The Sunday Times yesterday commented on Mark Felt, the secret source in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“Deep Throat”) whose insider guidance was vital to The Washington Post’s groundbreaking coverage of the Watergate scandal, which led to the resignation of US President Richard Nixon:
“Follow the money”. The advice given by Deep Throat to Bob Woodward during the Watergate investigation is part of the legend of the most famous anonymous source in the history of journalism. The only wrinkle is that Mark Felt, the FBI agent and informant who died on Thursday, never said anything of the sort.
The phrase was invented by William Goldman for the screenplay of “All the President’s Men”, the film that chronicles The Washington Post’s coverage of the Watergate scandal. It is not the only part of the mythology of Deep Throat that owes more to creative imagination than to fact. A rollicking yarn requires a struggle between good and evil. Since Richard Nixon and his unsavory crew of advisers had definitely gone bad, Deep Throat got to be the hero. In fact the real story of Felt is more nuanced, more subtle.
His motivations were mixed. Of course, there was his sense that something was wrong and needed to be exposed.
That, however, was only part of it. He was also fuelled by resentments, hoping to elevate himself in the bureaucracy, and possessed of a strong desire to dramatize himself.
He loved to gossip and Bob Woodward, a master of his craft, exploited that brilliantly. The intensely personal nature of the relationship that Woodward nurtured is best illuminated by this surprising fact — the first (and only) time that Deep Throat met Carl Bernstein was a month ago. The story of Deep Throat is then a story of modern journalism. Sources have complex motives, are only human. But in all the complexity, and even when they behave in dubious ways, they often do good. That, finally, must be the judgment on Mark Felt.
