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Wednesday, Nov 25, 2009
The revelation of Deep Throat's identity has only created more mysteries.
Jun 7, 2005 | The Bush administration prosecutes government officials who leak sensitive information, even when that information is not classified -- as I noted in my column on Jonathan Randal. The administration is also prepared to send reporters to jail when they refuse to reveal their sources to a grand jury, as I noted in another column.
I doubt the Justice Department will go after W. Mark Felt -- the 91-year-old former deputy director of the FBI -- even if he is the greatest leaker in American political history. Still, in the context of the administration's stances on leaking, the surfacing of Deep Throat at this time is rather ironic.
Bob Woodward (and Carl Bernstein) have confirmed the Vanity Fair story, identifying W. Mark Felt as their legendary Watergate source. The best-kept secret in Washington, for three decades, is no more.
But this is not to say the mystery is resolved. To the contrary, while Mark Felt is alive, his memory for the details of his relationship with Woodward seems to be all but gone. So the revelation of his identity raises many new questions that it seems Felt himself will not be able to answer.
The game of guessing the identity of Deep Throat, which moved from the parlors of Washington to serious inquiry during the last 30 years, is over. A number of us who were fascinated by the inscrutability of it all have been forced into retirement.
Adrian Havill, a freelance author who did some good digging, most recently thought Deep Throat could be no less than former president George H.W. Bush.
Leonard Garment, my successor as Nixon White House counsel, focused his considerable intellect and keen intuition on the issue, and first thought Deep Throat must have been former Nixon White House aide John Sears. Later, however, Garment was convinced that Deep Throat had to be a composite (a hypothesis that has yet to be shown to be incorrect -- but has been denied by Woodward and Bernstein).
Similarly, yours truly (the senior Deep Throat sleuth) has made several incorrect runs at Throat's true identity. (In my 2002 Salon e-book, "Unmasking Deep Throat," I wrote, "I don't believe there is any way Felt could have been Deep Throat," and concluded, "While I have personal knowledge about each of the remaining candidates -- [Pat] Buchanan, [Steve] Bull, [Ray] Price, [Jerry] Warren and [Ron] Ziegler -- as well as hunches about them, I'm not going to play a guessing game. Ever since throwing out Earl Silbert's name years ago, I have refused to guess, and now is not the time to start.") So I tip my hat to former Los Angeles Times reporter Jim Mann, who figured it out, and wrote about Felt in a 1992 Atlantic Monthly essay. Tim Noah of Slate was not far behind, forcing Felt to deny.
When I took a hard look at Felt years ago, I concluded he could not have known what Deep Throat knew when the information was given to Woodward, particularly since he was gone from the FBI at the end, and scratched him off the list of viable candidates.
In fact, so sure was I that, even after reading the Vanity Fair piece and before Woodward had confirmed Felt's identity, I bet an NBC News person $100 it was not Felt the morning the Vanity Fair story broke.
Fortunately, though, I knew my bet was covered, for I'd made an early wager, also for $100, with former Chicago Tribune investigative reporter William Gaines. Gaines, who now teaches journalism at the University of Illinois, has used Deep Throat sleuthing as a teaching tool, but I was confident that he was wrong in naming my former Nixon White House deputy, Fred Fielding, as Throat.
Woodward disliked this sleuthing. Now that the issue of Deep Throat's identity appears resolved, I suspect Woodward is going to be even less enchanted with those who focus on his journalism. And Deep Throat himself, Mark Felt, is going to be probed as he might never have dreamed.
I'm among those who believe Woodward is truly one of the great journalists. (It's not an opinion shared by many of my former White House colleagues.) No Washington reporter has so consistently had access to those in power -- meaning Woodward has often had uniquely compelling stories to tell. And Woodward's reporting is fair and honest -- one reason he may maintain the access he has.
Still, Woodward's use of unidentified sources -- a controversial practice, and one now banned at Newsweek after the Quran desecration debacle -- has been extreme. And because Woodward's key Watergate source was unidentified, until now no one could test his Watergate reporting.
Bob once told me that when I learned who, in fact, Deep Throat was, all my questions would be clarified. That, however, has not happened. To the contrary, I only have more questions now that I know Deep Throat was Mark Felt.
I raise a few of them here, in the hope of getting some answers, while Woodward is still out and about doing talk shows.
But first, for those not following this story closely, a little background is in order:
At the time of Watergate, Mark Felt was the deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Former Director J. Edgar Hoover, who had elevated Felt to this post, had died only weeks earlier. President Nixon had selected the assistant attorney general of Justice's Civil Division, L. Patrick Gray, to serve as the acting director of the FBI.
Even before Hoover's death, however, Felt was for all practical purposes running the FBI -- as Hoover wanted it run, with a few exceptions. For example, when Hoover wanted to end surreptitious black-bag jobs (entries onto premises without a court warrant), Felt continued them.
Later, Felt would be indicted and convicted by President Carter's Justice Department for continuing the practice of illegal searches, only to be pardoned by President Ronald Reagan for the practice. One wonders if Felt would have been pardoned by Reagan had it been known he was Deep Throat. Plus, I seriously doubt former President Richard Nixon would have testified on Felt's behalf -- as indeed he did -- during his trial had he known of Felt's actions as Deep Throat. Deep Throat had earned top ranking on Nixon's post-presidency enemies list (one notch above yours truly.)
When Pat Gray became acting director of the FBI, I don't believe he had a clue how to run the place. In fact, he did not really focus on trying to do so. Rather, he spent much of his time traveling throughout the country literally campaigning at various FBI field offices to win the support of rank-and-file FBI agents for the job of director. Thus, during much of the Watergate investigation, Gray was not even in Washington.
When I talked to Gray during the Watergate investigation, he typically said he would have to check with Felt and get back to me. No one at the Nixon White House believed Gray had any control whatsoever of the FBI. To claim otherwise, as Felt apparently did with Woodward, is absurd.
