Vanity Fair scooped Post on Deep Throat’s identity
Published 12:19 am Monday, December 22, 2008
By Staff
Washington's celebrated secret Watergate source who helped bring down President Richard Nixon when I was in high school turned out in mid-2005 to be J. Edgar Hoover's FBI second in command, W. Mark Felt.
Felt, 95, died Dec. 18 at 95 at his home in Santa Rosa, Calif., frail since a 2001 stroke.
Solving the second great mystery of our time (after the JFK assassination) May 31, 2005, didn't bring the closure I always imagined.
What really blew my mind is that the intrepid Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post investigative reporters, immortalized on screen by Robert Redford (Bob Woodward) and Dustin Hoffman (Carl Bernstein), were scooped at divulging their carefully-kept secret by Vanity Fair, which moves at the speed of a magazine.
"Caught by surprise," the Post reported, like when Miss Cleo the psychic never saw her end coming.
Thinking about Deep Throat makes me wonder why the prolific Woodward has never unraveled the mystery of the JFK assassination.
The piece unmasking Deep Throat, who proved more Anonymous than Joe Klein on the Clinton administration in "Primary Colors," was written by San Francisco attorney John D. O'Connor.
O'Connor earned his law degree from the University of Michigan in 1972 after receiving a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Notre Dame in 1968.
When the book (1974) and film (1976), "All the President's Men" came out, Felt was said to be shocked at his niche in history tagged with a tawdry title cheeky journalists borrowed from the 1972 Linda Lovelace porn movie.
"We didn't think his role would achieve such mythical dimensions," Bernstein admitted, since the shadowy parking garage character Hal Holbrook brought to life "largely confirmed information we had already gotten from other sources."
I was surprised to read that Bernstein only met the man for the first time last month when he and Woodward visited him at home.
I was on the side of Felt as an heroic whistleblower rather than a traitor to his commander in chief.
"This is a man who did his duty to the Constitution," Woodward told The AP Dec. 19.
Felt repeatedly denied any role, but Nixon suspected as early as February 1973, according to his tapes.
Felt may seem paranoid, but he knew first-hand of Nixon's willingness to use wiretap surveillance and "plumber" break-ins to plug leaks.
In hindsight, Felt seems a logical leaker. Angry at being passed over for the top job, which Hoover had since the beginning.
Angry at Nixon bringing in an outsider, Assistant Attorney General L. Patrick Gray III.
Determined not to let the White House impede the FBI's Watergate investigation.
His anti-Nazi espionage comes shining through when Felt insists Woodward summon him with a signal, a flower pot on the reporter's balcony.
Felt contacted Woodward by inking a clock face on page 20 of that day's New York Times.
I felt in 2005 his family was doing him no favor by trying to cash in to pay his mounting bills.
I feared his legacy's pendulum could easily swing from hero to villain with his motives laid bare.
Woodward, Bernstein and Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee promised not to reveal Deep Throat's secret identity until he died.
"We've kept that secret because we keep our word," said Woodward, Post assistant managing editor, who met Felt in 1970 while a Navy lieutenant and courier making deliveries to the White House.
Woodward knew Felt's family was at least considering going public because they approached him about dropping the bombshell in a book.
Woodward said his reservations stemmed from Felt's mental condition. He wondered whether his source was competent to release him from their longstanding agreement.
Ultimately, Woodstein continued to protect their source.
"(The Felt family and their lawyer) revealed him as the source. We confirmed it," said Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr.
So it wasn't Diane Sawyer, Henry Kissinger or Pat Buchanan, among the household names bandied about over the years.
John Dean, who tried to cover up Watergate for Nixon, frequently fanned speculation.
I think the last time this long-running parlor game appeared in this space before 2005 was when an investigative reporting class at the University of Illinois sleuthed out definitively that deputy White House counsel Fred Fielding was Deep Throat to worldwide publicity.
Another magazine, Atlantic, concluded in a 1992 piece by Jim Mann that Deep Throat "could well have been Mark Felt."
Felt wrote indignantly in his own 1979 memoir, The FBI Pyramid, "I never leaked information to Woodward and Bernstein or to anyone else!"
In 1980, Felt was indicted and convicted of conspiring to violate the civil rights of Weather Underground dissidents.
President Ronald Reagan pardoned him.
If your mother says she loves you, check it out: That's the first thing you learn in journalism school. Don't trust your memory ought to be second.
Mine failed me writing about the District Judge succession.
I should have looked it up.
Steg Legnell of Dowagiac was on the bench for a decade, from 1969-1978, but he lost that November election to Herm Saitz, who resigned in 1979.
Thanks to Burke Webb for bringing this to my attention.