Interviews, Penn Quarter, People, Special Events, The Features

Scribblings: Max Holland

Photo courtesy of cliff1066�
Richard Nixon, Time cover April 30, 1973, “The Watergate Scandal”
courtesy of cliff1066�

On Friday, March 16, join author Max Holland for a look at Mark Felt, the FBI official behind “Deep Throat,” the secretive whistleblower of the Watergate scandal. Holland will be speaking at the International Spy Museum from noon until 2 p.m. on his latest book, Leak: Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat.

Best known through Hal Holbrook’s portrayal in the film version of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s All the President’s Men, Felt was regarded for decades as a conscientious but highly secretive whistleblower who shunned the limelight. Yet even after he finally revealed his identity in 2005, questions about his true motivations persisted.

Max Holland has found the missing piece of that Deep Throat puzzle—one that’s been hidden in plain sight all along. He reveals for the first time in detail what truly motivated the FBI’s number-two executive to become the most fabled secret source in American history. In the process, he directly challenges Felt’s own explanations while also demolishing the legend fostered by Woodward and Bernstein’s bestselling account. Continue reading

Downtown, News, The Daily Feed

Watergate Hotel to be Auctioned

 Photo courtesy of
‘Watergate and Moon’
courtesy of ‘M.V. Jantzen’

WUSA 9 reports that the Watergate Hotel will be up for auction next week.  The hotel’s owners defaulted on their loan payments last month and the foreclosure notice on the property expires next Tuesday.  If the current owners fail to make payments by that date, an auction company will start accepting bids on the Watergate.

Foggy Bottom, The Daily Feed, WTF?!

SUV vs. Traffic Island

Snow. It turns us into adventurers. Some of us bundle up to walk the chill, white, stormy landscape like Arctic explorers, braving wind and cold for photos or milk and bread.

And others among us get adventure by roaring out of parking spaces and skidding over slush so that our big black Nissan Pathfinder SUVs end up jumping service road traffic islands in Foggy Bottom, skidding further to straddle the traffic islands like a large, obnoxious, diagonal monorail, before finally triumphing over traffic regulations and common sense.

Snow. It also turns some of us into bemused spectators.