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CNN Live Sunday

Interview With Sherry Bebitch Jeffe

Aired June 16, 2002 - 18:18   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Watergate, it's the story that brought down the Nixon administration and Monday, tomorrow, is the 30th anniversary of the Watergate burglary.

"The Washington Post" tracked the story with the help of an ultra-secret source, identified as Deep Throat. Later today, John Dean, a former Nixon adviser, releases his new book called "Unmasking Deep Throat." Is it the end of a 30-year mystery?

Well, joining us with more is Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political scientist from the University of Southern California. Hi Sherry. Good to see you.

SHERRY BEBITCH JEFFE, POLITICAL SCIENTIST: Hi Carol. Good to see you again.

LIN: So do you think John Dean is really going to give up the goods on who deep throat is?

JEFFE: Well, this is his third try, and they say three times is the charm, so we'll have to see. This is not the first time he's put together a guess. He's done it twice before in '75. It was a Watergate prosecutor, Earl Siebert (ph). In '82, it was Alexander Haig, so we'll see what happens tonight.

I have to say that there are those who say there really isn't a Deep Throat, that it is a composite character in the book, and there are those who don't really even care to speculate.

LIN: Do you think that's likely?

JEFFE: Likely that it's a composite?

LIN: Yes.

JEFFE: Woodward insists it is not. It's a guy. He happens to be a smoker. He's still alive and he's real.

LIN: Why is it -- what is the harm in revealing oneself after so many years? It's been 30 years. What would really be the impact of knowing who deep throat was today?

JEFFE: Look, Carol, the harm isn't if Deep Throat decides to reveal himself. The harm is that if Woodward and Bernstein having promised not to divulge Deep Throat until Deep Throat passes away or decides that he wants to be known, because these are reporters who have pledge confidentiality.

And Woodward has argued and I agree with him that people don't know much about government at all and what they can learn and do know from journalists comes through sources who cannot and will not be identified, perhaps fear of punishment, losing their jobs. Confidential sources will go away if the confidentiality of the key confidential source is breached.

LIN: You wonder why Deep Throat himself though hasn't stepped forward. I mean, imagine the fame, the notoriety, even the money this person could make.

JEFFE: That's a very good question. I guess we have another Diogenes, someone searching for an honest man who is an honest man. Imagine that.

LIN: Yes, imagine that.

JEFFE: Imagine that, what a concept. I doubt it, but I think that for his own reasons, Deep Throat, maybe it's because he doesn't want to be hounded by the media, maybe because he is in a profession which would be dangerous for him to expose himself. I don't know. Maybe he's working on a book and it's not finished yet. There's a myriad of reasons why (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

LIN: Well, he's supposedly 88 years old, so he better hurry up.

JEFFE: Oh, my God.

LIN: Sherry, I want you to take a look at a poll that we recently got some figures in on CNN and USA and Gallup conducted, opinion of Watergate. More than half, slightly more than half, 51 percent say that Watergate is a serious matter and yet, take a look at this next page, only 18 percent say that they're very familiar with Watergate, so a total of 82 percent say somewhat familiar or not familiar at all.

What does that tell you about what today's generation really thinks of this (UNINTELLIGIBLE) moment? They think they should think it's important but they don't really know why.

JEFFE: Well, exactly. I think what it says to me first of all is that the word Watergate has become a code word for a very serious governmental scandal. I mean clearly we've got Irangate. We've got Gategate (ph). When you hear gate, you know that there is some very serious business going on that ought not to be going on in government.

It also tells me that the perspective on Watergate really is generational. My generation lived through it. My generation lived through the Vietnam War and the Vietnam protests.

I remember being motivated to go into politics to be involved in politics by John Kennedy. I remember his assassination. All of these came together with Watergate as sort of the seminal symbol of the loss of innocence and the loss of trust in government. To the younger generation, it's a part of history.

LIN: Just a part of history.

JEFFE: That's what this is telling me, just a part of history.

LIN: But think of the potential parallels here. I mean here you had a president, President Nixon who wanted to beef up domestic intelligence, beef up the powers of the FBI, the CIA, went as far as authorizing illegal wiretaps.

Now we are in a time today, the so-called war on terror, where once again there is a debate going on as to how far these agencies should be allowed to go into the private lives of ordinary citizens.

JEFFE: Yes, it's interesting. I am hearing some of the same debate over civil liberties, over when is the Constitution breached. Today that we heard in Watergate and perhaps one of the things that will come out of the examination of the 30th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, is a focus on some of the dangers of allowing the president, of allowing government too much power, coming too close to pushing the envelope where the bending of the Constitution if not the breaking of the Constitution becomes a possibility. It could be somewhat healthy.

LIN: All right, well we shall see, tomorrow being the 30th anniversary. Thank you very much, Sherry Bebitch Jeffe for joining us.

JEFFE: My pleasure.

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