EDGEDAVAO
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What reporters can learn from Deep Throat
OOKWORM isn’t exactly the right word to describe someone who just finished reading a book like “The Secret Man” by Bob Woodward during the last three weekends of the year past, because a real bookworm can gobble up every page of that book in less than three days. Like every other journalist who loves reading and writing and taken in so strongly by that book-- and later a movie-- with the same title, “All The President’s Men” you can’t live long with the secret that Bob Woodward carried with him for 33 years--the real identity of “Deep Throat”. If you aren’t familiar with the book and the movie, “Deep Throat” was the name tag given to the mysterious FBI agent who tipped off Bob Woodward with deep background on what President Richard Nixon’s top officials were doing to cover up a widespread conspiracy to help him win the re-election. The secret tips and leads given by “Deep Throat” to Woodward guided this reporter on what to look for, whom to contact, etc in writing the news stories on the Watergate scandal in the Washington Post in 1972 that eventually forced Richard Nixon to resign. This was seen as a triumph for journalism and for press freedom. It was the actor and producer Robert Redford who suggested to Bob Woodward that it was their investigative journalism work, rather than the fall of the Nixon presidency that was very interesting as a story. This was during their chance meeting on board a press bus to one of the election campaign sorties in the US. At that time, Woodward was already
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VOL. 6 ISSUE 215 • THURSDAY, JANUARY 16, 2014
YPING CONFIRMS THE WRONG EXISTING SITUATION - President Benigno Aquino III and his bunch of over-zealous socio-political and economic advisers and image-builders may not accept it, but right now the administration is in frantic search for suitable solutions to the country’s prevailing crisis and other entwining problems which will not go away any sooner. The Palace propaganda team and its supporting PR groups have been trying to tout the people that all is and will be alright. But persistent critics and political detractors say hyping only confirms the wrong existing situation. Since President PNoy assumed the presidency in 2010, the government-controlled media, on most occasions, have pictured him as having some polished qualities of a leader like, say, working longer hours. Again critics say these have only emphasized the obvious and skillful-like the president may be, he cannot make things happen what he likes to transpire. Now here’s the query: “Is the highly appraising analysis of the President’s high-profile political and economic advisers and financial managers a confession of failure halfway through his term?” President Aquino will step down from the presidency in 2016. Will the Philippines be crisis-free when he bows out? Looking back, the electorate elevated President PNoy to the presidency in 2010 believing he has the right formula to success and to save the country from a moribund leadership, but his political adversaries insist he frustrated the people in their high hope just the same. Political experts noted that Aquino won not because he was the best at that time but because there was no one else who could beat other leading and most popular candidates.
planning to write the book and still had no idea where and how to start. Both Wo o dwa rd and his partner reporter Carl Bernstein finally agreed with Redford that their struggles and difficulties in getting Washington sources to talk and reveal the most damaging information on Nixon’s men---- was the meat of their story. But both the book and movie never reveal the identity of the man called “Deep Throat” who had secret meetings with Woodward in a dark underground garage in the wee hours of the morning when everyone is fast asleep. When I read the book and saw the movie starring Redford and Dustin Hoffman (as Bernstein), I cannot even guess if this secret source is someone from the White House, the Central Intelligence Agency or the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It was only after reading Woodward’s book “The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate’s Deep Throat” that I finally learned that “Deep Throat” is the Number Two man in the FBI, the man who almost took over the post of J. Edgar Hoover, his boss, who died without ever knowing what happened to Nixon and all the President’s men. Of course, Woodward knew him all
along, having met him once in the White House when the Post reporter was still in the US Navy, delivering some documents, sitting beside this man who introduced himself as W. Mark Felt from the FBI who had an appointment with some Nixon officials. It was this chance meeting that led Woodward to contact this FBI insider to tell him what’s really going on after the Watergate break-in, by “burglars” who turned out to be ex-CIA agents working for the President’s men. But still W. Mark Felt at 77 years old, a retired old man in California, cannot remember what he did, where he was, whom he knew, in 1972, propped up by his 56-year old daughter claiming her dad was suffering from dementia --- a mental condition linked to memory loss. Because he can’t remember clearly, he can’t admit he was the “Deep Throat”. In the Philippines, investigative journalists also have their own “deep throats” supplying them hardcore facts in secret, especially in the recent Pork Barrel Scam and lately the Rice Smuggling story. Most of these “deep throats” eventually become “ Whistle Blowers” when they agree to cooperate with the NBI and go public by testifying before the Senate Committee. As Woodward wrote, you can’t have a “deep throat” supplying you secret information unless you vow to keep his identity a secret until his death. If you’re a journalist, can you be trusted to keep your source a secret? (Comments? Email me at> tradingpost_davao@yahoo.com)
On assuming the presidency, Aquino was facing the same interlocking problems that were left behind by his predecessors – abject poverty, unemployment, low wages and high cost of living, lack of food and shelter, communist and Moro insurgencies, drug and crime syndicates, kidnapping, terrorism, investors and capital flight, and worse, rampant smuggling and massive corruption in all government levels. And we also have to consider as a more dreadful problem confronting the leadership a series of man-made and natural calamities that badly devastated the country causing severe damages to lives, properties, crops and infrastructures. By this time, mid-way through the Aquino administration, the balance sheet shows that whatever gains President PNoy has achieved cannot offset the continuous letdowns. For instance, despite scoring high in the economic front like GDP surpassing the targets and a bullish stock market, revenue collections until recently have been below the expected targets. What has gone wrong? I presumed the President has good social, economic and political plans and programs. Had these been correctly implemented as planned immediately right after he assumed office, much of the problems that greeted President PNoy in 2010 could have been solved by 2014, but it appears that the opposite happened? PREVAILING ‘SOCIAL CANCER’ – Why
should the Aquino administration not urged Congress, both the Lower and Upper Chambers through their respective committees on social justice, and welfare and development to make an inquiry into the weakness of the Filipino character with the view of undertaking measures, which would revitalize our national integrity and strengthen the moral fiber of the Filipinos during this time of grave crisis? Through this process, lot of questions need appropriate answers: “Why concentrate on the weaknesses of our people? Why is there a need to examine how society shapes our character and how Filipino children are brought up and what distortions in the process are being introduced? Is the country’s present socio-economic situation so desperate that thousands upon thousands of our discontented and disillusioned countrymen would migrate to foreign lands to look for greener pastures and several thousands of our women refused to learn new skills other than selling their bodies several times over every night? Why do we always disobey even the simplest traffic rules and regulations and why has circumventing the law becomes second nature, or to put it more crudely has cheating and corrupt practices become a normal way of life in our benighted country?” Again, what has gone wrong? Why can’t the Aquino administration, as critics would aptly put it, put its own house in proper order? Is there something left for our present leaders, President PNoy above all, to put in orderly fashion the affairs of government because by making a comparison the Philippines is like a very sickly person trying to recover from illness. It’s about time the leadership should intently analyze the “social cancer” affecting the vital organs of our ailing society.
Indication of failure
VANTAGE POINTS
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Don’t fear the Internet of things COMMENTARY BY JACK SHAFER
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Part 1 of 2
OVELIST Philip K. Dick anticipated by four decades the Internet of Things, a phenomenon touted loudly by the press from this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Internet-aware automobiles, toothbrushes, mattresses, infant monitors, fitness trackers, pet collars, tennis rackets, lightbulbs, toilets, bathroom scales, “wearable” tech, tricorder-like medical sensors, and more have arrived or are on their way. Dick, ever the dystopian, recognized that one man’s technological boon is inevitably another’s bane, and expressed this view most bleakly in his Ubik. The novel, published in 1969 but set in the early 1990s, posits a world populated with nearly sentient appliances. Joe Chip, the novel’s protagonist, is so broke he’s in arrears with the robots that clean his apartment, and they have reported him to a credit agency as a deadbeat. One morning, upon attempting to exit his apartment, the smartdoor blocked him, saying “Five cents, please.” “I’ll pay you tomorrow,” Chip promised after searching his empty pockets. The door isn’t having it, and refused to open. “What I pay you,” Chip said, “is in the nature of a gratuity; I don’t have to pay you.” “I think otherwise,” the door said. “Look in the purchase contract you signed.” Chip did as told, retrieving the contract and reading it. “You discover I’m right,” said the door in a smug voice. Using a knife as a screwdriver, Chip started to unscrew the bolt assembly. “I’ll sue you,” the door said as the first screw fell out. “I’ve never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it,” Chip responded. Nobody has been sued by a sassy, Ubik-esque smartdoor — yet. But it’s not completely irrational to worry that somewhere in the terms of service agreements that come with the newage lightbulbs, dog collars, and whoknows-what-next entering the market, we’ll find boilerplate legal language that will give our appliances standing in court to sue us for non-payment, trespassing, and unscrewing. As more and more everyday objects become “aware” and report the position and status of not just things but people, our world might start converging with the one imagined in Dick’s Ubik. What troubles people about the Internet of Things (or IoT, it’s called) is not the nagging and monitoring the devices generate, but control over the data collected. Computer data is used against you in ways you never anticipated. A piece in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal gives a current example: Lending companies now scrape Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites to establish individuals’ creditworthiness and identity, something few users thought about when posting pictures and narratives about themselves. As IoT devices roll out, they’ll become new self-surveillance devices like our phones and email, creating “records” that if not properly secured will be scraped by Big Business. Business isn’t the only potential heavy in the IoT future.