Sunday, Jul 6, 2008
Could the famous anonymous source have scribbled on Bob Woodward's newspaper or received signals from his balcony? A historian walks a mile in Deep Throat's shoes to settle the debate.
Jul 1, 2002 | June 20, 2002, 4:44 a.m. Thursday morning. Early for Hughes to awaken, but he was excited. A Washington journalist for more than 13.06 years, Hughes was about to embark on the easiest investigation of his life. He was going to find out whether the signaling system for Deep Throat and Bob Woodward described in "All the President's Men" was physically possible.
Hughes got up, grabbed the morning newspaper and turned on the coffeemaker. He remembered how his life had taken this undramatic turn. It all started when Hughes got an e-mail from Mary Beth at the online magazine Salon. Salon was about to publish an e-book by John Dean attempting to narrow the list of people who might have been Woodward and Bernstein's most famous, but still unidentified, source. Would Hughes be willing to answer e-questions about Watergate from Salon's e-readers?
Mary Beth works with the sister-in-law of one of Hughes' colleagues at the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs, where Hughes heads the Presidential Recordings Project's Nixon team. Hughes's colleague's sister-in-law's colleague said it would only take 15 minutes a day. From experience as a freelancer, Hughes knew this could only mean that Salon planned to pay him nothing. For some, the wages of nepotism include high public office. For Hughes, the wages include uncompensated labor. Well, the Miller Center's comprehensive effort to review all and transcribe the best of the Nixon tapes could use a little uncompensated publicity.
At 6 a.m., Hughes' wife asked, "Why are you wearing a suit?"
"It opens doors," Hughes said, as cryptically as he could.
Feminine laughter pealed through the halls of the Hughes household. Hughes handed his wife the paper, walked out of the apartment and embarked on a journey of discovery.
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In duplicating Deep Throat's system of signaling Woodward, Hughes was attempting something that others claimed could not be done. To accomplish this mission, Hughes would have to infiltrate Woodward's old apartment building.
Hughes also planned to test the practicality of Woodward's system for signaling Deep Throat. This entailed penetrating the apartment building's courtyard.
Hughes thought it would be easy -- almost too easy.
Woodstein described the signaling systems in "All the President's Men": "Several years earlier, Woodward had found a red cloth flag lying in the street. Barely one foot square, it was attached to a stick, the type of warning device used on the back of a truck carrying a projecting load. Woodward had taken the flag back to his apartment and one of his friends had stuck it into an old flower pot on the balcony. It had stayed there.
"When Woodward had an urgent inquiry to make, he would move the flower pot with the red flag to the rear of the balcony. During the day, Deep Throat would check to see if the pot had been moved. If it had, he and Woodward would meet at about 2:00 a.m. in a predesignated underground parking garage ...
"If Deep Throat wanted a meeting -- which was rare -- there was a different procedure. Each morning, Woodward would check page 20 of his New York Times, delivered to his apartment house before 7 a.m. If a meeting was requested, the page number would be circled and the hands of a clock indicating the time of the rendezvous would appear in a lower corner of the page. Woodward did not know how Deep Throat got to his paper."
Woodward's a bit dim, Hughes thought, not for the first time. Deep Throat did not have to get to his specific copy of the Times. He just had to get his hands on a copy of the Times before 7 a.m. and leave it outside Woodward's door. In American society, such work is often given to children. They are called "paperboys." Or "paper carriers." Or "newsies" by those with a taste for archaism.
Hughes had been a paperboy once, long ago. He knew the things that paperboys know.
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