Here We Go Again: Deep Throat Revealed?

Now we have another spectacular Deep Throat story that will have the mainstream press buzzing for days–enamored as it is of Woodward and Bernstein as investigative reporters. Even Ben Bradley agrees now that Mark Felt, former number two man at the FBI in the 1970s, was indeed Deep Throat. Before historians jump on the Watergate bandwagon again, please consider the following:

1) Read the Vanity Fair article online. Felt doesn’t really ever say to John D. O’Connor that he is Deep Throat or anyway, the only Deep Throat. Felt’s family and a close woman friend believe he is Deep Throat and they and some young people talk to O’Connor. They all think that Felt deserves to be honored for doing the right thing over thirty years ago. This is fine, but it does not prove the case. Right off the bat there is a problem not with anonymous sources, but the second-hand words of others about Felt being Deep Throat–most of whom claim not to have any detailed memory of Watergate even when they are old enough to have them–and whose motives, according to the Vanity Fair article range widely from family pride, to patriotism, to not letting “Woodward to get all the glory,” to “pay[ing] some bills.” Granted, Felt apparently can’t physically speak for himself because of failing health, but let’s be realistic about O’Connor’s sources and their motivations.

2) Most importantly, in All the President’s Men Woodward and Bernstein say that they only used Deep Throat “to confirm information that had been obtained elsewhere and to add some perspective.” But, aside from the fact that some of the information Deep Throat conveyed wasn’t true, the piece of information that has always intrigued me most was about the eighteen and a half minute gap on the June 20, 1972 tape. Deep Throat is not confirming anything Woodward and Bernstein have found out when he informs them on November 7 that “one or more of the tapes contained deliberate erasures.” There is no indication in All the President’s Men that Woodward and Bernstein knew about any erasures, but the very next day the Washington Post published an article saying that there were gaps of “a suspicious nature” which “could lead someone to conclude that the tapes have been tampered with.” November 8 just happened to be the day that Judge Sirica was holding a hearing about the tapes that had been subpoenaed. It was also a full week before the president’s lawyer Fred Buzhardt discovered the gap and told Nixon about it. It would seem that Deep Throat was not confirming anything on November 7, except that he had a hand in the erasures or knew who did and perhaps wanted to influence Sirica’s decision.

Publishing that story seemed to contradict the type of confirming information that Woodward and Bernstein have repeatedly said they always received from Deep Throat. There has never been any evidence indicating that Felt had access to the tapes. Therefore, it is unlikely that he could have conveyed what is clearly the most important piece of information that the reporters received from any one source. But let us assume for the moment that he did somehow learn about the erasure. He was one of the most important FBI agents in the country and a crime has been committed. Why didn’t he arrest the person who erased the tape? Or at the very least why didn’t he go to Sirica with the information given the important decision that the judge was about to make? Could it be that Felt himself was involved in black bag jobs for the Bureau and not as much interested in the law as in getting even against Nixon without drawing attention to himself? At least Ronald Reagan hastened to pardon him for being convicted of such activities against the Weathermen underground group. Please let a little logic prevail at least with respect to who could have had access to Nixon’s private presidential tapes in those crucial days when their public availability had become a major legal issue.

3) Woodward claims in All the President’s Men to have had a long-standing, personal relationship with Deep Throat. Again, there is no evidence that this was the case with Felt. Woodward had a cozy relationship with other Deep Throat candidates such as Alexander Haig, but he has never claimed or indicated the same with Felt. Why would a top FBI official start to relay information to a rooky Washington Post reporter on the job less than ten months? This does not deny that at some point Felt may have confirmed parts of the Watergate story for Woodward, but it is unlikely that Felt personally sought out Woodward because the White House was obstructing the FBI investigation and violating the civil rights of innocent people, as O'Connor claims.

4) I challenged Woodward in Austin at a conference celebrating the opening of the Woodward and Bernstein papers to videotape Deep Throat(s). 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 videotape 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.

Privately Bernstein told me he thought this was a good idea, but Woodward said that he has “other evidence” that would prove the dead man was Deep Throat. However, in a media age only a posthumous videotape 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. I said then that common sense and history demanded no less. Unfortunately Felt cannot verbally tell us this, although presumably he could dictate some details to some objective person outside of family and friends.

Now that Felt (or rather his family) have come forward, I challenge all other aging anonymous sources who spoke to Woodward and Bernstein to also come forward, so that the other real Deep Throats could now be identified before they die. It is even conceivable that they all thought they were the single source of information. But the one who indicated there had been a tape erasure is key to the Watergate story and belies the confirming nature of the reporters’ sources that they have clung to over the years. In the wake of the Newsweek story about the desecration of the Koran, the major news organizations on May 23 expressed concern the they “may have become too free in granting anonymity to sources” given readers' distrust of the practice. This is the perfect time for the most famous of all anonymous source(s) to be identified. We have had enough of contestable direct quotes which are the hallmark of all Woodward’s books. Mostly famously the interview he claimed to have conducted with the CIA Director Bill Casey when Casey lay dying and comatose. Curiously, the Washington Post did not “break” this sensational Felt story. The Post came in to claim it as truth only after the fact in a terse two-line statement. The Casey interview also did not make the Post’s headlines until after Woodward published a book saying it took place. Curious to say the least.

5) Finally, remember that David Obst, the literary agent for All the President’s Men, has categorically stated that Deep Throat was not in the original book proposal and only appeared in an early draft of the manuscript after Woodward had discussed movie possibilities for the book with Robert Redford. It would be an interesting research topic now that the Woodward and Bernstein papers are open to find both the original proposal and early drafts of the book . However, since these papers have been opened since February and Obst made the claim back in 1998 in his book, Too Good To Be Forgotten, I strongly suspect that any such proof of Deep Throat as purely a literary conceit has long since disappeared from these reporters’ papers. After all, they have garnered too much fame from perpetuating their investigative skills, especially as portrayed in the dangerous, detective story movie version of their relationship with Deep Throat that purportedly threatened his and their lives.

So myth lives on–unless we really want to take the Mark Felt story seriously to get to the bottom of the role that Deep Throat(s) played in Watergate. I for one want to know who was responsible for the eighteen and a half minute tape gap. We know it wasn’t Rosemary Woods (she claimed at most responsibility for at most four or five minutes in a gymnastic stretching feat) or Richard Nixon (who was too technologically challenged). But we do know of at least three other people who had access to the tapes: Nixon attorney Fred Buzhardt, Alexander Butterfield (the keeper of the tapes before he told Senate staffers about the taping system), and Alexander Haig, then chief of staff. Let’s stop letting Deep Throat play with the true history and meaning of Watergate and let’s stop falling for the latest identity story that comes down the pike. With identity theft such a prominent issue these days, it is time to put an end to the most publicized identity theft of all and find the person who erased the presidential tape.

Contrary to the PBS Lehrer NewsHour for May 31, 2005, and other network and cable station proclamations, the Felt story did not “bring to a close one of the great mysteries of history.” It only perpetuates the myth that the Watergate break-ins and Woodward and Bernstein brought down the Nixon presidency. There were many nascent neo-conservatives within the Republican party who wanted the president weakened and ultimately supported his resignation who couldn’t have cared less about the break-ins. Nixon obstructed justice with an inept cover-up, while they successfully covered up their desire to discredit his “soft-on-Communism foreign policy”--with or with out Deep Throat(s).