When an inexperienced Washington Post reporter granted anonymity to a Federal Bureau of Investigation official 33 years ago in exchange for information about a scandal that became known as Watergate, American journalism and politics changed forever – for better and for worse.
For better, in the short run, because an unbelievably dishonest president of the United States and members of his extremely dishonest staff ended their careers in disgrace. For worse, in the long run, because the mistaken idea that anonymous sources are somehow glamorous has compromised journalists and harmed public discourse ever since.
Now Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward reveals how he developed a secret relationship with the FBI official, Mark Felt – known to the public only as Deep Throat – to help drive Richard Nixon from the White House.
For several decades, I have been scolding Woodward for his overuse of anonymous sources in the dozen books he published before “The Secret Man.” I’m not famous or rich like Woodward. But I used my platforms as a book reviewer and as executive director of Investigative Reporters & Editors – a 5,000 member journalism organization – to criticize his bad example over and over.
Yet I have never scolded Woodward for promising anonymity to Felt. After reading “The Secret Man,” I am still convinced that Woodward made a defensible decision, despite my unrelenting opposition to journalists granting anonymity to sources.
In the 1974 book, “All the President’s Men,” by Woodward and Post reporting partner Carl Bernstein, careful readers can find a few clues about Deep Throat’s role and why he wanted anonymity. “The Secret Man” is especially poignant and revealing when read in tandem with “All the President’s Men,” the most compelling, instructive book about investigative journalism ever published. (Even the 1976 movie based on the book is compelling and instructive, thanks to the on-screen insights of Robert Redford as Woodward and Dustin Hoffman as Bernstein.)
The poignancy and the revelations center more on Woodward than on Felt. Woodward can only speculate about the motives of Felt, who apparently is too beset by dementia to explain himself lucidly so many decades after his decision to serve as the journalist’s secret source. The previously Sphinxlike Woodward, on the other hand, reveals thoughts and actions never known to a general audience.
In 1992, I spent face time with Woodward while researching an explanation of his journalism for a national magazine. Unlike most celebrities, Woodward did not crave attention, except through what he published. Although unfailingly polite, although inviting him into his home office and Washington Post office, Woodward spent more energy trying to dissuade me from writing about him than answering my questions. Except for coming away from the discussions with an awesome appreciation for Woodward’s work ethic, I gained little insight into the man.
“The Secret Man” provides a surprising amount of insight. (The title unintentionally applies to Woodward as aptly as it applies to Felt.) It turns out Woodward was serving in the U.S. Navy when he met Felt by chance. Thrown together in a White House waiting area with the commanding looking older man, Woodward started conversing with the stranger. Only reluctantly did Felt reveal his FBI identity. Woodward, uncertain about his future after the Navy but inclined to become a lawyer like his father, understood instinctively that Felt could be a useful guide to the future.
So, nonjournalist Woodward began cultivating Felt as a practiced journalist would cultivate a potentially important source. When, lo and behold, Woodward became a journalist despite advice to the contrary from his father and from father surrogate Felt, he had a highly placed source already primed. The cultivation of Felt by Woodward pre-Watergate is a remarkable saga. The payoff during Watergate is also a remarkable saga, with Woodward providing new details about how he arranged meetings with Felt, and even the location of the fabled parking garage serving as the site of the rendezvous.
Other portions of the book containing new details fascinate too: The opposition that Woodward and Bernstein had to overcome in the Washington Post newsroom to the Watergate exposés that seemed to strain credulity but were mostly accurate; Woodward’s sometimes bemused, sometimes worried thoughts as journalists, political operatives and hard-to-describe gadflies tried to solve the identity of Deep Throat, a few correctly; and Bernstein’s revelation, in an addendum, about how he and Woodward reacted when they first realized that their day-to-day reporting might lead to Nixon’s impeachment.
“The Secret Man” is not the book to serve as an introduction to Watergate or investigative reporting. But for those who have read “All the President’s Men” (or will now feel inspired to read it for the first time), “The Secret Man” is a worthwhile coda.
Steve Weinberg is a freelance book reviewer in Columbia, Mo.
The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate’s Deep Throat
By Bob Woodward
Simon & Schuster,
249 pages,
$23
