Julia Ioffe: The surprisingly shallow influence of Deep Throat
Last month, far from his old D.C. stomping grounds, a very old W. Mark Felt, Sr., died quietly in Santa Rosa, California. The press, who had known him as the dashing, silver-haired spook dubbed Deep Throat, portrayed this as a major event, the passing of one of the late 20th century's most influential figures. The New York Times remembered him as the man who "helped bring down President Richard M. Nixon by resisting the Watergate cover-up and becoming Deep Throat, the most famous anonymous source in American history." Across the Pond, the Guardian's obituary only heightened the legend. "Long after memories of Linda Lovelace's pornographic film have vanished," it wrote, "Felt will live on in American political history as Deep Throat, the mysterious insider whose leaks to journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein brought well-deserved ruin to the Nixon presidency."
In no small part because of Hal Holbrook's goggle-eyed, cotton-mouthed portrayal of him in All the President's Men, we've come to think of Deep Throat in these romantic terms: as the mystery man feeding rounds into Woodward and Bernstein's gumshoe guns. That was in 1976. Nixon had resigned, the bad guys had gone to jail or had been publicly shamed, the movie won four Oscars, and still no one knew who Deep Throat was. So a large and devoted gaggle of politicians, journalists, and scholars began to guess at Deep Throat's identity. Then they began to obsess over it, doubling back on every possible hypothesis, and Deep Throat's legend ballooned. "A lot of awfully intelligent people made awful fools of themselves," says Slate's Timothy Noah, who, until Deep Throat's outing, was an active participant in the guessing game. A bemused Woodward told me that, over the years, he's received scores of PhD and masters dissertations trying to uncloak Deep Throat once and for all. It took three decades for Felt to come out and put an end to (most of) the speculation.
But this most anonymous of sources was not nearly as important to Woodward and Bernstein's reporting--or to Nixon's demise--as we have come to believe. He was useful, yes, but the Washington Post staffers who midwifed the Watergate story readily admit that he was just one of many, many sources, some of whom are still anonymous. In fact, the entire editorial team did not know about Deep Throat's identity until after Nixon resigned. To them, Deep Throat was not the man who helped two reporters fell a crooked president, but just one piece of a huge and dynamic puzzle.
"Don't think for a second that if Deep Throat was so important, Ben Bradlee wouldn't have asked who he was," Barry Sussman, Woodward and Bernstein's direct editor on the Watergate articles, told me recently. (Today, Bradlee, the Post's former executive editor, says he didn't ask because Deep Throat was usually right. "Being right is what you care about in a source," he explained. "If he was caught way off base telling a lie, then I would've asked. I would've throttled Woodward.")
The Post had a two-source rule for the investigation--that is, every bit of information had to be corroborated--but Deep Throat was never one of them. He was rarely the one to approach Woodward; he didn't offer documents or leads or even many details; he spoke in code and disappeared for long stretches of time. For the most part, he was a check on information Woodward and Bernstein had already cobbled together. "He was important, but the story could've been done without him," says former metro editor (and Sussman's boss) Harry Rosenfeld. "It wasn't like any story stood or fell by what he told us."
"I think his nickname elevated him into history more than his actual contribution," Bradlee says. Thirty-odd years later, he is still baffled and delighted by the naughtiness of the moniker. "It's extraordinary that it caught on. I mean, the average person had not seen the movie, I guess, and did not know that we were talking about oral intercourse here!"...
Read entire article at New Republic
In no small part because of Hal Holbrook's goggle-eyed, cotton-mouthed portrayal of him in All the President's Men, we've come to think of Deep Throat in these romantic terms: as the mystery man feeding rounds into Woodward and Bernstein's gumshoe guns. That was in 1976. Nixon had resigned, the bad guys had gone to jail or had been publicly shamed, the movie won four Oscars, and still no one knew who Deep Throat was. So a large and devoted gaggle of politicians, journalists, and scholars began to guess at Deep Throat's identity. Then they began to obsess over it, doubling back on every possible hypothesis, and Deep Throat's legend ballooned. "A lot of awfully intelligent people made awful fools of themselves," says Slate's Timothy Noah, who, until Deep Throat's outing, was an active participant in the guessing game. A bemused Woodward told me that, over the years, he's received scores of PhD and masters dissertations trying to uncloak Deep Throat once and for all. It took three decades for Felt to come out and put an end to (most of) the speculation.
But this most anonymous of sources was not nearly as important to Woodward and Bernstein's reporting--or to Nixon's demise--as we have come to believe. He was useful, yes, but the Washington Post staffers who midwifed the Watergate story readily admit that he was just one of many, many sources, some of whom are still anonymous. In fact, the entire editorial team did not know about Deep Throat's identity until after Nixon resigned. To them, Deep Throat was not the man who helped two reporters fell a crooked president, but just one piece of a huge and dynamic puzzle.
"Don't think for a second that if Deep Throat was so important, Ben Bradlee wouldn't have asked who he was," Barry Sussman, Woodward and Bernstein's direct editor on the Watergate articles, told me recently. (Today, Bradlee, the Post's former executive editor, says he didn't ask because Deep Throat was usually right. "Being right is what you care about in a source," he explained. "If he was caught way off base telling a lie, then I would've asked. I would've throttled Woodward.")
The Post had a two-source rule for the investigation--that is, every bit of information had to be corroborated--but Deep Throat was never one of them. He was rarely the one to approach Woodward; he didn't offer documents or leads or even many details; he spoke in code and disappeared for long stretches of time. For the most part, he was a check on information Woodward and Bernstein had already cobbled together. "He was important, but the story could've been done without him," says former metro editor (and Sussman's boss) Harry Rosenfeld. "It wasn't like any story stood or fell by what he told us."
"I think his nickname elevated him into history more than his actual contribution," Bradlee says. Thirty-odd years later, he is still baffled and delighted by the naughtiness of the moniker. "It's extraordinary that it caught on. I mean, the average person had not seen the movie, I guess, and did not know that we were talking about oral intercourse here!"...