to have immediate access to its regulatory records.

     Fully disclosing reckless financing schemes and dubious loans immediately after bank regulators criticize them would accomplish far more than the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which failed to sound the alarm bell before the 2008 collapse. Posting their banks’ examination reports on the Internet would have a chilling effect on freewheeling executives who would breach their fiduciary obligations to their stockholders and creditors in order to enrich themselves.

     In this moment of anxiety, taxpayers have the power to force openness in the banking industry. Transparency would strike at the alliance between banks and politicians, and provide the necessary information to make the markets function properly. There is no doubt that releasing the secrets of the banking industry would provide a wrenching adjustment among insiders. But secrecy and the lack of information about the fraud and insider abuse in the financial system led to the 2008 fiasco, which caused the worst recession since the depression in the 1930s. Not addressing this problem now invites financial upheavals in the future.

 

Raymond B. Vickers, an attorney and economic historian, is the author of  Panic in the Loop: Chicago's Banking Crisis of 1932. He was formerly the top appointed banking and securities regulator for the state of Florida. As an attorney, he has represented more than a hundred financial institution.

DUST: the Inside Story of Its Role in the September 11th Aftermath

By Paul J. Lioy

Memorial Day 2011 has just passed, and during the Spring of 2011 another page in the fight against terrorism and the need to be prepared for the unknown. Tom Kean, who has commented widely about preparedness, is still correct because even with the death of Osama Bin Laden threats remain high against our country’s people and infrastructure, and his words should be a reminder that being prepared for terrorist events is an important part of our country’s responsibility to protect and defend. The 10th Anniversary of the deadly attacks on the WTC, United flight 93, and the Pentagon is also just around the corner. They will be solemn occasions that will provide an opportunity to educate those who were too young to remember or are part of the next generation. Since the publication of Dust: the Inside Story of Its role in Role in the September 11th Aftermath, I have talked to many individuals and groups, and recorded interviews, about the reasons for writing the book. In my discussions, it became clear that people wanted to know how the results of our analyses of the dust were used to understand exposure and health response relationships. In reviewing what has been written since publication of my book, the actual health effects experienced by the workers/volunteers remain highly correlated with the time of a person’s arrival at Ground Zero, and whether or not he or she was wearing a respirator during their completion of Ground Zero related activities over time. Based upon all my conversations with physicians and other environmental health professionals, my hypotheses remain consistent: the unknown or unquantifiable gases released during the jet fuel fires were part of the etiology of the diseases derived from the aerosol that contained the WTC Dust and inhaled by the workers/volunteers during the first days after the collapse of the towers. However, they cannot be realistically reconstructed in toxicological tests because they would have to include both the WTC Dust and combustion gases released by “uncontrolled” fires caused by the burning jet fuel.

The reader response to other important aspects of my story has come as sort of a surprise. Many were associated with the content of Chapter 12 which deals with the lessons learned and the lessons that still need to be learned from 9-11. These are linked specifically to the 5 Rs + 1: Rescue, Re-entry, Recovery, Restoration and Rehabitation. The Plus 1 is Resilience. Because of the natural events that have occurred since 9-11 (e.g. earthquake and Tsunami in Japan), and military actions overseas, I have had opportunities to describe the levels of completion or success using the 5 Rs for some of those incidents. As a member of the general public you can use my 5Rs to grade us all on the actions and the outcomes of those actions that can and do occur in natural and terrorist events.

Paul J. Lioy is a Professor and Vice Chair, Department of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. He is Deputy Director for Government Relations and Director of Exposure Science at the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute of Rutgers University and RWJMS-UMDNJ. Dr. Lioy is the author of Dust: The Inside Story of its Role in the September 11th Aftermath.

Schuman, Persichetti, and Mennin: Modern Musicians Remembered

By Walter Simmons

For many today—including those who consider themselves musical sophisticates—the names of William Schuman, Vincent Persichetti, and Peter Mennin hearken back half a century or more to the days when composers concerned themselves with writing “the Great American Symphony.” These figures –Schuman and Mennin especially--were very much regarded as “musical bureaucrats,” both having held the position of president of the internationally renowned Juilliard School. And while he was never an administrator, Persichetti had led the Juilliard composition faculty for some 35 years, rendering him the quintessential “academic.”

But the careers of all three were launched through their musical compositions, which had made a significant an impact when each was still quite young. Schuman’s musical activity had been limited to the world of Tin Pan Alley until he turned 20; nine years later his Symphony No. 2 was performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Mennin completed the writing of his Symphony No. 3 on his 23rd birthday and performed later that year by the New York Philharmonic. Persichetti’s career developed more gradually, but only by comparison. In his 30s, he discovered the wind ensemble, for which he had a distinctive gift as a composer. Although his large catalog of works includes all genres, he is recognized today as the foremost American composer of music for wind band of his generation, and most of his works for that medium endure as classics.

As for my own relationship with these composers, their music proved a far more personal experience for me. I discovered their works when I was in my early teens—largely through my own high school band experience, thanks to a conductor who set high standards for his ensemble, which he refused to subject to holiday parades and football games. It was a very high-minded time in American culture—the JFK years. But while for most of my peers this exposure would always remain part of their high school experience, I loved this music with an intense passion As my interests developed, I began to reach beyond these composers’ works for band, delving into their compositions for orchestra, chorus, chamber ensembles, and solo instruments—and into the music of other American composers of their generation as well.

Studying their music, however, wasn’t enough for me: I also wanted to know them as people, to search for connections between their personalities and their creative lives. So I sought them out personally and eventually became acquainted with them and their families to differing degrees. All part of the question I sought to answer as to how mind and music resonate with one another, I dare say that the connections between their personalities and their creative work remain largely an enigma to me and may well be what makes theirs works as great as they are.

When I headed off to college in the mid-1960s, imagine my shock when I learned that these composers, whose music I had come to cherish were “out,” while serialism and other, more experimental approaches were now “in.” A gauntlet had been thrown down, and so I pursued graduate studies in theory and musicology for the specific purpose of uncovering the reasons why these composers, whose music had touched me so deeply, were now the objects of scorn. My researches only reinforced a deep-seated certainty that the disparagement of these composers had little to do with musical quality and much to do with musical politics. It was then I decided to devote my life to bringing greater attention to the music of these masters, arguing for its legitimacy and stature as fine creative art based on the principles of great music that have evolved over the centuries. Besides the hundreds of reviews I have written, weekly radio series I have hosted, and numerous premiere recordings I have produced, my two books are the culminations of this effort to bring these great composers—and others like them—back into the mainstream of musical greatness. I only my hope both books have supplied a sturdy foundation for others similarly excited by this body of music to pursue it in their study as performers and researchers.

Walter Simmons has received the National Educational Film Festival Award and the ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award for music criticism. He has contributed articles to The New Grove Dictionary of American Music, American National Biography, Fanfare, Music Journal, and Musical America. He is the author of Voices in the Wilderness: Six American Neo-Romantic Composers (Scarecrow, 2004) and the recently published The Music of William Schuman, Vincent Persichetti, and Peter Mennin: Voices of Stone and Steel (Scarecrow, 2010).

What Sells Better than Sex? REVENGE! The Taylor Swift Takeover

By Elizabeth Barfoot Christian

Taylor Swift’s not superstitious.

The gorgeous yet gangly 20-year-old queen of crossover country, continues to show that only those who screw her over need fear her favorite number, 13, which she famously marks on her right hand before each performance.

But do her wrong, and you’ll wish you’d never crossed her path. She will live to sing about it---and make millions off your shame with a sweet smile on her face.

Swift has definitely lived up to her name with the speed at which she has smashed music records, becoming the youngest artist ever to win album of the year at the Academy of Country Music Awards in 2009 for Fearless, her second album. It was the best-selling album of 2008 and 2009 and has become the most-awarded album in country music history.

She repeated the win in 2010 at the Grammys, also becoming the youngest artist ever to win Album of the Year.

Thus far, Swift has won more than 70 awards in a career not yet five years old.

So what’s her formula for success? This former teen angel has proven she’s a music marketing powerhouse. And the grown-up Taylor’s menu includes songs served up with a spoonful of sugar-coated revenge! Her latest album, 2010’s Speak Now, debuted at No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard 100, selling more than 1 million its first week, a feat not done since 2005—and only achieved by three female artists before her.

Here’s a brief run-down of how this nice girl can do nasty—and why her fans love her for it.

Humiliated in front of millions by Kanye West upon her win at the VMAs, she acted like a lady, then later offered her forgiveness in lyrics. Result: hit song “Innocent.”

Wronged by player John Mayer, Swift wrote him a “Dear John” letter neither he nor we shall ever forget.

After losing the love of her life, Joe Jonas, to a looser lady, Taylor memorialized the bad behavior. Result: hit song “Better Than Revenge.”

Writers are always taught to write what they know, and no one tells her tales better than Taylor. The world just rarely gets access to one’s diary so creatively delivered. Swift seems to genuinely want to engage her audience in her life. She spends hours with fans after each show and is involved in every aspect of her image. She values what her fans think of her, and she has the kind of wholesomeness that attracts little girls, teenage boys and moms, alike. Something about her songs resonates with all of us.

Taylor, the victim, knows how to do vicious better than anyone since the angry Alanis Morissette of the ‘90s. Now, we can all sit back and wait for the jilted-by-Jake Gyllenhaal ditty.

Elizabeth Barfoot Christian is assistant professor of journalism at Louisiana Tech University and the editor of Rock Brands: Selling Sound in a Media Saturated Culture.

Next blog: The publicly profane Odd Future of the music industry

PTSD is not a modern phenomenon

By Dennis W. Brandt

Loss of courage.” “Battle fatigue.” “Shell shock.” These are just some of the historical names for a debilitating psychological condition inherent to warfare. Modern psychiatrists call it “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,” a condition brought to the public’s attention in a post-Vietnam world but one that hardly began in the rice paddies of Southeast Asia. The recent HBO documentary, Wartorn: 1861—2010 includes the tragic story of a young Civil War soldier named Angelo M. Crapsey. I chronicled Angelo’s slip into mental torment in my book Pathway to Hell: A Tragedy of the American Civil War and was honored that HBO included a Civil War segment partly because of the book. I also served as a consultant for the show.

PTSD is a relatively neglected aspect of Civil War research. Obviously, no one can interview those involved, and people then were reluctant to discuss the matter and thus left little documentation. Moreover, historians by nature have little or no training in psychology and are understandably reluctant to psychoanalyze the dead. But what became clear during my research was that those who experienced Antietam, Gettysburg, or Shiloh felt no less terror and were no less psychologically debilitated than those who stormed the beaches at Iwo Jima and Normandy, endured the Tet Offensive, or are fighting now in the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan. The Civil War became romanticized even during its veterans’ lifetimes, but it is critical to remember that those photos of reunions depicting former adversaries shaking hands across a stone wall they once tried to kill each other to possess occurred decades later and cannot expose private torments. Angelo’s case is an ideal illuminator because it is founded on extensive primary accounts.

As the U.S. military is no longer ignoring the problem, history, too, must become engaged.

Dennis W. Brandt is a freelance author-historian and the author of Pathway to Hell: A Tragedy of the American Civil War (Lehigh University Press), From Home Guards to Heroes: The 87th Pennsylvania and its Civil War Community, and Shattering the Truth: The Slandering of Abraham Lincoln.

Deep Throat and Government Records

By Ivan Greenberg

The ongoing publication of secret U. S. Department of Defense and State documents by Wikileaks points once again to the important role that government records can play in documenting abuse of power. But there are other ways to obtain important government documents without relying on unauthorized disclosures. Using the Freedom of Information Act, I recently obtained the 3,500-plus page FBI file on W. Mark Felt, who died almost two years ago. The file suggests new ways of looking at the demise of Richard Nixon and the role of the FBI in American society.

To begin with, when Felt’s role as Deep Throat first was made public in 2005 few in the media, with the exception of the Albany Times Union, adequately appreciated that he did not act alone. At least three other top-level FBI officials or agents worked with him to coordinate the leaks to the press. What might properly be called a “coup” inside the government, led by Felt, forced the President to resign. The actions of this FBI faction were extraordinary. Instead of targeting political liberals or radicals, they went after the chief executive using information as a weapon.

Felt’s motives have been discussed at length. He saw himself as a patriotic whistleblower acting to preserve the integrity of government. Nixon broke the law during Watergate and so the President should be exposed. Critics see less noble purposes. Felt resented being passed over for the Director’s job by Nixon after J. Edgar Hoover died in early May 1972. In addition, Felt acted as a vigilante against Nixon because the President wanted to run “dirty tricks” intelligence operations directly out of the White House bypassing the FBI altogether. The latter point is critical: Felt hoped to preserve the dominant role of the FBI to spy on Americans in domestic politics. Felt called it preserving the FBI’s “independence.”

FBI files show that the Felt faction engaged in a high-level of deception within the Bureau to protect its secret contact with the press. Soon after the Watergate break-in, Director L. Patrick Gray III put Felt in charge of finding sources of FBI leaks to the press. In short, the fox had been put in charge of protecting the chickens.

On several occasions, Felt and his collaborators investigated others knowing they had no part in the leaks. For example, in the summer of 1972 an agent working with Felt conducted several dozen interviews of FBI personnel in the hunt for the leaker. In another instance, Felt wrote a bogus memo suggesting that the source of leaks to the Washington Post came from outside the Bureau. In a third memo dated Sept. 11, 1972, Felt told one of his conspirators to “forcibly remind all agents of the need to be most circumspect in talking about this case with anyone outside the Bureau.”

By the fall of 1972, Nixon suspected Felt as the source of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s articles. When Nixon in early 1973 urged Gray to make Felt submit to a lie-detector test, Gray refused. Nixon later recalled the conversation:

’Pat,” I said. ‘I want you to check these leaks.’

“He said, ’Oh, they couldn’t be from the Bureau.’

“I said, ‘Yes they are…some are.’ And I said, ‘We have from very good authority that they’re from Felt.’

‘Oh, they could not be from Felt.’

“I said, ‘Dam it, they may be’ and I said, ‘You ought to give him a lie-detector test.’

“’Oh, we can’t do that,’ he said. ‘But,” he said, ‘I vouch for Felt.’”

In his 2008 memoir, Gray described this meeting with the President as a 30-minute “tirade” against leaks coming from the FBI. Gray refused to accept the President’s view of the source of the leaks. But Gray’s successor, Clarence M. Kelley, started a formal investigation the next year to ascertain if Felt had served as Deep Throat. On June 20, 1974, Felt -- now retired -- wrote a personal letter to the Director defending himself in false, blunt terms. “My contacts with the press have been limited. On only one occasion did I ever ‘leak’ information and that was years ago and on instructions from the Bureau….I am not ‘Deep Throat.’”

That this deception lasted for so many years is not too surprising. In early 1975, agents inside the Bureau suspected Felt continued to engage in press leaks despite his retirement. Felt again wrote the Director to deny it. “I want you to know that I am not the source of the unfortunate [text redacted] stories appearing yesterday and today in the ‘Washington Post,’” he said. He admitted a reporter had called him. “I tried to talk him out of writing the story but we both know that front page by-lines sometimes become more important to reporters than the facts.”

Felt’s declassified FBI file helps us understand the great lengths he went to cover-up his role in bringing down the President.

Ivan Greenberg is the author of The Dangers of Dissent: The FBI and Civil Liberties since 1965.