Deep Throat Myths

With the dramatic revelation that W. Mark Felt was The Washington Post's Watergate Deep Throat informant, now we know the scandal was just another bureaucratic power play. It was more dramatic because it took down a president; yet, it was not primarily about Richard M. Nixon but inside Washington bureaucratic politics.

It was first about Bob Woodward, who was looking for a job, and met senior FBI bureaucrat Mark Felt, cultivating his advice on a future career. In 1971, Woodward won the coveted job of city investigative reporter at one of the nation's most prestigious newspapers, undoubtedly selling the Post on his "contacts," Washington's currency. Woodward immediately put Felt to use in an investigation of the District of Columbia police force and immediately thereafter of the attempted assignation of George Wallace. Woodward had inside FBI information within hours in both cases, winning high praise and future chits from his bosses. Two weeks later on June 17, 1972, the Watergate apartment break-in took place and in less than a year Woodward (and to a lesser extent Carl Bernstein) was off to stardom, including a motion picture, and top billing at mover-and-shaker dinners.

What did Felt get in return? The legendary director J. Edgar Hoover was still head of the FBI and Felt was third in line. According to his own 1979 memoir, Felt believed he had "an excellent chance" to succeed his boss, especially since he fully expected that a careerist would be selected to replace him. It would certainly not hurt to have a friend at the town's top media outlet. When Hoover died on May 2, 1972, Felt was devastated to learn the next day that Nixon appointed L. Patrick Gray III, a senior Department of Justice political appointee, as acting director. Gray immediately took control of an agency that had denied him access before his appointment. Felt became second in command and plotted revenge.

Watergate soon provided the opportunity. Long before the White House could have obstructed justice, the reason for Deep Throat's and his media supporters "patriotic" justification of his actions, just two days after the break-in, Felt gave Woodward FBI proof of the involvement of White House associate E. Howard Hunt. And the leaking from confidential investigation sources never stopped until another political director was appointed in 1973 and Felt retired.

Was Felt concerned about the politicians using illegal means to gain information or suppress evidence? In 1980, Felt was convicted by Federal officials of participating in unlawful break-ins that occurred well before Watergate. These were well-worn methods in Hoover's FBI as well as bugging and disrupting political activity on the right and left, including the most famous, against Martin Luther King. Gray's first encounter with Felt was when the later denied the former Hoover's secret files when Gray appeared as a Justice official to retrieve them at the director's death. A White House internal investigation unit, the so-called "plumbers," had been established earlier as a way to get the president information denied him by the FBI, which led Tom Charles Huston, the leader of the unit, to advise Nixon to fire the director. Felt was Hoover's man in all of these bureaucratic machinations so why would he object to them in principle? He did not object to the methods but only to "political interference" from the public officials to whom he was legally responsible.

The Post has long claimed the moral high ground in pursuing Nixon and prided itself on keeping its pledge not to revel Deep Throat. But it could only do so by misdirection, clearly against journalistic ethics. Woodward and Bernstein claimed in "All the President's Men" that a November 1973 story was from Deep Throat but also said it was based on a White House source. It was this and related untruths that kept the secret so long, although the former Post reporter James Mann had pierced the lie by 1992. Perhaps that was not so unethical afterwards to protect a source but implying the source was near the president was mainly very useful at the time to give the necessary substance to make the story credible enough to be effective. Now we know that the great inside spy story was not true but was purloined by a bureaucrat from FBI files.

Civil service professional associations are always lecturing political appointees to trust the professionals. They decry the secrecy of political officials in not keeping bureaucrats in the loop and relying on them. The John Bolton nomination is the latest episode in this Beltway morality play. But here is the highest career official at the FBI's stated view of career professionalism, when Felt denied being Deep Throat in 1979: "It would have be contrary to my responsibility as a loyal employee of the FBI to leak information" in the way Deep Throat had done, he responded.

Exactly. The bureaucrats and the media brought down a president but they lost the war. The whole progressive welfare state mythology relies upon the professionalism of a bureaucracy that is to be given the job of running the government instead of the ignorant elected politicians. After Felt, who could trust top bureaucrats, even at the most professional agencies like the FBI? Felt may have done us all a favor by destroying once and for all this dangerous myth.

Donald Devine, Editor.

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