Out of the Shadows
A secret source goes public, putting a new gloss on the running debate over reporters and their leaks
Felt's story may reaffirm the value of anonymity--that when it works, the public is served. Former White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater, who worked for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, has been critical of what he characterizes as post-Watergate media cynicism, but he staunchly defends the use of unnamed sources when normal channels won't work. "I was a bureaucrat for 17 years before I went to the White House," Fitzwater says, "and I always thought that if things got really bad, I could always go to the press."
But the saga also suggests a parallel cautionary tale, one that instructs reporters to cast a gimlet eye at the stew of self-interest and vanity--as well as the presumed will to do what's right--that can motivate someone to provide information secretly. When Felt began parceling out guidance to Woodward during nighttime meetings in a deserted Virginia parking garage, he was the FBI's No. 2 man and was disappointed to have been recently passed over by President Nixon for the bureau's top job. At the time, Felt believed the White House was trying to take control of the FBI and feared that the bureau's traditions would be ruined by politicization. He was also heading the FBI's investigation into the break-in at Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate complex, a crime that eventually served as a portal into the dank netherworld of the Nixon administration's illegal dirty tricks. Felt saw the CIA as in cahoots with the White House to stymie the bureau's inquiry into how the burglary was funded.
So Felt's motives for cooperating secretly with Woodward were, in a word, mixed: He was a proud and accomplished protege of former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover passed over for the top job, which went to an outsider, interim political appointee L. Patrick Gray III. He was an agent who loved the bureau. He was an "incurable gossip," wrote Woodward and Bernstein in their book, fascinated by rumor and ill-suited to hiding his feelings. Woodward had met Felt by chance about a year before he began his career as a Post reporter. The man Woodward had been turning to for fatherly career advice quickly became a reliable source. A "junction of motives" drove Felt's relationship with Woodward, says Bill Baker, a 26-year FBI veteran who retired in 1991 as assistant director of criminal investigations. "It was personal, it was bureau integrity, and he saw the CIA trying to block the money trail," Baker says. "To those who ask why he didn't go to the prosecutors or through the legal system, well, he knew it would've been stalled."
"Betrayal." In his magazine confessional, Felt told writer John D. O'Connor, who as Felt's lawyer unsuccessfully shopped the story for sale, that he was concerned about whether FBI personnel would see him as a "decent man or a turncoat" for his role in leaking sensitive bureau information to Woodward. O'Connor worked with Felt's family to persuade the old agent to reveal himself as Deep Throat so Felt could get credit for his role and make some money, too. The lawyer told Felt, who now lives with his daughter in California, that those associated with the bureau consider him a patriot.
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