How a Single Video Tape Would End the Debate over “Deep Throat”
Ms. Hoff, Research Professor of History, Montana State University, Bozeman, is the author of: Nixon Reconsidered (Basic Books).
John Dean has done it again. In two short references in a February 6 op ed piece in the LA Times, he suggested that Deep Throat might be ill and so we would soon learn his identity. He also said that an unidentified source had told him Woodward informed Ben Bradlee, former executive editor of the Washington Post, of this and that Bradlee had proceeded to write an obituary about this most famous character to emerge from Watergate outside of President Nixon himself.
Bob Woodward has denied this. But Dean managed to appear on CNN and MSNBC discussing his latest successful attempt to capitalize on the role he played in the Watergate Senate hearings back in 1973. After all, over the years he has named at least a half-dozen men as Deep Throat.
Dean’s timing was not fortuitous. On February 4, with much pomp and circumstance, the University of Texas in Austin opened the Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein Watergate papers for which it had paid the handsome price of $5 million. A symposium of scholars and journalists accompanied this opening–an event that Dean did not attend. What better time to announce the imminent demise of Deep Throat.
At one session of the symposium when I suggested that the search for the identity of Deep Throat(s) had for too long proved a diversion from rethinking the meaning of Watergate and the Nixon presidency, Woodward interrupted me, saying that Deep Throat was, indeed, only one person. I replied that then he should video tape that individual as soon as possible so the public could be sure of the authenticity of man Woodward would ultimately reveal as Deep Throat when the person could not deny it.
While privately Bernstein told me he thought this was a good idea, Woodward said that he has “other evidence” that would prove the dead man was Deep Throat. However, in a media age only a posthumous video tape would stop speculation about the verity of this long-awaited identification. The subject could also tell us in his own words WHY he leaked the damaging information he did about the Nixon administration. Common sense and history demand no less.
Such a video tape would constitute a primary source that historians, at least, require as evidence. Even a notarized written statement signed in blood would not achieve this level of authenticity; nor would another Woodward interview complete with contestable direct quotes which are the hallmark of all Woodward’s books. Mostly famously the one he conducted with the CIA Director Bill Casey when he lay dying and comatose.
No doubt Deep Throat is thirty years older than when he achieved such anonymous notoriety. If he actually exists and is not a composite literary character, he will eventually die in the midst of much publicity and sensational reporting. We need hard proof that he admitted to being Deep Throat while alive–not Woodward’s word that he was after his death.
Bob Woodward has denied this. But Dean managed to appear on CNN and MSNBC discussing his latest successful attempt to capitalize on the role he played in the Watergate Senate hearings back in 1973. After all, over the years he has named at least a half-dozen men as Deep Throat.
Dean’s timing was not fortuitous. On February 4, with much pomp and circumstance, the University of Texas in Austin opened the Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein Watergate papers for which it had paid the handsome price of $5 million. A symposium of scholars and journalists accompanied this opening–an event that Dean did not attend. What better time to announce the imminent demise of Deep Throat.
At one session of the symposium when I suggested that the search for the identity of Deep Throat(s) had for too long proved a diversion from rethinking the meaning of Watergate and the Nixon presidency, Woodward interrupted me, saying that Deep Throat was, indeed, only one person. I replied that then he should video tape that individual as soon as possible so the public could be sure of the authenticity of man Woodward would ultimately reveal as Deep Throat when the person could not deny it.
While privately Bernstein told me he thought this was a good idea, Woodward said that he has “other evidence” that would prove the dead man was Deep Throat. However, in a media age only a posthumous video tape would stop speculation about the verity of this long-awaited identification. The subject could also tell us in his own words WHY he leaked the damaging information he did about the Nixon administration. Common sense and history demand no less.
Such a video tape would constitute a primary source that historians, at least, require as evidence. Even a notarized written statement signed in blood would not achieve this level of authenticity; nor would another Woodward interview complete with contestable direct quotes which are the hallmark of all Woodward’s books. Mostly famously the one he conducted with the CIA Director Bill Casey when he lay dying and comatose.
No doubt Deep Throat is thirty years older than when he achieved such anonymous notoriety. If he actually exists and is not a composite literary character, he will eventually die in the midst of much publicity and sensational reporting. We need hard proof that he admitted to being Deep Throat while alive–not Woodward’s word that he was after his death.