The United States needs systems thinking today to solve urgent problems, including its national security, education and healthcare crises.Deep Throat may be even more important in 2004 than he was in l974. In this year marking the 30th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s resignation following the Watergate scandal, Americans will recall the informer who blew the whistle on all the president’s men. Deep Throat, nicknamed after a pornographic movie, was a mysterious White House insider who has become a historic figure–a popular icon like Paul Revere.Deep Throat understood, when no one else did, that a two-bit burglary and many other unconnected events and so-called “dirty tricks” were, in fact, the work of top administration officials, and he believed their cover-up was undermining the U.S. government and the Constitution.Everyone else—lawyers, the president, some of the perpetrators, investigators and the press corps—saw only separate, isolated pieces but did not know how to put them together to reveal the big picture.Seeing a system invisible to the rest of the participants helped Deep Throat connect the myriad dots of the puzzle amid tense circumstances. Moreover, he understood all dots are not created equal. He knew as an intuitive systems thinker certain important dots might be invisible, and he had an instinct for where those invisible dots could be found—for example, in the Department of Justice, the Committee for the Re-election of the President and the Oval Office.Once Upon a Time Most modern explanations of systems thinking involve jargon and, to the uninitiated, tedious details about technology, processes and automobile production lines.
That detail may help academics and management experts begin to understand how systems and organizations might work better, but it is not an appealing route for the rest of us.
For the rest of us, storytelling is a much quicker and more interesting introduction to systems thinking and a new mind-set for better understanding our world, our choices and other people. It also allows us to recognize leaders who can see the system and manage a continually improving future.
Studying Deep Throat is a good place to start learning how a mind with systems intelligence works (see the sidebar “How and Why I Wrote This Article”).
A number of books and articles over the years have speculated on Deep Throat’s identity. Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, the only one who knows, has never revealed his source publicly.
The more urgent and interesting question, however, is not who Deep Throat was, but how he did it. Possessing systems thinking allowed him to connect apparently unrelated events, weave together long threads of scattered evidence and ask perceptive questions that did not occur to the rest of us.
What Deep Throat did, in effect, was lead Woodward, his colleague Carl Bernstein and the rest of us Watergate observers through an experiential workshop in systems thinking. The general instruction he gave the reporters to unravel the plot was, “Follow the money.”
He assured them the money would connect the dots for them and eventually reveal the conspiracy’s entire “circulatory” system. Identifying resources is one way to sketch in the outlines of some systems.
Deep Throat was not a conventional journalistic source, according to former Nixon White House counsel. In his book In Search of Deep Throat,1 Leonard Garment profiles Deep Throat and analyzes a number of possible candidates.
Only occasionally did Deep Throat supply the reporters with new facts, according to Garment. “Instead, he gave them confirmation, usually cryptic, of information they had gathered elsewhere,” Garment wrote. “More important, Deep Throat provided Woodward and Bernstein with a general ‘perspective,’ to use his word, on the disparate pieces of information that the two journalists were uncovering.”
Woodward described Deep Throat this way in a 1997 online conversation on the Washington Post Watergate website:2
The source known as Deep Throat … provided a kind of roadmap through the scandal. His one consistent message was that the Watergate burglary was just the tip of the iceberg, part of a scheme and a series of illegal activities that amounted to a subversion of government. The interlocking nature of the crimes gave it weight and provided the context, and in fact one of the incentives for us to continue our investigations.
Other Examples
Systems thinkers—looking at the same events as others—are able to draw a bigger picture, ask different questions, make more accurate predictions and identify new opportunities and unsuspected problems. In mystery novels the detective or private investigator is usually a systems thinker who is able to weave scores of seemingly unrelated clues into a surprising resolution of the murder.
Certain people throughout history—from Leonardo da Vinci to the fictional Sherlock Holmes—have randomly and intuitively accessed systems intelligence. Unfortunately, these geniuses did not decipher the elements of systems thinking in a way they could teach to others. Only recently have the elements of systems thinking been synthesized into a teachable skill.3
Systems thinkers learn how to expand the tunnel vision of the ordinary thinker and comprehend more than the linear and tangible aspects of the larger picture. Using systems intelligence, they see and understand it as more than the sum of the parts.
For example, in the children’s fable of the blind men and the elephant, the confusing and separate parts felt by the blind men become a whole elephant when assembled. Systems thinkers can also see when the whole is less than the sum of its parts—or less than its potential—as it is in most organizations, businesses, schools, individuals and teams today. They then understand how to begin to make improvements.
The U.S. founding fathers were systems thinkers. No one of them alone could have created the American system of democracy. And their outcome was greater than the sum of their individual efforts.
Wilkes and Barre, the men for whom Wilkes Barre, PA, was named, also saw a bigger picture. They were members of King George III’s parliament in the l8th century and urged the king not to tax the American colonists. They predicted it would only anger the colonists and bring them together to fight the English. And that’s what happened.
Why Systems Thinking Is Important Today
Systems thinking is suddenly vital to our survival, because it allows us to recognize, create and manage a future different from our immediate past and its dangerously outdated worldview.
For the first time in history, our world is changing so rapidly that unconscious assumptions, beliefs and practices that helped us succeed in simpler yesterdays may be sabotaging our present and future. Systems thinking gives us new ways to see these outdated ideas and allows us to create a more accurate and useful worldview and a more desirable future.
Today, when l9 terrorists in commercial aircraft can do more damage in a few minutes than an infantry platoon can in days or weeks, we need not only such systems thinkers, but also systems listeners and observers like Deep Throat. Both shuttle disasters, the 9-11 intelligence problems and the failure to plan how to occupy Iraq are examples of a lack of adequate systems thinking.
The 9-11 Commission’s description of a “failure of imagination” could be explained as a failure of systems thinking.4
In certain academic, government and business circles, a systems mind-set is now recognized as the most effective and perhaps the only way to manage the chaotic situations created by the confluence of revolutions in information sciences, technology, transportation and communication, not to mention the revolutions in terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.
More and more, such big picture, long-term thinkers are needed in today’s changing, complex world. The short-term, personal gain, quick fix solutions of a traditional, linear, mechanical mind-set, which were usually successful in the past, are today actively damaging the government, the economy and individual citizens.
Practicing systems intelligence also works in improving Fortune 500 companies, kindergarten classrooms, the government, hospital operating rooms and the family. Most of these people systems are capable of producing dramatically better results than the individuals acting separately can.
Each person in a company, school system, hospital or White House can and do usually act alone on his or her separate task. When they can act together with agreed methods and common aim—the essence of a conscious systems approach—they can produce a greater and more effective result than the sum of their individual efforts. Common aims could be to reduce hospital-acquired infections, eliminate on-the-job accidents or teach l0-year-olds to read with higher levels of comprehension.
Great efforts and good intentions, which sometimes worked well enough in the past, are not effective in today’s uncertain world. In fact, good intentions without knowledge of the larger system and the effects of change and complexity can be destructive and produce unintended, even dangerous consequences.
Again, the Watergate burglary is an example. Nixon’s aides, Nixon’s own decision to cover up and the Washington Post reporters unintentionally came together into an unintended system of scandal, which for the first time in history drove out of office a U.S. president. It was the opposite of what the Nixon people wanted. It is a compelling example of the dangerous and unintended consequences of acting without understanding the big picture or system.
Identified and managed, the unending multiplicity of systems—in which we all mostly unconsciously live and work—can produce better cars, better students, better medical care, better national security and a better quality of life. Conversely, ignored, misunderstood or sabotaged by unwitting good intentions, the community, family and national systems can and do wreak havoc—albeit unintentionally. And our standard of living and quality of life deteriorate.
How Deep Throat did it is more important than who he was. How he did it suggests why it is imperative for all of us to improve our systems thinking and systems listening skills.
How To Be a Systems Thinker
Most of us could learn systems intelligence or thinking but don’t know how to begin. It is an ongoing process and requires commitment and practice. In fact, practicing and improving understanding of it is a lifelong process. The unexpected payoff is that it works in relationships at work and at home, as well as in your important relationship with yourself.
A systems mind-set cannot be taught in any traditional academic manner. It must be learned and developed experientially, much like becoming proficient as an artist or musician or in speaking a new language. And like music and a new language, systems thinking must be practiced.
Systems thinking is about organizing and planning to achieve an aim. Successful global manufacturers have used it in the past 25 years to capture world markets. It works not only on the production line, but on the personal and organizational level. It allows continually improving products, services and relationships with less effort and fewer resources, produces greater profits and, most importantly, gives joy and meaning to work and relationships.
The first step is understanding such a powerful skill or mind-set exists and is within grasp. The second step is understanding every system from a global organization or a person to a tiny cell must have an aim. The next step is challenging your own and popular assumptions and surfacing your unconscious and unwarranted beliefs and asking whether they are true now.
In the slower past, it usually didn’t matter whether assumptions about why things happened or what could be changed or improved were true. Today with more people and more technology producing more and more complex interactions—for example, the delivery of healthcare or weapon `s—we need to develop new ways of seeing what is happening and what is possible.
Systems intelligence is about interactions: the interactions of people with each other and with technology. It is also about acknowledging the system and the world are always changing.
Another step is to begin to look for the intangible connections between people and events. Systems thinkers must keep in mind that cause and effect can be widely separated in time and space.
A useful practice is to imagine situations in which two plus two can equal four or five or three or 22 and begin to look for greater wholes. Greater wholes are more than the sum of their parts and can be anything from a fabulous soufflé or a prize winning drama to a successful marriage, symphony, family or individual.
The musical composition of the instruments and notes played in order and proper time is a system or a greater whole. Other familiar examples of powerful wholes or systems are the human body and its individual organs or an automobile and its parts. None of the body organs or parts works on its own or has a separate agenda. A hand can’t write; only a person can. An eye doesn’t see; a human being does.
A greater whole can be seen in teams that can accomplish more than the sum of the efforts of the individual members. It often happens that a group of ordinary players acting as a team can beat a team of stars merely trying to raise their personal scoring averages.
Some experienced system teachers and sports coaches believe individuals can only achieve their greatest potential in a system or on a team. In other words, the best and most effective you can probably be is as a member of a well-managed system.
Both NASA shuttle disasters, the problems of occupying Iraq, the education dropout rate, medical errors estimated to kill thousands of people yearly and much more can be traced to failures to consider the systems implications of apparently small problems and unwarranted assumptions.
That is why the significant news on this 30th anniversary year of Nixon’s resignation is how Deep Throat did it rather than who he was.
References and Notes
1. Leonard Garment, In Search of Deep Throat, Basic Books, 2000.
2. www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/watergate/splash.html
3. http://ackoffcenter.blogs.com of the Ackoff Center has papers and conversations on systems thinking. There is also systems information on Pegasus Communications Inc.’s website at http://www.pegasuscom.com and on In2:InThinking Network’s website at http://in2in.org/aboutus.shtml Books on systems thinking include several by both Russell L. Ackoff and C. West Churchman, plus An Introduction to General Systems Thinking by Gerald M. Weinberg (Dorset House Publishing, May 2001) and Eve’s Seed Biology, the Sexes and the Course of History by Robert S. McElvaine (McGraw-Hill, 2001).
4. Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, official government edition, www.gpoaccess.gov/911.
Clare Crawford-Mason is the producer of “How To Heal a Hospital,” which will air on PBS in early 2005; “If Japan Can Why Can’t We?,” which aired on NBC-TV in l980; the “The Deming Video Library,” 28 volumes, 1986-1996; and “Quality or Else: the Revolution in World Business,” which aired on PBS in l991. Crawford-Mason co-authored Thinking About Quality: Progress Wisdom (Random House, 1995) and the Deming Philosophy and Quality or Else: The Revolution in World Business (Houghton Mifflin, 1992).
———————————–
SIDEBAR
How and Why I Wrote This Story
By Clare Crawford-Mason
In August 2002 I read that former deputy United Nations Ambassador Charles Lichenstein, a longtime Nixon staffer, had died in Washington. I recalled a long ago talk with him and began to wonder whether his story might be an interesting way to explain the power of systems thinking to a general audience.
Ambassador Lichenstein was the mythic faceless bureaucrat, the John le Carré mystery novel figure no one notices, the man who seems not to be there but knows the secrets and wields the ultimate power.
At a dinner party in the early l980s, he told me he was Deep Throat. Because I was a journalist, he immediately followed his admission with, “And that’s off the record.” I nodded.
He proceeded to build an intimate and convincing mosaic of details about the Nixon White House and executive branch. Surprisingly to me if he was Deep Throat, he offered much praise for President Nixon.
In l984 I asked him to step forward as Deep Throat on the l0th anniversary of Nixon’s resignation in a story for Esquire Magazine. After some days of agonizing, he finally said he could not agree to do the story. President Nixon, with whom he was still close, his Republican colleagues and friends would not understand, he explained.
After his funeral, I discussed what Lichenstein had told me with other friends and colleagues. A year-long investigation turned up confirming evidence for Deep Throat as a systems thinker, Lichenstein as Deep Throat and a surprising motive for Liechtenstein, which fit with what he had told me. His friends believe he was trying to save President Nixon, the Republican Party and the country and was repulsed by Nixon lieutenants H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman and their methods.
Lichenstein’s résumé shows he was everywhere Deep Throat had to be. He worked throughout the executive branch and eventually as an assistant to President Nixon. He was the ghostwriter for Nixon’s 1962 book, Six Crises. Everyone trusted him. He had been director of research for the Republican National Committee and for the 1964 Goldwater campaign. He had also been a former CIA trainer.
Besides being in the Nixon inner circle, he fit the oddball profile of Deep Throat in the book and movie All the President’s Men: mild and scholarly bachelor who talked like a lawyer, understood journalism, smoked heavily and drank Scotch. Lichenstein was also the first person to have said he was Deep Throat.
After going through some of Lichenstein’s papers and interviewing most surviving Watergate figures except for Bob Woodward, who refused to be interviewed, I conclude Lichenstein is almost certainly the main source for Woodward and they probably met in that underground garage at least once or twice. Woodward has not denied Lichenstein was Deep Throat but said it was much more complex.
But that is not important from a systems view. Deep Throat, both as characterized in the book and movie and in the man I talked with at the dinner party, offers an approachable example to understanding systems thinking.
And the good news is that Deep Throat can perform another important and urgent service for Americans. This time we can learn how wider, more long-term viewpoints can help us improve complex and dangerous situations, prevent undesirable outcomes and create desirable ones Cutline
NIXON SAYS GOODBYE: Richard Nixon boards a helicopter after resigning the presidency on Aug. 9, 1974. His resignation came after approval of an impeachment article against him by the House Judiciary Committee for withholding evidence from Congress.
Systems Thinking 
Watergate’s Deep Throat; A Systems Thinker
That detail may help academics and management experts begin to understand how systems and organizations might work better, but it is not an appealing route for the rest of us.
For the rest of us, storytelling is a much quicker and more interesting introduction to systems thinking and a new mind-set for better understanding our world, our choices and other people. It also allows us to recognize leaders who can see the system and manage a continually improving future.
Studying Deep Throat is a good place to start learning how a mind with systems intelligence works (see the sidebar “How and Why I Wrote This Article”).
A number of books and articles over the years have speculated on Deep Throat’s identity. Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, the only one who knows, has never revealed his source publicly.
The more urgent and interesting question, however, is not who Deep Throat was, but how he did it. Possessing systems thinking allowed him to connect apparently unrelated events, weave together long threads of scattered evidence and ask perceptive questions that did not occur to the rest of us.
What Deep Throat did, in effect, was lead Woodward, his colleague Carl Bernstein and the rest of us Watergate observers through an experiential workshop in systems thinking. The general instruction he gave the reporters to unravel the plot was, “Follow the money.”
He assured them the money would connect the dots for them and eventually reveal the conspiracy’s entire “circulatory” system. Identifying resources is one way to sketch in the outlines of some systems.
Deep Throat was not a conventional journalistic source, according to former Nixon White House counsel. In his book In Search of Deep Throat,1 Leonard Garment profiles Deep Throat and analyzes a number of possible candidates.
Only occasionally did Deep Throat supply the reporters with new facts, according to Garment. “Instead, he gave them confirmation, usually cryptic, of information they had gathered elsewhere,” Garment wrote. “More important, Deep Throat provided Woodward and Bernstein with a general ‘perspective,’ to use his word, on the disparate pieces of information that the two journalists were uncovering.”
Woodward described Deep Throat this way in a 1997 online conversation on the Washington Post Watergate website:2
The source known as Deep Throat … provided a kind of roadmap through the scandal. His one consistent message was that the Watergate burglary was just the tip of the iceberg, part of a scheme and a series of illegal activities that amounted to a subversion of government. The interlocking nature of the crimes gave it weight and provided the context, and in fact one of the incentives for us to continue our investigations.
Other Examples
Systems thinkers—looking at the same events as others—are able to draw a bigger picture, ask different questions, make more accurate predictions and identify new opportunities and unsuspected problems. In mystery novels the detective or private investigator is usually a systems thinker who is able to weave scores of seemingly unrelated clues into a surprising resolution of the murder.
Certain people throughout history—from Leonardo da Vinci to the fictional Sherlock Holmes—have randomly and intuitively accessed systems intelligence. Unfortunately, these geniuses did not decipher the elements of systems thinking in a way they could teach to others. Only recently have the elements of systems thinking been synthesized into a teachable skill.3
Systems thinkers learn how to expand the tunnel vision of the ordinary thinker and comprehend more than the linear and tangible aspects of the larger picture. Using systems intelligence, they see and understand it as more than the sum of the parts.
For example, in the children’s fable of the blind men and the elephant, the confusing and separate parts felt by the blind men become a whole elephant when assembled. Systems thinkers can also see when the whole is less than the sum of its parts—or less than its potential—as it is in most organizations, businesses, schools, individuals and teams today. They then understand how to begin to make improvements.
The U.S. founding fathers were systems thinkers. No one of them alone could have created the American system of democracy. And their outcome was greater than the sum of their individual efforts.
Wilkes and Barre, the men for whom Wilkes Barre, PA, was named, also saw a bigger picture. They were members of King George III’s parliament in the l8th century and urged the king not to tax the American colonists. They predicted it would only anger the colonists and bring them together to fight the English. And that’s what happened.
Why Systems Thinking Is Important Today
Systems thinking is suddenly vital to our survival, because it allows us to recognize, create and manage a future different from our immediate past and its dangerously outdated worldview.
For the first time in history, our world is changing so rapidly that unconscious assumptions, beliefs and practices that helped us succeed in simpler yesterdays may be sabotaging our present and future. Systems thinking gives us new ways to see these outdated ideas and allows us to create a more accurate and useful worldview and a more desirable future.
Today, when l9 terrorists in commercial aircraft can do more damage in a few minutes than an infantry platoon can in days or weeks, we need not only such systems thinkers, but also systems listeners and observers like Deep Throat. Both shuttle disasters, the 9-11 intelligence problems and the failure to plan how to occupy Iraq are examples of a lack of adequate systems thinking.
The 9-11 Commission’s description of a “failure of imagination” could be explained as a failure of systems thinking.4
In certain academic, government and business circles, a systems mind-set is now recognized as the most effective and perhaps the only way to manage the chaotic situations created by the confluence of revolutions in information sciences, technology, transportation and communication, not to mention the revolutions in terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.
More and more, such big picture, long-term thinkers are needed in today’s changing, complex world. The short-term, personal gain, quick fix solutions of a traditional, linear, mechanical mind-set, which were usually successful in the past, are today actively damaging the government, the economy and individual citizens.
Practicing systems intelligence also works in improving Fortune 500 companies, kindergarten classrooms, the government, hospital operating rooms and the family. Most of these people systems are capable of producing dramatically better results than the individuals acting separately can.
Each person in a company, school system, hospital or White House can and do usually act alone on his or her separate task. When they can act together with agreed methods and common aim—the essence of a conscious systems approach—they can produce a greater and more effective result than the sum of their individual efforts. Common aims could be to reduce hospital-acquired infections, eliminate on-the-job accidents or teach l0-year-olds to read with higher levels of comprehension.
Great efforts and good intentions, which sometimes worked well enough in the past, are not effective in today’s uncertain world. In fact, good intentions without knowledge of the larger system and the effects of change and complexity can be destructive and produce unintended, even dangerous consequences.
Again, the Watergate burglary is an example. Nixon’s aides, Nixon’s own decision to cover up and the Washington Post reporters unintentionally came together into an unintended system of scandal, which for the first time in history drove out of office a U.S. president. It was the opposite of what the Nixon people wanted. It is a compelling example of the dangerous and unintended consequences of acting without understanding the big picture or system.
Identified and managed, the unending multiplicity of systems—in which we all mostly unconsciously live and work—can produce better cars, better students, better medical care, better national security and a better quality of life. Conversely, ignored, misunderstood or sabotaged by unwitting good intentions, the community, family and national systems can and do wreak havoc—albeit unintentionally. And our standard of living and quality of life deteriorate.
How Deep Throat did it is more important than who he was. How he did it suggests why it is imperative for all of us to improve our systems thinking and systems listening skills.
How To Be a Systems Thinker
Most of us could learn systems intelligence or thinking but don’t know how to begin. It is an ongoing process and requires commitment and practice. In fact, practicing and improving understanding of it is a lifelong process. The unexpected payoff is that it works in relationships at work and at home, as well as in your important relationship with yourself.
A systems mind-set cannot be taught in any traditional academic manner. It must be learned and developed experientially, much like becoming proficient as an artist or musician or in speaking a new language. And like music and a new language, systems thinking must be practiced.
Systems thinking is about organizing and planning to achieve an aim. Successful global manufacturers have used it in the past 25 years to capture world markets. It works not only on the production line, but on the personal and organizational level. It allows continually improving products, services and relationships with less effort and fewer resources, produces greater profits and, most importantly, gives joy and meaning to work and relationships.
The first step is understanding such a powerful skill or mind-set exists and is within grasp. The second step is understanding every system from a global organization or a person to a tiny cell must have an aim. The next step is challenging your own and popular assumptions and surfacing your unconscious and unwarranted beliefs and asking whether they are true now.
In the slower past, it usually didn’t matter whether assumptions about why things happened or what could be changed or improved were true. Today with more people and more technology producing more and more complex interactions—for example, the delivery of healthcare or weapon `s—we need to develop new ways of seeing what is happening and what is possible.
Systems intelligence is about interactions: the interactions of people with each other and with technology. It is also about acknowledging the system and the world are always changing.
Another step is to begin to look for the intangible connections between people and events. Systems thinkers must keep in mind that cause and effect can be widely separated in time and space.
A useful practice is to imagine situations in which two plus two can equal four or five or three or 22 and begin to look for greater wholes. Greater wholes are more than the sum of their parts and can be anything from a fabulous soufflé or a prize winning drama to a successful marriage, symphony, family or individual.
The musical composition of the instruments and notes played in order and proper time is a system or a greater whole. Other familiar examples of powerful wholes or systems are the human body and its individual organs or an automobile and its parts. None of the body organs or parts works on its own or has a separate agenda. A hand can’t write; only a person can. An eye doesn’t see; a human being does.
A greater whole can be seen in teams that can accomplish more than the sum of the efforts of the individual members. It often happens that a group of ordinary players acting as a team can beat a team of stars merely trying to raise their personal scoring averages.
Some experienced system teachers and sports coaches believe individuals can only achieve their greatest potential in a system or on a team. In other words, the best and most effective you can probably be is as a member of a well-managed system.
Both NASA shuttle disasters, the problems of occupying Iraq, the education dropout rate, medical errors estimated to kill thousands of people yearly and much more can be traced to failures to consider the systems implications of apparently small problems and unwarranted assumptions.
That is why the significant news on this 30th anniversary year of Nixon’s resignation is how Deep Throat did it rather than who he was.
References and Notes
1. Leonard Garment, In Search of Deep Throat, Basic Books, 2000.
2. www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/watergate/splash.html
3. http://ackoffcenter.blogs.com of the Ackoff Center has papers and conversations on systems thinking. There is also systems information on Pegasus Communications Inc.’s website at http://www.pegasuscom.com and on In2:InThinking Network’s website at http://in2in.org/aboutus.shtml Books on systems thinking include several by both Russell L. Ackoff and C. West Churchman, plus An Introduction to General Systems Thinking by Gerald M. Weinberg (Dorset House Publishing, May 2001) and Eve’s Seed Biology, the Sexes and the Course of History by Robert S. McElvaine (McGraw-Hill, 2001).
4. Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, official government edition, www.gpoaccess.gov/911.
Clare Crawford-Mason is the producer of “How To Heal a Hospital,” which will air on PBS in early 2005; “If Japan Can Why Can’t We?,” which aired on NBC-TV in l980; the “The Deming Video Library,” 28 volumes, 1986-1996; and “Quality or Else: the Revolution in World Business,” which aired on PBS in l991. Crawford-Mason co-authored Thinking About Quality: Progress Wisdom (Random House, 1995) and the Deming Philosophy and Quality or Else: The Revolution in World Business (Houghton Mifflin, 1992).
———————————–
SIDEBAR
How and Why I Wrote This Story
By Clare Crawford-Mason
In August 2002 I read that former deputy United Nations Ambassador Charles Lichenstein, a longtime Nixon staffer, had died in Washington. I recalled a long ago talk with him and began to wonder whether his story might be an interesting way to explain the power of systems thinking to a general audience.
Ambassador Lichenstein was the mythic faceless bureaucrat, the John le Carré mystery novel figure no one notices, the man who seems not to be there but knows the secrets and wields the ultimate power.
At a dinner party in the early l980s, he told me he was Deep Throat. Because I was a journalist, he immediately followed his admission with, “And that’s off the record.” I nodded.
He proceeded to build an intimate and convincing mosaic of details about the Nixon White House and executive branch. Surprisingly to me if he was Deep Throat, he offered much praise for President Nixon.
In l984 I asked him to step forward as Deep Throat on the l0th anniversary of Nixon’s resignation in a story for Esquire Magazine. After some days of agonizing, he finally said he could not agree to do the story. President Nixon, with whom he was still close, his Republican colleagues and friends would not understand, he explained.
After his funeral, I discussed what Lichenstein had told me with other friends and colleagues. A year-long investigation turned up confirming evidence for Deep Throat as a systems thinker, Lichenstein as Deep Throat and a surprising motive for Liechtenstein, which fit with what he had told me. His friends believe he was trying to save President Nixon, the Republican Party and the country and was repulsed by Nixon lieutenants H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman and their methods.
Lichenstein’s résumé shows he was everywhere Deep Throat had to be. He worked throughout the executive branch and eventually as an assistant to President Nixon. He was the ghostwriter for Nixon’s 1962 book, Six Crises. Everyone trusted him. He had been director of research for the Republican National Committee and for the 1964 Goldwater campaign. He had also been a former CIA trainer.
Besides being in the Nixon inner circle, he fit the oddball profile of Deep Throat in the book and movie All the President’s Men: mild and scholarly bachelor who talked like a lawyer, understood journalism, smoked heavily and drank Scotch. Lichenstein was also the first person to have said he was Deep Throat.
After going through some of Lichenstein’s papers and interviewing most surviving Watergate figures except for Bob Woodward, who refused to be interviewed, I conclude Lichenstein is almost certainly the main source for Woodward and they probably met in that underground garage at least once or twice. Woodward has not denied Lichenstein was Deep Throat but said it was much more complex.
But that is not important from a systems view. Deep Throat, both as characterized in the book and movie and in the man I talked with at the dinner party, offers an approachable example to understanding systems thinking.
And the good news is that Deep Throat can perform another important and urgent service for Americans. This time we can learn how wider, more long-term viewpoints can help us improve complex and dangerous situations, prevent undesirable outcomes and create desirable ones Cutline
NIXON SAYS GOODBYE: Richard Nixon boards a helicopter after resigning the presidency on Aug. 9, 1974. His resignation came after approval of an impeachment article against him by the House Judiciary Committee for withholding evidence from Congress.
Posted by CC-M1 at 7:20 AM
Labels: Bob Woodard, Carl Bernstein, Commentary CC-M, Deep Throat, Leonard Garment, Nixon, Systems Thinking, Washington Post, Watergate
August 8, 2007 Posted by ccmason | 9/11 Commission, Ackoff Center, All the President’s Men, Bob Woodard, C. West Churchman, Carl Bernstein, CC-M Commentary, CC-M Opinion, Charles Lichenstein, CIA, Deep Throat, Department of Justice, Esquire Magazine, Gerald M. Weinberg, Goldwater, H.R. Haldeman, House Judiciary Committee, How To Heal a Hospital, If Japan Can Why Can’t We, John Ehrlichman, King George III, Leonard Garment, Nixon, Opinion, Oval Office, Pegasus Communications Inc., President Richard Nixon, Robert S. McElvaine, Russell L. Ackoff, Six Crises, System Application, Systems Intelligence, Systems Thinking, The Deming Video Library, Washington Post, Watergate, White House, Wilkes and Barre | Leave a comment