Out of the Shadows
A secret source goes public, putting a new gloss on the running debate over reporters and their leaks
The years of guessing, second-guessing, third-guessing, and endless political parlor games finally all came to an end last week. "I'm the guy they used to call Deep Throat," announced W. Mark Felt, a top-ranking FBI official at the time of the Watergate scandal.
At 91, the mystery man who surreptitiously aided Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein is now enfeebled by age and fading health. Long conflicted over how his actions would be seen by former FBI colleagues and recorded by history, Felt, encouraged by his family and lawyer, decided not to take his secret to the grave. The shadowy figure immortalized in the reporters' 1974 book, All the President's Men, and portrayed by whispery, smoke-shrouded Hal Holbrook in the movie of the same name chose the glossy monthly Vanity Fair for his revelation. In doing so, he denied his former Post contacts--who remained dutifully silent about their source's identity for 33 years--a final Watergate scoop and set off a frenzy of media coverage that stirred debate about the former G-man's motives then and now. Suddenly back in the spotlight, albeit briefly, were Watergate-era figures, from former Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee to former Nixon chief counsel Chuck Colson. And there was buzz about a potential million-dollar book deal for Felt, despite his failing memory, while Woodward raced to get his own Deep Throat-and-me book out in July.
But beyond all the hoopla, the self-outing of the nation's most famous anonymous source--at a time when the American press is struggling to improve its credibility--provides a fascinating, if not entirely enlightening, glimpse into the murky business of using unnamed sources, especially on high-impact stories. Reliance on such sourcing is now under heavy fire following Newsweek 's retraction of an anonymously sourced report of a Koran having been defiled at the U.S. military's detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba--a report that may have contributed to deadly protests in Afghanistan.
"A good day." A number of major news outlets, from the New York Times to USA Today --and now Newsweek --have taken steps to reduce their use of unnamed sources. But reporters are pushing back, arguing that it's difficult to gather important information during a time of war and heightened national security without turning to reliable sources who, as Felt did, insist on anonymity. "The Felt disclosure was a good day for anonymous sources," says Vernon Loeb, who covered the Pentagon and CIA for the Washington Post before becoming an investigations editor last year at the Los Angeles Times . "To only quote people by name would deprive readers of really critical information."
Investigative work without the judicious use of anonymous sources, Loeb and others argue, would be nearly impossible, especially in Washington, where the Bush administration's insistence on secrecy and staying "on message" exceeds that of any recent administration and where "on background" is set as a precondition of even innocuous briefings. Time reporter Matthew Cooper, who, with New York Times reporter Judith Miller, faces 18 months in prison for refusing to reveal a source who identified a covert CIA operative, says anonymous sources are important "in order to be able to find out what's really going on, whether it's government corruption or malfeasance." Adds Cooper: "Felt's announcement is a reminder, once again, that reporters take these confidences seriously."
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.
But Felt's fears about the reaction of some current and former FBI officials were not unfounded. Oliver "Buck" Revell, a former FBI associate deputy director, bristled when asked about Felt's Deep Throat admission and cautioned that it would be "shortsighted" for the media to look at this as a testimonial for anonymous sources. "To sneak around as a whistle-blower, when you have a duty and obligation to provide information to prosecutorial authorities, to me is a total betrayal of his duties," Revell says. "The investigation every day was uncovering what went on and would have proceeded, though perhaps not as spectacularly." Even those who applaud what they see as Felt's positive portrayal of an anonymous source--one who ultimately helped his country--note that Woodward and Bernstein relied on a constellation of sources to build their Pulitzer Prize-winning Watergate coverage, a point made clearly by Woodward in the hours after he and his former reporting partner confirmed Felt's claim.
Today, the use of anonymous sources--sometimes reliance on a single source--may have become too routine, a peculiar Washington habit that can produce mistakes that diminish the news media's credibility. But with the suffix -gate affixed to every fleeting scandal, Felt's disclosure illustrates that twinning a knowledgeable, reliable anonymous source with dogged, responsible reporters can serve as a journalistic gold standard.
This story appears in the June 13, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.