Rating: 
Summary: In a Nutshell, The Truth about Watergate
Review: "Silent Coup" is the result of one of the most important journalistic research efforts of the modern era. It details an alternative view of the Watergate Affair, and blows a mile-wide hole in the commonly-accepted account of Woodward & Bernstein.As distasteful as it may be to some readers, the work generally supports the long-held claims of the G. Gordon Liddy camp, i.e. that Woodward & Bernstein's accounts in "The Washington Post" and their following books were merely an extension of John Dean's version of Watergate, wherein Dean is innocent and everyone else is guilty. However, while the book vindicates Liddy's testimony as to fact, it does not paint much of a flattering picture of the convicted felon otherwise. Colodny & Gettlin expose Dean's supposed role of "fall guy" for what it is: self-serving lies, and lies that were (or should have been) known to the Watergate prosecutors who used his perjured testimony, given in exchange for leniency, to bring down the Nixon Administration. A carefully researched and meticulously documented thesis is posited by the authors, namely that Dean essentially sent the White House up the river in order to save his own neck and conceal his own critical involvement in literally every aspect of the Watergate crimes and cover-ups. Specifically, an overwhelming case is made that Dean, in order to squash his own involvement in a seperate legal matter pertaining to the surreptitious use of DNC headquarters in Washington as a front for a high-class call-girl service, and in which his own future wife Mo was complicit, instigated the burglaries at the DNC in hopes of removing evidence belying his association therein. The DNC burglaries were conveniently tucked into the overall dirty tricks program against the advice of most of the operative conspirators, who, as Liddy has stated, saw no value in hitting the DNC. The value of the break-in, the authors show, was to Dean and Dean alone. The other primary bombshell dropped in "Silent Coup" is the very under-reported fact that journalist Bob Woodward was, astonishingly, a former Naval Officer involved in extremely sensitive communications intelligence, and that Woodward almost certainly briefed Alexander Haig and others in the Nixon White House in an official capacity prior to his departure from the Navy and rapid rise to the unlikely position of star reporter for the Post, and, conveniently, the lead newsbreaker in the Watergate matter! This direct link between Woodward and the Nixon White House should have disqualified Woodward from reporting on the matter. It did not disqualify him, because those who should have known about the link apparently either didn't know, or didn't care. This fine history of the Watergate era covers many other pertinent related topics, including the establishment of a top-secret communications "back channel", which Nixon instituted in order to sidestep the State Department and Pentagon in sensitive dealings with the former USSR, Red China, and in the prosecution and settlement of the Vietnam War. The evidence shows that the back channel was illegally compromised by Haig and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The implications with respect to the larger Watergate scandal are addressed in detail by the authors. The work also touches many historical issues exposed by the Watergate investigations, not the least of which is the implication that Nixon may have known the truth behind the Kennedy Assassination, and that some those connected to Watergate may have been directly involved, namely E. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, and perhaps some of the Cuban "Plumbers". Again, this history encompasses more than just Watergate by virtue of the enormous amount of studious research that was necessary to document the central arguments contained within. The importance of this book is further magnified by the fact that a large number of the players in the Watergate affair are deceased; fortunately for history, the authors had the opportunity to interview most of the now-dead key players prior to their passing. This book is must reading for anyone interested in Watergate. The book's radical rethinking of the common wisdom of Watergate is both refreshing and disturbing, not only in its treatment of the facts of the case, but as an expose' of the secret agenda of Bob Woodward.
Rating:
Summary: In a Nutshell, The Truth about Watergate
Review: "Silent Coup" is the result of one of the most important journalistic research efforts of the modern era. It details an alternative view of the Watergate Affair, and blows a mile-wide hole in the commonly-accepted account of Woodward & Bernstein. As distasteful as it may be to some readers, the work generally supports the long-held claims of the G. Gordon Liddy camp, i.e. that Woodward & Bernstein's accounts in "The Washington Post" and their following books were merely an extension of John Dean's version of Watergate, wherein Dean is innocent and everyone else is guilty. However, while the book vindicates Liddy's testimony as to fact, it does not paint much of a flattering picture of the convicted felon otherwise. Colodny & Gettlin expose Dean's supposed role of "fall guy" for what it is: self-serving lies, and lies that were (or should have been) known to the Watergate prosecutors who used his perjured testimony, given in exchange for leniency, to bring down the Nixon Administration. A carefully researched and meticulously documented thesis is posited by the authors, namely that Dean essentially sent the White House up the river in order to save his own neck and conceal his own critical involvement in literally every aspect of the Watergate crimes and cover-ups. Specifically, an overwhelming case is made that Dean, in order to squash his own involvement in a seperate legal matter pertaining to the surreptitious use of DNC headquarters in Washington as a front for a high-class call-girl service, and in which his own future wife Mo was complicit, instigated the burglaries at the DNC in hopes of removing evidence belying his association therein. The DNC burglaries were conveniently tucked into the overall dirty tricks program against the advice of most of the operative conspirators, who, as Liddy has stated, saw no value in hitting the DNC. The value of the break-in, the authors show, was to Dean and Dean alone. The other primary bombshell dropped in "Silent Coup" is the very under-reported fact that journalist Bob Woodward was, astonishingly, a former Naval Officer involved in extremely sensitive communications intelligence, and that Woodward almost certainly briefed Alexander Haig and others in the Nixon White House in an official capacity prior to his departure from the Navy and rapid rise to the unlikely position of star reporter for the Post, and, conveniently, the lead newsbreaker in the Watergate matter! This direct link between Woodward and the Nixon White House should have disqualified Woodward from reporting on the matter. It did not disqualify him, because those who should have known about the link apparently either didn't know, or didn't care. This fine history of the Watergate era covers many other pertinent related topics, including the establishment of a top-secret communications "back channel", which Nixon instituted in order to sidestep the State Department and Pentagon in sensitive dealings with the former USSR, Red China, and in the prosecution and settlement of the Vietnam War. The evidence shows that the back channel was illegally compromised by Haig and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The implications with respect to the larger Watergate scandal are addressed in detail by the authors. The work also touches many historical issues exposed by the Watergate investigations, not the least of which is the implication that Nixon may have known the truth behind the Kennedy Assassination, and that some those connected to Watergate may have been directly involved, namely E. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, and perhaps some of the Cuban "Plumbers". Again, this history encompasses more than just Watergate by virtue of the enormous amount of studious research that was necessary to document the central arguments contained within. The importance of this book is further magnified by the fact that a large number of the players in the Watergate affair are deceased; fortunately for history, the authors had the opportunity to interview most of the now-dead key players prior to their passing. This book is must reading for anyone interested in Watergate. The book's radical rethinking of the common wisdom of Watergate is both refreshing and disturbing, not only in its treatment of the facts of the case, but as an expose' of the secret agenda of Bob Woodward.
Rating:
Summary: DC pimp in White House
Review: Bob Woodward, with help from Carl Bernstein, co-wrote All the President's Men, which eventually became a myth-making movie starring Robert Redford. This book was credited with starting the downfall of President Richard Nixon in the aftermath of the illegal Watergate burglaries. Mr. Woodward had formerly been a Navy lieutenant whose daily job had been briefing the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon, and relaying daily their communications to General Alexander Haig, who was the president's White House chief of staff during the Vietnam War, according to Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin, in their book Silent Coup.
It's interesting that Nixon's chief of staff HR Haldeman, in his autobiography The Ends of Power, wrote that when Nixon mentioned "the Bay of Pigs thing" in the White House tapes, he was referring to Watergate CIA burglers E Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis being arrested in Dealy Plaza within minutes of the murder of John Kennedy in front of the Dallas police station (the photographed "tramps"). A civil libel jury found Hunt guilty of that murder, as proven by attorney, author of Plausible Denial. Hunt's paymaster in Dallas was CIA agent George HW Bush Sr, according to declassified CIA memo and J Edgar Hoover's memo. Hunt's wife was killed while delivering a payoff from Nixon to the Watergate burglers, when her airliner blew up, killing all on board.
Another bombshell in Silent Coup was the reported fact that White House attorney John Dean's wife was a prostitute and pimp in Washington DC, hired to blackmail Democrat politicians. That makes convicted-felon Dean a pimp and extortionist as well. Democrat Congressman Barney Frank performed a similar duty as gay pimp and snuff kiddie porn for George Bush Sr, as reported by Nebraska senator John DeCamp in his autobiography, The Franklin Coverup, and reported in 100 news articles by the Washington Times and DC criminal court convictions. To salvage his evil presidency, Nixon plotted to bomb the Republican National Convention, and blame bogus terrorists, as he plotted to terrorize USA with bogus terrorism in Operation Northwoods (declassified 2000). Northwoods plan including DC assassinations, bombings, sabotage of US military base in Commie Gitmo Cuba, hiring enemy soldiers to attack US military bases, building fake aircraft to simulate enemy aircraft and shoot down US military aircraft and civilian airliners, and hijack US airliners by remote control (as in 9-11-2001). Nixon was the father of Op Northwoods, that General President Eisenhower warned us about his VP Nixon's "military industrial complex".
All historians require Silent Coup to study our Gangster Government.
Rating:
Summary: Colodny's work the only one that makes Watergate make sense.
Review: Colodny's work analyzes the Watergate scandal in a manner that satisfies Occam's Razor. Though some speculation is involved, Colodny's scenario fits the personalities of the key players and does not rely on the superhumanly diabolical view of Nixon that sold many books in the seventies. He may be the first writer on Watergate to consider the possibility that Nixon, though morally capabable of crafting the events of the break-in, did not order it.
Polarized audiences looking for a scathing demolition of Richard Nixon or a sacchariney absolution of the man will not find their preconceptions reinforced here, and perhaps this is partially responsible for the mainstream media's
failure to give this work the attention it deserves.
Rating: 
Summary: Trash and nonsense
Review: Gordon liddy, who isn't revealing qhat he knows, unless john Dean wants to take it to court, says this book is the closest thing to the truth he has seen in print. Liddy, for those who forgot, was John Deans right hand man. It is likely that only these two men know the truth. Woodward and Bernstein were Spinning a saleable tale.
Rating: 
Summary: All the facts in the world won't stop the Nixon haters
Review: Gordon liddy, who isn't revealing qhat he knows, unless john Dean wants to take it to court, says this book is the closest thing to the truth he has seen in print. Liddy, for those who forgot, was John Deans right hand man. It is likely that only these two men know the truth. Woodward and Bernstein were Spinning a saleable tale.
Rating:
Summary: Historical Perspective after the passage of time
Review: Having just completed Silent Coup this afternoon, I felt compelled to comment. The resignation of Richard Nixon was my earliest political memory and ignited an interest in Watergate and politics in general that I carry to this day. I don't believe, as some do, that this was an effort to protect/redeem Richard Nixon, nor a conscious effort to discredit the Washington Post. Instead, as is usually the case, a true and objective historical perspective is not always clear amidst significant events(i.e. Kennedy Assassination, Gulf of Tonkin, Iran-Contra, Panama-Noriega, Kosovo, Columbia, our current World Trade Center tragedy). It is my belief that Bob Woodward was the only reporter at the time of the Watergate break-in with the access to discover the story as it unfolded. Unfortunately, the source/sources of this information was limited. It is not a surprise, assuming Haig was Deep Throat, that there would be a certain spin to the Woodward & Berstien coverage of the story. It is only after the passage of time and the publication of multiple biographies that we can begin to piece the entire puzzle together. It is safe to assume that the whole truth will never be known, much less verified. What is unique about this Colodny & Gettlin effort was the extensive and expansive interviews with most of the key players, the analysis of conflicting stories in so many biographies of the critical figures and the presentation of several versions of certain events(Dean vs. Liddy, Haig vs. Ford, etc). Whether you agree with the conclusions that are reached in Silent Coup, this book provides the broadest perspective on Watergate I have read to date.
Rating:
Summary: All Around Good Book
Review: I have never liked John Dean and this book gave me 450 more pages of reasons to dislike him. Ok that might be a bit much, but the authors basically blame Dean and Haig for most of Nixon's problems. The book gives the reader a great overview of the Watergate scandal and what took place behind the scenes. If you have read a number of books on this topic then this one has a new and interesting look at what really happened. Not to give too much away but the authors make a claim that it was actually a few people that were on the Presidents staff that pushed, tricked and caused Nixon to make the mistakes he did which resulted in him resigning. We also get their guess at who good old Deep Throat was. The authors do a very good job in detailing out all of the research they did to come to their conclusions. It looks like they read every book on the subject and talked to about 90% of the key players in the event. They give us all the instances where the statements that Dean made were just not completely correct and detail the many instances where Dean was completely wrong in many of his statements. They also have an interesting dup in the form of Woodward, which was an interesting tidbit. Overall it is hard to completely take all responsibility away from Nixon. The statements he made on tape and the full range of dirty tricks and abuse of power items that Nixon did just went too far to think that the issues around a Watergate cover up would be beyond him. The book is very interesting and is full of great insight into the administration. If you are interested at all in Watergate then you will really enjoy this book
Rating:
Summary: Unnamed British Journalists
Review: I saw a show on C-SPAN that said unnamed Brisish journalists on unnamed shows are not to be trusted.
Rating:
Summary: BBC reporters say this book is nonsense
Review: I saw a show on CSPAN with some BBC reporters who have investigated the claims of this book. The BBC reporters concluded that the claims of this book are nonsense.
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