A look at Deep Throat, Investigative Reporting, and the Role of Deep Throat in Watergate

OPen Government

Given that it is the day after Christmas, I thought we would talk about something a little different from what we usual talk about. As a fan of and a recent practitioner of investigative reporting, the story of Deep Throat and Woodward and Bernstein has been intriguing to me. Woodward and Bernstein’s investigative reporting during Watergate started a new era and inspired young journalists in hopes of becoming the next muckraking reporter.

The past week marked the passing of Mark Felt at the age of 95. Mark Felt in 2005 revealed that he was in fact the mysterious Deep Throat, Bob Woodward’s deep background source in the early Watergate stories. Much controversy surrounds the actions of Deep Throat, even to this day. To many who considered Watergate an appalling abuse of power and a true threat to the very fabric of democracy, Mark Felt is a hero and a whistle blower who put the country first. Others consider him disloyal for leaking at best secret information available to him at his position as the No.2 man in the FBI. To make matters more ambiguous, he was an unapologetic supporter of Hoover and Hoover’s FBI policies. He helped implement COINTELPRO. He was unabashed about spying on Vietnam protesters, suspected communists, civil rights leaders, etc.

This summer, by happenstance I happened to read Woodward and Bernstein’s “All the President’s Men,” intrigued I followed it up reading Woodward’s account of Mark Felt, “The Secret Man,” and just for good measure, I read Stanley Kutler’s account of Watergate, “The Wars of Watergate,” a book some historians consider a definitive account of the controversy.

From reading Woodward and Bernstein it is clear that Mark Felt was always conflicted. On the one hand, appalled at the conduct of the Nixon administration including Nixon himself, he felt obliged to leak information in a roundabout way to the public through Bob Woodward whom describes their original meeting several years prior somewhat as a matter of happenstance.

On the other hand, he was paranoid of being discovered but also conflicted as to whether or not he should leak the information. Events after Watergate as described in “Secret Man” indicate that he and Woodward had a falling out. Felt took considerable heat just as a suspected “Deep Throat” one of many. One thing that remains questionable is whether Felt himself ever made the decision in 2005 to reveal himself. Woodward in “Secret Man” describes a meeting with Felt late in Felt’s life. Felt does not even remember Woodward. It is not even clear that Felt remembers Watergate or his role in Watergate fully. Woodward alludes to perhaps John O’Connor pushing Mark Felt to come out in order to push a book he does with Mark Felt.

A Washington Post book reviews describes the resulting book, “A G-Man’s Life”:

“A G-Man’s Life also adds little because it’s an odd publishing venture, evidently assembled under trying circumstances: The man whose revelations were supposed to drive the book was unable to recall anything about the revelations he was contracted to reveal. The resulting book is hardly more than an abridgement, lifted word for word, from Felt’s 1979 memoir, The FBI Pyramid, in which he stoutly denied being Deep Throat, supplemented by extracts from an unpublished manuscript written with his son sometime after 1983 in which Felt provided more material on his early days in the FBI and, in O’Connor’s words, “edged closer to his Deep Throat identity.”

Added to the mix, according to O’Connor, are some of Felt’s FBI memos and some interviews conducted by Felt’s family, his caretaker and O’Connor from early 2002 to late 2005, but Woodward’s accounts of his meetings with Felt during that same period establish that Felt could remember next to nothing about his past by then. The new book also contains an introduction and conclusion by O’Connor and a speculative aside (inserted into the Watergate chapter) in which O’Connor guesses at Felt’s motives for helping Woodward uncover the Nixon White House’s cover-up of its role in the burglary.

Felt’s own portions of the book, derived almost entirely from his 1979 memoir and his 1980s reminiscences, have not been adjusted to reflect his “edging” toward admitting that he was Woodward’s source, let alone his 2005 admission that “I’m the guy they used to call Deep Throat.” O’Connor appears to have been scrupulous in ensuring that the words in the Felt sections are actually by Felt, but this makes for some perplexing narration.

You will read Felt musing, “People will debate for a long time whether I did the right thing by helping Woodward” just after Felt has said that his contact with Woodward was limited to “one occasion during the Watergate investigation” — a statement itself contradicted a few pages later when Felt adds, “I met with Woodward over the next few months, again only confirming or not confirming information he already had collected from other sources.” This is as close as this book (in the sections that are supposed to be Felt’s) comes to discussing his role as Deep Throat, and it is impossible to tell exactly which words he wrote himself or when he wrote them.”

One thing that becomes clear reading all of these books in concert with each other is that popular lore probably overstates the role that Mark Felt and also Woodward and Bernstein played in Watergate.

I argue in fact, the role was overblown by the popularity of the movie, “All The President’s Men” starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford.

Mark Felt revealed information to Woodward and Bernstein, but it was first of all the tip of the iceberg. Obviously the information was coming from the FBI who was doing much of the original investigation. It was a rare event when Woodward and Bernstein knew more than the FBI, in fact, there was a scene in the movie where Bernstein was meeting with his source from the FBI, and they noted this. He even made reference to everyone believing that the FBI was tipping off the Washington Post.

Moreover, on the eve of the 1972 election, though the Washington Post had kept the story alive to some extent, it was view by the public who knew about it as a partisan scandal. Many simply believed this was the McGovern campaign’s grasp at straws. A poll revealed less than half the public even had heard of Watergate.

The key turning points came not from anything the Washington Post did, indeed the election pretty much marked the end of their influence as a leading publication on Watergate, but rather turned to the Congressional Watergate hearings. The key were figures such as Southern Democratic Senator Sam Ervin who headed up the Senate Select Committee on Watergate.

A key moment came during the confirmation hearings for Pat Gray who had been acting FBI Director following Hoover’s death and was nominated to become Hoover’s full time successor. But during hearings Gray inadvertently revealed the extent to which White House Council John Dean had involvement in what appeared to be a containment policy.

As Kutler wrote:

“The creation in early February (1973) of the Senate Select Committee investigating the 1972 campaign had caused barely a ripple of public attention… But as John Dean’s “containment” policy disintegrated against the backdrop of revelations unveiled in the Gray hearings, “Watergate” rapidly became a meaningful–and loaded–political term that spread across the nation, raising far-reaching political concerns.”

Within a month, the President’s top men would have to resign from the scandal. While Gray’s testimony was not the death knell, it was a game changer to use current parlance. Prior to March of 1973, Watergate was still a largely unknown and considered partisan scandal. After that, it became increasingly clear how much of a role the White House played in the cover up. The impetus was not Deep Throat, but the Senate Select Committee investigations and the carelessness of people like Patrick Gray.

As we all know now, the key in any scandal is not what you do, but whether or not you try to cover it up. Had Nixon simply revealed in 1972 their role in Watergate, or even in December of January of 1973, he probably would have survived. But the Nixon White House feared not so much the Watergate break in, but their pattern of corruption, use of slush funds, the extent to which they wielded their political power to try to disgrace their enemies. Their use of these tactics to bring down more formidable challengers in 1972 such as Ed Muskie and insure someone like George McGovern, a good man clearly far to the left of most of the population would get nominated.

In the end, I would argue that Mark Felt is more an intriguing footnote on history than the man who brought down Nixon. It is perhaps true, that without the Washington Post to keep the scandal alive in the minds of Washington insiders, that these later events could not have unfolded, but nothing that the Washington Post revealed was unknown by the FBI.

—David M. Greenwald reporting