Silent Coup

Silent Coup: The Removal of a President

Author	Len Colodny, Robert Gettlin
Language	English
Subject	Watergate scandal
Publisher	St. Martin's Press
Publication date	January 1992
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (Hardcover)
Pages	580 pages
ISBN	0-312-05156-5 (hardback) ISBN 978-0-312-92763-9 (paper)
OCLC	22493143
Dewey Decimal	364.1/32/0973 20
LC Class	E860 .C635 1991

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Silent Coup is a book written by Len Colodny [1938 - 2021] and Robert Gettlin that proposed an alternate explanation for the Watergate scandal that led to the 1974 resignation of US President Richard Nixon. The first edition was published in 1991, followed by an expanded second edition in January 1992.

The prevailing narrative is that Nixon and his high-ranking associates covered up a 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters in the Watergate Complex which had been undertaken to obtain information to be used against Nixon's political rivals.^{[third-party source needed]} In contrast, Colodny and Gettlin contend that former White House counsel John Dean orchestrated the 1972 Watergate burglary. His motive was argued to have been to protect his future wife Maureen Biner by removing information linking her to a call-girl ring that worked for the DNC. The authors also lay out a case that Nixon's Chief of Staff Alexander Haig was the identity of "Deep Throat", the nickname for an important and then-unidentified source for reporter Bob Woodward. Woodward, a Naval officer before becoming a reporter, had briefed Haig at the White House in 1969 and 1970 and the authors suggest that Haig was a source for the reporters.^{[third-party source needed]} In 2005 it was revealed that FBI deputy director Mark Felt was the "Deep Throat" informant who had become Woodward's key source after his partner Carl Bernstein was able to locate hush money paid to the DNC burglars in Miami, Florida.^[1]