Shocked, I tell you...

"'Deep Throat's' Ex-Boss Shocked by Revelation" reads the headline of the ABC News report. For those of you who were afraid this was article about that time Linda Lovelace spent as a stenographer, thankfully we are spared that sordid story, although I'm sure it could probably be found on the CBS site somewhere under "White House News".

However, it is interesting that the former head of the FBI, L. Patrick Gray, states that he believed W. Mark Felt when he said that he was not Woodward and Berstein's Watergate source. That's it. He asked him and Felt denied it and that was that. Case closed.

Excuse me for a moment whilst I incredulously reel about in the small room I'm working in at the moment. All right, reeling complete.

This is the FBI we're talking about, remember? The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the chief federal law-enforcement agency in the United States, the department run by J. Edgar Hoover, the one that had millions of illegal files on every single American deemed more prominent than the Indian Springs, Nevada chief dog-catcher. They could tell you the water boy JFK used to procure cheerleaders in high school, but didn't know if their number two guy was leaking information to the press.

For myself, I have no doubt that , were Hoover still running things at the time, after Felt's denial J. Edgar would have smiled, propped up his stilettoed heels, brushed back the chiffon from his face and tossed a large file on the desk that just happened to contain 10,000 pictures of Felt and Woodward in compromising positions (most of them politically.) That would be just before he opened up on him with a tommy-gun.

Had things changed so much after Hoover's demise? Obviously they still had the naming algorithm down: J. Edgar Hoover, L. Patrick Gray, W. Mark Felt. (What, were they all frustrated Victorian novelists?) Yes, they were all wearing suits and not frocks, but surely Gray could have put together a secret little internal investigation to find out if Felt was burning up packs of menthol cigarettes in Washington car parks in the middle of the night, waiting for Woodward to turn up. You know, the kind of investigation where Felt is whispering to Woodward inbetween drags, when suddenly a large black town car pulls up alongside them and 15 G-Men, wearing sunglasses and Thompson submachine guns, jump out, handcuff the pair of them and throw them in the trunk, then take them back to Gray for a little late night chat under the hot lights.

Not in this case. "Are you Deep Throat?" he asked him. "It is not I," he replied (I'm paraphrasing of course.) If this is the chief investigative technique used within the department, can you imagine how terror investigations would go?

"Are you the one who planted the bomb?" asked the FBI investigator.

"No." replied Ahmad Osama Khomeni bin Qaddafi.

The investigator stood up suddenly, threw a chair across the room, swore loudly, grabbed the light and shone it right into Ahmad's eyes.

"Well, OK then."

Let's hope the blokes at the FBI have worked things out since then.