I was all over Watergate.

I read the newspaper stories. I watched the Senate Watergate Committee hearings and heard Sam Ervin warn John Ehrlichman that “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” I followed the House Judiciary Committee hearings considering Articles of Impeachment against President Richard Nixon.

When Nixon resigned, I taped his speech by putting my cassette recorder’s microphone right in front of the TV’s tiny speaker. The sound was tinny, but the tape captured the sound of car horns honking in celebration outside my apartment.

I even took a bus to Washington, D.C., and sat in Judge John Sirica’s courtroom through the second day of the Watergate trial of H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, John Mitchell, and several others.

I read many Watergate books. It’s been about thirty years since I read All the President’s Men. All the time I was reading the book, I was trying to figure out the identity of Deep Throat, Bob Woodward’s “deep background” informant from inside the government. Reading the book’s account of one particular meeting between Woodward and Deep Throat, I felt a sudden certainty: I knew who Deep Throat was. It was so obvious, I thought Woodward and his co-author Carl Bernstein were being awfully careless with the anonymity of their secret source.

Through the years, I noted the many lists that folks compiled of people who were suspected of being Deep Throat. A few mentioned the man I knew to be Deep Throat, but most of them brushed past him quickly to dwell on other candidates. I would read the lists and smile quietly. I knew for certain that Deep Throat was FBI Director L. Patrick Gray.

I’m going to be drummed out of the Psychics’ Union for this. Not for being wrong, but for admitting it.

Pat Buchanan was sometimes on the lists of suspects. Last night on MSNBC’s Countdown, he said he knew none of the White House aides on the list could be Deep Throat, because Richard Nixon had helped each of them advance their careers. Apparently they were more loyal to Nixon than to the law. Not too surprising in the Nixon White House.

Had she lived, Marilyn Monroe would be 79 years old today.

This quote is attributed to her:

Hollywood is a place where they’ll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul.

Recommended: The Seven Year Itch, Some Like It Hot and The Misfits. The first two are brilliant comedies. The Misfits is not a comedy. Marilyn is extraordinarily good in all three. She had talent.