Who really was Mark Felt?

Mark Felt was a deputy to Idaho Senator James Pope (Democrat)and his successor D. Worth Clark (Democrat)and was a Democratic Party appointee to the Federal Trade Commission (see below) before becoming the 3rd man in line at the FBI who was passed over for the top job when J. Edgar Hoover died.

On Saturday, June 17, 1972 five men in business suits, ties and wearing surgical gloves entered the Watergate complex in Washington D.C. for the second and last time, carrying walkie-talkies, cameras and film, and tiny recording devices. Their arrest touched off a scandal that shook the government, leading to the prosecution and conviction of many top-level individuals in the White House, Committee To Re-elect, Justice Department, and ultimately to the resignation of the President of the United States. The investigation of this scandal was aided in no small measure by two journalists at The Washington Post; Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein and they in turn relied heavily on the information and counsel of an anonymous, high-ranking government official referred to as Deep Throat. The identity of this person has been the best-kept political secret of the past thirty years and the subject of much speculation. I hope to put this speculation to rest.

On May 2, 1972, eight weeks before the June 17th break-in at the Watergate, John Edgar Hoover, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation since 1921, died in his sleep. From the very beginning of the Nixon presidency relations with Hoover had been strained. Nixon and Hoover had known each other for more than twenty-five years, since Nixon had come to Washington as a young congressman from California. On occasion, Nixon had provided a political outlet for information Hoover wanted leaked, concerning people in government who threatened Hoover’s control over the FBI and Hoover, in turn provided Nixon with valuable information and support in the congressman’s crusade against communists. Still, as Nixon took hold of the reigns of government, he recognized that Hoover could be a two-edged sword.

Nixon was maniacal when it came to security. His longstanding suspicions of the media, in general, and the press, in particular, as well as his mistrust of government workers whom he saw as an unfriendly, left leaning, democrat dominated, entrenched bureaucracy convinced Nixon that he needed broader powers and authority to identify, investigate, and sanction those whom he believed opposed his agenda and policies. Here, the interests of these two powerful men would come into direct opposition. For example, when Tom Houston of Ehrlichman’s staff was asked to come up with a plan to counteract the effects of anti-war demonstrations which Nixon believed were undermining negotiations with Hanoi, identify leaks concerning the Pentagon Papers, and other politically sensitive White House operations, Hoover refused to go along, citing the illegality of elements of the plan. This was the genesis on the “Plumbers” and the beginning of a series of illegal break-ins, wiretaps, and ‘black bag’ jobs that would bring down the government.

One of the worst kept secrets in Washington was that Hoover kept private, secret files on virtually everyone and everything of any importance in the Capitol over the past 50 years. Hoover used the knowledge of the existence of these files and the speculation as to what they contained to perpetuate his re-appointment even past the mandatory retirement age for government employees. When Hoover died, Nixon moved quickly to take possession of these files and sent L. Patrick Grey III, then deputy attorney general-designate, to the Bureau to retrieve them. Helen Gandy, Hoover’s personal-private secretary for over forty years refused to admit even the existence of the files, as did Clyde Tolson, associate director, chief of staff, and Hoover’s most intimate friend. Grey was sent away empty handed.

Hoover’s death touched off a power struggle both within the Bureau and between the Bureau and the White House. According to Ronald Kessler in The FBI, the struggle for power within the bureau involved assistant director William Cornelius Sullivan, assistant to the director Cartha DeLaroach, and associate director Clyde Tolson. Less than a year before, Hoover had foreseen such a possibly and “decided to squeeze William Sullivan out and gave him a powerful hint to that effect by promoting a Sullivan opponent, Mark Felt, into a newly created number three position of deputy associate director between Tolson and Sullivan”(307).

W. Mark Felt, Jr. grew up in Twin Falls, and received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Idaho. After a year of pre-law, Felt moved to Washington, D.C., to work for Idaho Senator James Pope and his successor, D. Worth Clark, attending George Washington University Law School in the evenings. Felt received his law degree in 1940 and was admitted to the D.C. bar in 1941, when he was appointed to the Federal Trade Commission before becoming an FBI agent in 1942. Over the next twenty years, Felt was assigned to the Espionage Division at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C., and supervised investigations of employees at the Hanford, Washington, plutonium facility. In 1962, Felt was promoted deputy assistant director (number one man) in the Training and Inspections Division, where he headed the FBI’s training programs in Quantico, Virginia and Washington, D.C. Nine years later, in 1971, Mark Felt was appointed deputy associate director of the FBI by J. Edgar Hoover (Theoharis 324). With both Hoover and Clyde Tolson in poor health, Felt was now literally a “heartbeat away” from the directorship of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, an office he had sought for over thirty years.

On May 3, 1972, after Hoover’s funeral, Helen Gandy and Clyde Tolson resigned, reportedly taking some of the secrets files with them, while the remainder was transferred to Mark Felt’s office. Felt believed that he was now the only likely successor to Hoover, but Nixon had other plans. For the first time in anyone’s memory, a president of The United States was in a position to appoint a new director of the FBI. Approaching the campaign for his re-election with the avowed intent to “get his enemies” after securing that election, Nixon wanted control of the FBI with a director who was personally loyal to him. To accomplish this, Nixon went outside the Bureau and named L. Patrick Grey III acting director. Grey quickly chose Felt as associate director and relied heavily upon him to ease Grey’s transition. Inside the bureau, Grey was seen as an interloper and a pawn of the president.

Two men have attempted an exhaustive and methodical search for Deep Throats true identity: John W. Dean III and Leonard Garment. Both men served as Council to the President (Nixon) and it was Garment who replaced Dean after he was fired shortly after his appearance before the Senate Select (Ervin) Committee. In Garment’s book, In Search of Deep Throat: The Greatest Political Mystery of Our Time, Garment tells us that Felt was frustrated by Grey’s cooperativeness with the White House (81). The former Council to the President goes on to say that Felt was a “strong” match for Deep Throat and had “matchless access to information about the scandal. Felt, Garment says, was “a seasoned career special agent and Bureau executive, well acquainted with clandestine modes of operation” and because of being passed over for Hoover’s job, had a personal motive for acting (146). In addition, Garment feels the FBI had a “collective reason to fear the Nixon White House” because, from the beginning of Nixon’s presidency, relations between the Bureau and the administration were strained and uneasy. Moreover, The Bureau at times refused White House demands for wiretaps and sometimes terminated others without notifying the White House.

To be clear, according to Garment “Mark Felt was a prototypical career FBI man. He was …understandably angry on behalf of not only himself but also his agency. He was also believed by some of his colleagues, and therefore by Deep Throat theorists, to be a big leaker to the press. These characteristics were a good fit” (147). John Dean tells us in Lost Honor, of a conversation he had with John Ehrlichman about wiretap records that was passed on to Ehrilichman to prevent Hoover’s using them for blackmail. Ehrlichman responds, “Deny it! It sounds like your friend over at the FBI, Mark Felt, has been talking again” (67). Dean goes on further to say that the only people who knew the names of the individuals whose phones had been tapped at the time “…the information was given to Woodward were Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, John Ehrlichman, John Mitchell, Bob Mardian and…in the FBI, Mark Felt” (347).

As in any investigation, motive, opportunity and access to information are paramount considerations to answering the question: WHO? Mark Felt, a career officer in the bureau had hoped to replaced Hoover as director only to find himself passed over by a junior level Justice Department lawyer with no criminal experience. In FBI, Sanford Ungar writes, Felt has been described as a “ smooth and charming, a tall and uncannily handsome, white-haired man who looked about ten years younger than his actual age. He could be clever and became one of the Director’s (Hoover) favorites in his declining years” (303). Others within the bureau criticized Felt for the ease with which he could come down on both sides of a hotly disputed issue, according to Ungar. Ungar continues, “…there is no disputing the fact that Felt knew the FBI from several valuable vantage points. Unlike many others in powerful positions at headquarters…he knew the strengths and weaknesses of some of the more obscure corners of FBI operations” (513). Also, in 1972, White House assistant John Ehrlichman requested the FBI to help in the “identification of substantial issue problem areas in…several major states, in order for Ehrlichman to give the president maximum support during campaign trips over the next several weeks.” Felt approved the request in Grey’s absence and when the issue became public, Grey testified that he had been out of the office (Washington) when the results came back and that as second in command, Felt had knowledge and responsibility for the information (527).

Robert Upshur Woodward was born in Wheaton, Illinois, attended Yale University on an ROTC scholarship. In Deep Truth: The lives of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, Adrian Havill tells us “ Woodward served as editor of the Yale newspaper The Banner and in 1964, as a senior, he became a member of the Yale secret society, Book and Snake. Yale – especially its secret societies – was a fertile recruiting ground for the U.S. Intelligence community” (29). Many young Yale seniors, particularly among history majors and these secret societies, were approached and recruited for service in various intelligence agencies of the U.S. Government. At this very time, Mark Felt was Chief in charge of recruitment and training for the FBI. Indeed, in their work Silent Coup, Colodny and Gettlin have said that they believe Woodward became a “spook” between his graduation from Yale and his entry into the Navy. They are not alone, other authors have also suggested this possibility. We know that three days after graduating from Yale, the U.S. Navy sent Woodward to Norfolk Virginia, where none other than U.S. Senator George Smathers of Florida commissioned him an ensign. All newly commissioned Navy and Marine Corps officers are required to attend ‘Junior School’ before beginning their military careers and usually, but not always before their first assignments. This school is located at the U.S. Marine Headquarters, Quantico, Virginia, the same base where the training headquarters for the FBI are located, and where Mark Felt was director of training at that time and until 1971. Woodward has always insisted that he and Deep Throat had a relationship that preceded Watergate and that they would spend evenings talking about government and politics. Could this be where that relationship began? Woodward’s first assignment is a very special ship, called the “floating Pentagon,” the U.S.S. Wright. This vessel was a National Emergency Command Ship, a place where a president and his cabinet could preside from in the event of a nuclear war. It had elaborate and sophisticated communications and data processing capabilities. It had a smaller replica of the war room at the Pentagon. It ran under what was called SIOP (Single Integrated Operation Plan. For example, in the event of a nuclear war, the Wright was third in line to take full command it the two ahead of it, the Strategic Air Command (SAC) in Omaha and NORAD, were rendered incommunicado. Woodward, with a straight face told authors Colodny and Gettlin that he guessed he had been picked for the ship because he had been a radio ham as a kid! After a two and a half year stint on the Wright Woodward was supposed to go to Vietnam, still an ensign, but instead was assigned at one of the most sought after duty stations in the country, the Naval Base at San Diego, California. Then he wrote the Pentagon asking to serve on a Destroyer. His wish was granted, he was promoted to lieutenant and given a particularly cushy assignment aboard the U.S.S. Fox as communications officer. While at Yale, after an eight-year relationship, Woodward had married his high school sweetheart, and while they were stationed in California they discussed what they would do after he was discharged from the Navy. According to his wife Kathy, the plan had been to move to northern California, and the bay area, to finish his graduate work at the University of California at Berkeley. There she would get her teaching certificate. At the conclusion of his tour of duty on the Fox, arriving back in San Diego, Woodward informed his wife he signed up for an additional year and was going to work in the White House! Where could he have gotten such assurances while halfway around the world in the Pacific? Stunned, she refused to go to Washington. That, for all intents and purposes put an end to their marriage and a twelve-year relationship. Why would he do it? Instead of the White House he served as a liaison officer between the Joint Chief’s intelligence division in the Pentagon and the National Security Council (NSC) in the Nixon White House. In this capacity Woodward would have had to submit to a thorough FBI field check in order to obtain clearance to classified material if he had not already done so and would of necessity had contact with high ranking officials within the FBI who also worked with the NSC. Until his elevation to deputy associate director, Mark Felt was in charge of the Inspections Division at the FBI (Theoharis 325).

James Mann was already a reporter at The Washington Post when Woodward arrived after a stint as a reporter for a small suburban Maryland newspaper where he had gone after leaving the Navy. Mann was covering the federal courthouse in Washington D.C. and he and Woodward worked closely together, becoming friends reporting on the Post Metro beat. Post City editor Barry Sussman in his book The Great Cover-up relates how within hours of the shooting of presidential candidate George Wallace, while the alleged assailant was still not publicly known, Woodward volunteered that he had a “friend” who might be able to help. Later that day and over the next two weeks, Woodward not only came up with the assailants name, Arthur Bremer, but details of his life and travels as soon as the FBI uncovered them while, at the same time, the Bureau declined to officially comment even on the search. In an article Woodward wrote for the Post on May 25, 1972 he credited a ‘reliable source close to the investigation’ for the information used in the story (Mann).

On June 19, 1972 – two days after the break-in – Woodward called his “friend” again. The source told him “the FBI regarded Hunt as a prime suspect in the Watergate investigation” and related details from Hunt’s address book containing references to the White House (Woodward 25). In addition, it turned out that the “bugs (planted in the DNC offices at the Watergate) sent radio signals across the street to the Howard Johnson Motel, where they were monitored by Alfred Baldwin III, another (former) FBI agent” (Sirica 48). According to Mann and checking the text beginning with the introduction of Deep throat in Chapter four of All The President’s Men on page 72, Woodward (in speaking about Deep Throat) says, “ It was he (Deep Throat) who had advised Woodward on June 19th that Howard Hunt was definitely involved in Watergate…he told Woodward that the FBI badly wanted to know where the Post was getting it’s information.” Mann also asserts that during the summer and fall of 1972 Woodward spoke repeatedly of “my friend at the FBI – each time making it plain that this was a special and unusually well placed source” (Mann). On September 15, 1972 when the Watergate burglars were indicted, Mann had left the Post and called Woodward to say goodbye. Mann says he mentioned the indictments and asked what’s new? Woodward responded, “I just talked to my friend at the FBI. I think we’re on a whole new level on this thing” (Mann). On page 73 of All The President’s Men, Woodward writes that on the day of the indictments he talked to Deep Throat reading him the draft of a story saying that he had received information that officials high up in the Committee to Re-Elect had been involved in funding Watergate.

The FBI agents involved in the Watergate investigation, headed by Agent Angelo J. Lano, “were amazed to see material in Woodward and Bernstein’s stories lifted almost verbatim from their reports of interviews a few days or weeks earlier (Kessler 269). At one point, according to Daniel C. Mahan, an agent on the case, “Acting Director Grey called all the agents on the (Watergate) squad into his office to try to ferret out who was leaking the material” (Kessler 344). In To Set The Record Straight: The Break-In, The Tapes, The Conspirators, The Pardon, Judge John J. Sirica tells us, “ Attorney General (Richard) Kleindienst ordered (acting FBI Director) Patrick Grey to refuse to answer any more questions about the FBI handling of the Watergate investigation, but his order was too late, since Grey had already testified that he had sent (emphasis mine) eighty-two investigative reports from the FBI to John Dean in the White House” (107). Who did he send them with? Who was close to him he could trust?

We know from Woodward that Deep Throat did not like getting calls “at the office” and so an elaborate system to set up face to face meetings was invented requiring Woodward to move a certain flower pot with a red flag in it to a precise location on his deck if he wanted a meeting which they had agreed upon, in advance, would be at a certain time, in a certain basement garage. If Deep Throat wanted the meeting, Woodward’s New York Times, which he received every morning, would have page 20 circled and a clock face with the meeting time drawn in. We know, again from Woodward, that between June 19, 1972 and the first week of November 1973 the two were in contact thirteen times. The first two contacts Monday, June 19, 1972 (twice); by phone two days after the break in were initiated by Woodward and were probably to Felt at his office. The next two contacts, also initiated by Woodward were on Saturday, September 16, 1972 and Sunday, September 17, 1972 again by phone and since it was a weekend they were probably to Felt at his home. These were followed by three garage meetings in the month of October 1972, two at Woodard’s request and one at Deep Throat’s. One of these meeting’s was October 9, 1972. Alexander Haig has often been considered a candidate for Deep Throat, however he was in Paris with Henry Kissinger on this day overseeing the signing of the Paris Peace Accords, which ended the Vietnam War.

Then on Sunday, February 24, 1973 Woodward arrived in the garage for a pre-arranged meeting only to find that Deep Throat was not there. They had a backup plan for this eventuality, which consisted of Deep Throat leaving Woodward a note in a certain location in the garage. This was the only time this occurred. Woodward went to retrieve the note but found he could not reach it without help; the ledge was too high for him to reach unaided. Woodward is five feet, ten inches tall so Deep Throat had to be considerably taller to place the note on the ledge without any assistance. Woodward found a pipe on the ground and with it was able to reach and drag the note from the ledge. Deep Throat had typed instructions to meet the next night a bar Woodward had never heard of. “Had Deep Throat gone crazy? Woodward wondered.” The next night, February 25th, Woodward arrived at a tavern, a saloon for truckers and construction workers on the outskirts of Washington and found Deep Throat sitting nervously at a side table, alone (Dean 268). At various times over the years many people have been under consideration for the real Deep Throat. The two men who attempted the most in depth investigation into Deep Throats identity: John Dean and Leonard Garment, have both included in their lists: Al Haig, David Gergen, Charles Colson, Alexander Butterfield, L. Patrick Grey, Henry Peterson, Earl Silbert, Stephen Bull, Ron Ziegler, Elmo Zumwalt and Mark Felt. At the time of this unusual, face-to-face meeting, Woodward was not yet the well-recognized figure he is today; however, the others were, with one exception: Mark Felt.

In 1999, while preparing his book, Garment tells us he was “actively considering Mark Felt as…Deep Throat” (Garment 170) when he received a letter from a young man who claimed to know the truth to the mystery. Chase Culeman-Beckman wanted Garment to talk to his attorney about confidentiality arrangements before revealing what he knew to the author. Garment agreed to credit him if he used his theory. Culeman-Beckman had been friends a decade before with Carl Bernstein’s son, Jacob, and they had gone to a summer camp together. According to Beckman, Jacob told him that his dad “had identified Mark Felt as Deep Throat” (Garment 171). Beckman’s supporting information relied on Woodward’s fascination with anagrams and his love for puzzles when an undergraduate at Yale, first reported by Adrian Havill in Deep Truth. Thus, “My Friend” = MF = Mark Felt ! For his part, Carl Bernstein, says that his son is “probably parroting speculation by his mother”, Nora Ephron, whom Bernstein says he never told.

Although Woodward has never divulged Deep Throat’s identity, he has publicly ruled out some of the men mentioned above for reasons of his own; Haig, Peterson, Gergen and Zumwalt. Why does Deep Throat not come forward, considering the financial rewards from books, motion pictures, lectures and guest appearances that would await him? Perhaps, it’s his age. W. Mark Felt, Jr. was fifty-one years of age in 1974 and would be eighty-one today. As an associate director of the FBI when he retired he is receiving a handsome pension and very good benefits. Or maybe he still has something to hide. In 1980, the Justice Department indicted and convicted W. Mark Felt, Jr. of approving illegal wiretaps on the Weather underground in the ‘seventies’ While his case was still on appeal in 1981, President Ronald Reagan pardoned Felt who is now retired, his whereabouts unknown.

Just when it seems that the mystery of Deep Throat has faded into the pages of history something extraordinary happens and he is back in the news. On July 16, 2001 Washington Post owner and publisher Katherine Graham died at the age of 84 in Sun Valley, Idaho after a fall while she was attending a newspaper executives meeting. At her funeral at Washington National Cathedral a crowd of over 3000 paid their respects. Among them was Historian, author, and advisor to presidents Kennedy and Johnson, Arthur M. Schlesinger According to an Associated Press story on July 24, 2001, Schlesinger, in his eulogy, ‘surveyed the crowd and injected a touch of mystery as he recalled that the Post’s groundbreaking coverage of the Watergate scandal was aided by information supplied by a reporters source nicknamed Deep Throat, identity unknown even to Graham.’ Deep Throat, he said, “may very well be among us this morning” (Benac A3).

Benac, Nancy. “Nation’s elite bid farewell to Post’s Katherine Graham”. Portland Oregonian. 24 July 2001: A3.

Central Intelligence Agency: Press Releases and Statements. “Statement By The Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet on The Death of Cord Meyer.” Central Intelligence Agency. 14 March 2001. 20 July 2001. http://www.cia.gov/cia/public_affairs/press_release/archives/2001/pr03142001.html

Colodny, Len and Robert Gettlin. Silent Coup: The Removal of a President. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991.

Garment, Leonard. In Search of Deep Throat: The Greatest Political Mystery of Our Time. New York: Basic Books, 2000.

Havill, Adrian. Deep Truth: The Lives of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. New York: Birch Lane Press, 1993.

Hougan, James. Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat and the CIA. New York: Random House, 1984.

Kutler, Stanley I. The War of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.

Lukas, Anthony J. Night-Mare: The Underside of the Nixon Years. New York: Viking Press, 1973.

Mann, James. “Deep Throat: An Institutional Analysis.” theatlantic.com. May 1992. 28 June 2001. http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/92may/9205deepthroat.htm

Morrow, Lance. “My Memories of Deep Throat (Not That One).” time.com. 27 July 2000. 28 June 2001. http://www.time.com/time/nation/printout/0,8816,51020,00.html

Noah, Timothy. “Deep Throat Revealed (Again).” Slate. 17 June 1999. 20 July 2001. http://www.slate.msn.com/code/chatterbox/chatterbox.asp?Show=6/17/99&idMessage=3033

Reichmann, Deb. “And Deep Throat Is…Well Maybe Not.” Associated Press. 25 July 2000. 2 July 2001. http://www.chblue.com/article.asp?ID=769

Shenk, Joshua Wolf. “What do we know and why do we know it?” U.S. News & World Report. 25 June 1997: 25.

Schorr, Daniel. “The Mother of All Unnamed Sources” Christian Science Monitor. 1 Sept. 2000: 11.

Sirica, John J. To Set The Record Straight: The Break-in, the Tapes, the Conspirators, the Pardon. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1979.

Summers, Anthony. The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon. New York: Viking Press, 2000.

Theoharis, Athan G. The FBI: A Comprehensive Reference Guide. Phoenix: Oryx Press, 1999.

Todorovich, Lisa. “The CIA Theory.” washingtonpost.com . 13 June 1997. 28 June 2001. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/watergate/cia.htm

Todorovich, Lisa. “The FBI Theory.” washingtonpost.com. 13 June 1997. 28 June 2001. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/watergate/fbi.htm

Vankin, Jonathan. “Top Secrets.” nytimes.com. 3 Dec. 2000. 2 July 2001. http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20011203mag-chart.html

Woodward, Bob and Carl Bernstein. All The President’s Men. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1349874/posts

Full-Throated Record
NRO ^ | February 23, 2005, 9:13 a.m. | Jonah Goldberg

Posted on 02/23/2005 8:03:08 PM PST by Checkers

If there is a Deep Throat, he should make the record clear.

by Jonah Goldberg

I have a request to make of William Rehnquist, Bob Dole, Henry Kissinger, Robert Bork, George Bush Sr., Al Haig, and a host of other Washington graybeards. While you're getting your affairs in order, could you please prepare an affidavit - or, even better, sworn video testimony - to be released posthumously, clarifying whether you are Deep Throat?

Let's back up a bit. As we all know, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein pretty much brought down the Nixon administration by exposing the Watergate cover-up. They then cemented their status as iconic American journalists with the book All the President's Men, which was made into a near-hagiographic film of the same title, starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman.

All the President's Men, both book and movie, were huge successes. What made them so, besides the engaging subject matter of high government misconduct, was a thrilling cloak-and-dagger plot. And central to this was the mysterious character known only as "Deep Throat." In the film, but not the book, it was Deep Throat who advised the reporters to "follow the money" in order to unravel the tangled web of lies spun by the White House. He was also the shadowy figure in a trench coat who allegedly warned Woodward that the duo's very lives were in danger, probably from the CIA. The implication was that Richard Nixon, the man who couldn't orchestrate a "third-rate burglary," was going to have the CIA terminate two Washington Post reporters.

Woodward and Bernstein have long promised that they will reveal the identity of this super-source on the occasion of Deep Throat's demise. Speculation and anticipation in Washington have been rising of late as the health of various potential candidates has deteriorated. Professional Watergate veteran John Dean recently wrote an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times claiming that Mr. Throat is very ill and that his obituary has already been written.

Here's the first problem: Nothing is easier than pinning a crime on a dead man. Here's the second problem: I don't think Deep Throat exists.

I'm not alone. Recently, Fox News media analyst Eric Burns revealed that the late, great historian Stephen Ambrose had told him there never was a Deep Throat. Burns's evidence was secondhand at best. He said Ambrose had shared an editor with Woodward and Bernstein - the legendary Alice Mayhew - and she had told him that Deep Throat was a composite of various sources. Mayhew told Ambrose that the first manuscript of All the President's Men contained no references to Deep Throat and that she told them the book needed a stronger plot device. D.T. was the result.

This version corroborates that of David Obst, Woodward and Bernstein's former literary agent. In his memoirs, Too Good to Be Forgotten, he confirms that the first draft of the book didn't mention Deep Throat and that Bob Fink, the researcher who organized the reporters' huge pile of sources, notes, and articles into a workable manuscript, was stunned to discover the appearance of Deep Throat in later versions.

Obst also runs down several of the implausible details about Deep Throat in the book. Woodward was supposed to have signaled to Throat that he needed to talk by putting a cloth-topped stick in a flowerpot and moving it to the back of his balcony. If Throat saw the signal, they would meet at a prearranged underground garage. Inconveniently, however, the pot couldn't be seen from the street. In other words, this major Washington figure was supposed to drive to Woodward's building, get out of his car, and walk down Woodward's alley every single day. That's not very secretive behavior for someone trying to stay secret.

A similar problem is Woodward's claim that Throat would secretly mark page 20 of Woodward's home-delivered New York Times with a hand-drawn clock marking the time of their next meeting. But Woodward's Times was delivered to the building's lobby, writes Obst, "unmarked and stacked in a pile" before 7 A.M. How did Deep Throat figure out the right paper? And why would a super-secret, high-profile source devise a system that required regularly skulking in a public lobby before dawn?

Anyway, there are more questions and more answers to all of this. But I think history deserves a full accounting. Presumably, if Deep Throat exists he is aware that he will be named when he dies. So, gentlemen, why not get your side of the story on paper - or video - now? If you suspect you might be fingered for doing something you didn't, you have even more reason to get your version squared away.

Watergate prompted a generation of preening journalists to lecture America from a pedestal. The least Deep Throat can do - or, the least the leading Deep Throat suspects can do - is to let us know if the journalists belonged on that pedestal in the first place.

This from a Slate article documenting Nixon's anti-semitism.

"As in the White House tapes excerpt Chatterbox previously cited, Felt is discussed as a probable leaker. This time, though, Nixon (who, among other things, will likely be remembered as America's last anti-Semitic president) expresses horror at discovering Felt to be Jewish. This conversation, dated Oct. 19, 1972, is even more Gothic than the last:

Nixon: Well, if they've got a leak down at the FBI, why the hell can't Gray tell us what the hell is left? You know what I mean?...

Haldeman: We know what's left, and we know who leaked it.

Nixon: Somebody in the FBI?

Haldeman: Yes, sir. Mark Felt. You can't say anything about this because it will screw up our source and there's a real concern. Mitchell is the only one who knows about this and he feels strongly that we better not do anything because--

Nixon: Do anything? Never.

Haldeman: If we move on him, he'll go out and unload everything. He knows everything that's to be known in the FBI. He has access to absolutely everything ...

Nixon: What would you do with Felt?

Haldeman: Well, I asked Dean ...

Nixon: You know what I'd do with him, the bastard? Well that's all I want to hear about it.

Haldeman: I think he wants to be in the top spot.

Nixon: That's a hell of a way for him to get to the top.

Haldeman: You can figure a lot of--maybe he thought--first of all, he has to figure that if you stay in as president there's a possibility or probability Gray will stay on. If McGovern comes in, then you know Gray's going to be out ...

Nixon: Is he Catholic?

Haldeman: (unintelligible) Jewish.

President Nixon: Christ, put a Jew in there?

Haldeman: Well, that could explain it too. "

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