|
发表于 2006-5-28 12:10:46
|
显示全部楼层
FBI's No. 2 Was 'Deep Throat'
It wasn't for lack of sleuths. "Who was Deep Throat?" has been among the most compelling questions of modern American history, dissected in books, in films, on the Internet, and in thousands of articles and hundreds of television programs. Virtually every figure in the Nixon administration, from Henry A. Kissinger to Patrick J. Buchanan to Diane Sawyer, has been nominated for the role -- sometimes by other Nixon veterans. Former White House counsel John W. Dean III, who tried to cover up Watergate on Nixon's instructions and then gave crucial testimony about the scheme, was a frequent contributor to the speculation, as was another Nixon lawyer, Leonard Garment.
Recently, an investigative-reporting class at the University of Illinois compiled what professor Bill Gaines believed to be a definitive case that Deep Throat was the deputy White House counsel, Fred F. Fielding. Those findings were publicized around the world. Perhaps the most insightful argument was mustered in the Atlantic magazine by journalist James Mann in 1992. "He could well have been Mark Felt," Mann wrote cautiously in a piece that laid bare the institutional reasons why FBI loyalists came to fear and resent Nixon's presidency.
Photos
Deep Throat Revealed
W. Mark Felt, former assistant director of the FBI during the Nixon Admminstration was identified on May 31 as "Deep Throat" after 30 years of secrecy.
Revisiting Watergate
Watergate Chronology Key events from the 1968 election to President Nixon's resignation in 1974.
Sights & Sounds The best photos from The Washington Post and other photographers of the period, audio excerpts from the Nixon tapes and TV coverage from the era.
2002 Special Report
Review: 'All the President's Men' Gary Arnold's review of the 1976 film that chronicled the Watergate scandal.
Politics Trivia
Which person was NOT a White House Chief of Staff under President Bill Clinton?
Mack McLarty
Leon Panetta
Erskine Bowles
Mike Espy
Free E-mail Newsletters
Daily Politics News & Analysis
See a Sample | Sign Up Now
Federal Insider
See a Sample | Sign Up Now
Breaking News Alerts
See a Sample | Sign Up Now
Felt fended off the searchlight each time it swung in his direction. "I never leaked information to Woodward and Bernstein or to anyone else!" he wrote in his 1979 memoir, "The FBI Pyramid."
"It would be contrary to my responsibility as a loyal employee of the FBI to leak information," he told journalist Timothy Noah six years ago.
In an article being prepared for tomorrow's Washington Post, Woodward will detail the "accident of history" that connected a young reporter fresh from the suburbs to a man whom many FBI agents considered the best choice to succeed the legendary J. Edgar Hoover as director of the bureau. Woodward and Felt met by chance, he said, but their friendship quickly became a source of information for the reporter. On May 15, 1972, presidential candidate George Wallace was shot and severely wounded by Arthur H. Bremer, in a parking lot in Laurel.
Eager to break news on a local story of major national importance, Woodward contacted Felt for information on the FBI's investigation. Unlike many in the bureau, Felt was known to talk with reporters, and he provided Woodward with a series of front-page nuggets -- though not with his name attached.
By coincidence, the Bremer case came two weeks after the death of Hoover, an epochal moment for the FBI, which had never been led by anyone else. Felt wanted the job, he later wrote. He also wanted his beloved bureau to maintain its independence. And so his motivations were complex when Woodward called a month later seeking clues to the strange case of a burglary at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex. Again, the young reporter had a metro angle on a national story, because the five alleged burglars were arraigned before a local judge.
Wounded that he was passed over for the top job, furious at Nixon's choice of an outsider, Assistant Attorney General L. Patrick Gray III, as acting FBI director, and determined that the White House not be allowed to steer and stall the bureau's Watergate investigation, Mark Felt slipped into the role that would forever alter his life.
He makes his first appearance as a literary figure in Chapter 4 of "All the President's Men."
"Woodward had a source in the Executive Branch who had access to information at [Nixon's campaign committee] as well as at the White House," Bernstein and Woodward wrote. "His identity was unknown to anyone else. He could be contacted only on very important occasions. Woodward had promised he would never identify him or his position to anyone."
Felt established extremely strict initial ground rules: He could never be quoted -- even as an anonymous source -- and he would not provide information. He would "confirm information that had been obtained elsewhere and . . . add some perspective," in the words of the book.
At first, the two men spoke by telephone. But Watergate was, after all, a case that began with a telephone wiretap. Felt had been summoned at least once to the White House, before Watergate, to discuss the use of telephone surveillance against administration leakers. He soon concluded that his own phones -- and the reporters' -- might be tapped. That's when he developed the system of coded signals and parking-garage encounters. |
|