Inside Watergate's Last Chapter

(4 of 5)

When you go back to the Post's coverage, instead of the movie myth, a more complex picture emerges of what Deep Throat brought to the case--and what he didn't. A review of Post stories and Woodward and Bernstein's book points to a handful of instances in which Deep Throat's leaks advanced the story in specific ways. (See timeline.) But even Bernstein told the Post last week that "Felt's role in all this can be overstated." As the No. 2 man at the FBI, overseeing the agency's daily operations, including the break-in investigation, he conducted infrequent cloak- and-dagger conversations with Woodward from June 19, 1972, two days after the break-in, until November 1973, five months after he quit the FBI. Generally, other sources provided the details while Deep Throat distantly guided the hunt. He corroborated information, tipped the duo where to dig, steered them off side paths and encouraged them to keep pushing the story hard, especially in the early days when Watergate was an inside-the-Beltway tale that might have petered out under the White House campaign to cover things up. Barry Sussman, the Post editor who was in charge of the Watergate story, argued in a 1997 article on the Internet that Woodstein's shoe-leather work was really the key to their prizewinning stories. No editor asked them during the process for Deep Throat's name, he said, "because Deep Throat was basically unimportant to our coverage." It's true, says Bradlee, that Deep Throat's guidance was "invaluable." But he also says the paper did not need Deep Throat to fuel its thirst for the story: "God himself couldn't have slaked it."*

Today Deep Throat's role still stirs both scorn and praise, much as Felt feared. Nixon diehards like former speechwriter Pat Buchanan last week called Felt a shameful "snake" who snitched on his government and betrayed his agency. Others piously complained he should have gone through channels or spoken up publicly, rather than leaking to the press in a dark parking garage in the wee hours. Moreover, John Dean, the White House counsel sent to jail for his deep involvement in the White House attempt to obstruct justice, tells TIME that Woodstein never really got to the bottom of the whole case. "They didn't even crack the case. They couldn't have been further from what concerned us most, the cover-up." Yet the majority of Americans who have come to equate Watergate with the triumph of the common good and the Constitution over a corrupt government probably share the assessment of Felt's grandson Nick Jones: "He is a great American hero who went well above and beyond the call of duty at much risk to himself to save his country from horrible injustice." Felt's willingness to blow the whistle against the highest in the land provides a salient reminder, at a time when journalism's credibility is at a low, of why anonymous sources have a legitimate role to play in keeping the powerful honest.