Ritchie feels vindicated by Deep Throat’s outing

Associate Senate Historian Donald Ritchie was accepting plaudits from friends and colleagues yesterday after a former FBI official claimed that he was the mysterious source named “Deep Throat” who helped two Washington Post reporters uncover the Watergate scandal. Former FBI Deputy Director W. Mark Felt, now 91 and living in Santa Rosa, Calif., made the claim in an article in the current issue of Vanity Fair, confirming what Ritchie wrote in his new book about the history of the Washington press corps, Reporting from Washington.

Associate Senate Historian Donald Ritchie was accepting plaudits from friends and colleagues yesterday after a former FBI official claimed that he was the mysterious source named “Deep Throat” who helped two Washington Post reporters uncover the Watergate scandal.

Former FBI Deputy Director W. Mark Felt, now 91 and living in Santa Rosa, Calif., made the claim in an article in the current issue of Vanity Fair, confirming what Ritchie wrote in his new book about the history of the Washington press corps, Reporting from Washington.

While not identifying Felt as the key source for Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in their reporting that led to the resignation of President Nixon in 1974, Ritchie wrote that Deep Throat was a high-ranking official of the FBI.

“Needless to say, I’m greatly relieved that the book’s speculative analysis was consistent with the facts,” Ritchie told The Hill yesterday.

Noting that his conclusion was reported in The Hill on May 11, Ritchie added, “Many thanks for that reference to Deep Throat [in The Hill] two weeks ago. We scooped Vanity Fair’s revelation of his identity today.”

Ritchie said Felt’s disclosure makes sense to everybody in retrospect, but at the time his book came out, “I was sure worried that I had crawled out onto a precarious limb. What a relief!”

Nothing’s the matter with Bolton, Sen. Roberts says

“Not a damn thing, except we could use a little rain.”

That was the tart response of Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), when asked a question last Thursday phrased in the words of the best-selling book about why Kansas has become one of the most conservative states in the union, Thomas Franks’s What’s the Matter with Kansas?

Roberts’s mood wasn’t helped by the fact that the Senate had just failed to invoke cloture and allow a vote on John Bolton’s nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. He was waiting in the Senate Press Gallery for Democratic Sens. Joe Biden (Del.) and Chris Dodd (Conn.) to finish their comments.

“I’m not happy about being here,” Roberts said when he and Sens. George Allen (R-Va.) and Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) spoke with reporters. Roberts dismissed the Democrats’ claim that they had not been given access to highly classified information about Bolton’s handling of classified information.

“When we talk about matters like signal intelligence and intercepts, we’re talking about some of the most highly classified things in the intelligence community,” he said.

Roberts pointed out that Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, who headed the supersecret National Security Agency until being named deputy director of national intelligence, had briefed his committee on the issue.

“There’s no better briefer, no person more familiar with the intelligence community than General Hayden,” Roberts said. “And he said Bolton’s requests [for classified documents] were routine, routine.”

Let’s cut cashing out, says DeWine the younger

Pat DeWine, the son of Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), is putting his foot down.

The Hamilton County commissioner, who is running in Ohio’s 2nd District special election to replace Rep. Rob Portman (R), called yesterday for an end to the “revolving door” that lets former members of Congress lobby their ex-colleagues.

“As former members, they have access to places other do not have — they can walk onto the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, and they can hang out in areas accessible only to members of the House,” DeWine said. “It’s a nice little cozy club that corrupts the process. It’s simply wrong, and it has to be stopped. No one who’s ever served in Congress ought to be allowed to become a lobbyist, ever.”

As for his proposed rule applying to his father, the two probably needn’t worry. The elder DeWine, in his second term, will be just 59 years old when he has to run again next year — a spring chicken for a senator. He is not viewed as particularly vulnerable to a Democratic challenger.

No word on whether Pat DeWine has the same reformer’s zeal against nepotism in Congress.

Jessica Cutler’s coming-out party — if you care

The long wait for the print debut of Jessica Cutler is over, and the curious will be able to get a better look at the budding author later this month at her debut D.C. book reading.

Cutler, the former staffer to Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) who gained a measure of local fame for her salacious “Washingtonienne” blog last year, releases her thinly fictionalized “novel” today.

In the book, New York City native Jacqueline Turner is asked by her friends to start a Web log so that they can keep track of her increasingly complicated love life.

In case reading it isn’t a guilty enough pleasure for you, Cutler — she of the Playboy.com pictorial — will be reading from her book Wednesday, June 15, at 7 p.m. at Olsson’s in Penn Quarter. A happy hour, to be sure.

The book sells for $16.29 on Amazon.com, where it currently occupies the 1,087th spot on the online retailer’s sales ranking.

D.C. debut for former Hill staffer turned singer

Carolyn Hudson, a former communications staffer to Sen. Connie Mack (R-Fla.) who released her debut album last year, makes her D.C.-area debut Tuesday at 9:30 p.m. at Vermillion restaurant in Old Town Alexandria.

Hudson was the subject of a profile in The Hill at the Republican National Convention last year when she played “R: The Party,” the convention soiree at Roseland Ballroom in New York hosted by the Bush twins.

It was the first time she had played in front of more than 150 people, but her well-received performance has led to more gigs in her adopted home of New York, as well as Florida, and now Washington.

Hudson told The Hill last year that, in addition to her hard work, she’s been “getting a lot of breaks.” Those breaks include her friendship with Mitch Bainwol, her former boss in Mack’s office who now heads the Recording Industry Association of America.

Hudson’s debut CD, “Living in My Skin,” which she’s still performing in support of, featured noted session musicians who had played with such artists as Steely Dan, Smashing Pumpkins and Bruce Springsteen. It was produced by Doug Maxwell, who’s worked with Joan Osborne, Gladys Knight and Chrissie Hynde.

Hudson has just released her first single, “Waiting for the Light to Change.”

Weiner: No more Mr. Nice Guy

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), who’s running for the Democratic nod to face New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R), snubbed his would-be opponent at a Memorial Day parade in Queens yesterday, the New York Daily News reports.

The fourth-term lawmaker walked past Bloomberg at the parade without so much as a hello or a handshake.

Handy with a clever non-apology was Anson Kaye, Weiner’s campaign spokesman. “Anthony didn’t mean to ruffle the mayor’s feathers,” Kaye said. Bloomberg “should just think of it as practice for when Anthony passes him at the polls in November.”

Ah, New York.

Celebrities turn out to honor CNN’s 25th anniversary

CNN may have lost some ground to Fox News Channel in the ratings, but the cable-news pioneer can still turn out the dignitaries.

Ted Turner’s favorite toy turns 25 today, having grown from a reach of fewer than 2 million households in 1980 to 89 million today.

Appearing at a three-day conference at CNN’s Atlanta headquarters are the presidents of Iraq, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Indonesia; former President Jimmy Carter; Bono; and Ricky Martin. Hall and Oates will headline the entertainment (a bit of a drop-down in the “cool” department from Bono, it seems).

This week’s “Larry King Live” lineup includes Vice President Cheney and his wife, Lynne; former President George and Barbara Bush; former President Bill Clinton; and Dan Rather.

Tonight, the network will air a special on the top 25 defining moments over its history. The order has not been revealed, but the list includes the space shuttle disasters, the massacre at Tiananmen Square, Sept. 11, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Princess Diana’s death and the recent tsunami, to name a few.