Leak: Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments 197 Like many interesting projects, this one didn’t start out the way it ended up. I was never a Watergate buff, even though I worked for George McGovern ’s campaign in Los Angeles as a twenty-one-year-old. I believed there was much more to the break-in, of course, and kept a McGovern bumper sticker on my car for months after the November 1972 landslide as a small act of political defiance. And naturally, during the summer of 1973, I was glued to the television as a parade of administration witnesses appeared before Sam Ervin’s Senate select committee. But afterwards, I read none of the copious Watergate literature, and aside from a passing interest in the identity of Deep Throat, paid little attention to the story. Although I was part of the generation that flocked to journalism schools in the wake of All the President’s Men, my role model was less Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein and more I. F. Stone, who could not get published in the Washington Post. In 2007, a short article in the Post attracted my attention: it described the $5 million sale of Woodward and Bernstein’s Watergate-related papers to the Ransom Center at the University of Texas. I was looking for subjects to write about for a website I had just started, Washington Decoded (www.washingtondecoded.com), and having done research in archives for years, I thought any newly opened papers were likely to contain at least a few new insights into an old crisis. Soon afterwards, I hooked up with William Gaines, a Pulitzer Prize– winning reporter who had become a journalism professor. He had attracted national attention prior to 2005 for using successive classes to try to ferret out the identity of Deep Throat. Though he and his students ultimately guessed wrong, I found Gaines’s perspective unique—that of a working journalist rather than historian, yet one who believed in the importance of the documentary trail. His knowledge of the subject was unparalleled. Moreover, he was willing to share it and brainstorm. acknowledgments 198 We collaborated on a May 2007 website article, “Deep Throat 3.0,” which attempted to shed new light on the nature of the relationship between W. Mark Felt and the Post’s coverage. Subsequently, I wrote two more articles: “The Secret That Wasn’t: Deep Throat Exposed in 1973” (September 2008) and “Richard Nixon’s Own Deep Throat” (November 2009), the latter of which was also published in The Washingtonian in an abridged version. The more time I spent catching up with the Watergate literature, the more fascinated I became with the journalistic angle to the story. It became apparent that the press had not applied any of its well-honed skepticism to the pat story about Deep Throat. The coverage of W. Mark Felt’s death in 2008 underscored my sense that the treatment had been self-congratulatory, if not self-adulatory, rather than thoughtful. Several people enabled me to develop a new perspective on Mark Felt. Ed Gray’s book with his father, L. Patrick Gray III, caused me to rethink my vague recollection that the acting FBI director was just another of the president’s men. Daniel Armstrong, one of Gray’s top aides during his short tenure, was a patient guide to that tumultuous year. James Mann helped me understand the inner workings of the Post, and Harry M. Rosenfeld was open to talking about the paper’s Watergate coverage anew. Barry Sussman, Richard M. Cohen, and Carl Bernstein responded to specific questions. I also benefited from talking with reporters at other publications, especially Ronald J. Ostrow of the Los Angeles Times, Stephan Lesher, formerly with Newsweek, and from Time magazine, John F. Stacks and John M. Wilhelm. John M. Crewdson, formerly of the New York Times, was helpful when it mattered most. Bob Woodward was generous with his time despite his skepticism about anyone being able to decipher “a secret man.” I did not have as many questions for Woodward as I might have, because his 2005 memoir about his relationship with Mark Felt was better than any interview could be. Cartha “Deke” DeLoach, Ray Wannall, William D. Ruckelshaus, and John J. McDermott were pivotal in helping me comprehend the mysteries of FBI culture in the early 1970s. My patient guide to Watergate itself from the Bureau’s perspective was Angelo J. Lano, the case agent, and I am greatly in his debt. All three...