Max Holland

American Journalism Review

 

Watergate Reconsidered   

The press’ role was important in unearthing the scandal, but it wasn’t nearly as overarching as earlier assessments suggested. 

 

By Max Holland

Max Holland is the author of  Leak: Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat

(University Press of Kansas, 2012). 

 

  It has taken all of the 40 years since the June 1972 break-in at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., to arrive at a proper understanding of the media's role in the scandal that broke a presidency. Even then, it is not the sheer passage of time that permits a balanced accounting. Rather, it is time plus some key disclosures and documents, including information gleaned from recordings surreptitiously made by President Richard M. Nixon; recent releases by the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act; the 2007 opening of critical portions from the Woodward and Bernstein Papers at the University of Texas's Ransom Center; and finally, confirmation, in 2005, that the über-secret source known as Deep Throat was in actuality W. Mark Felt, the bureau's No. 2 man in 1972-73.

Integrating all this information results in an understanding that diverges markedly from the first draft of history presented in Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward's 1974 book, "All the President's Men," and two years later, glorified in the eponymous movie. To be sure, the press played an instrumental, possibly irreplaceable, role. Yet contrary to the legend fomented by the book and film, the media did not save the day with truth its only weapon.

The linchpin in this mythic version, of course, has always been Deep Throat, or more precisely, the widespread public perception of his role. Regardless of whether one believed Woodward's initial 1974 rendering (Felt as principled whistle blower, trying to save the office of the presidency), or the more nuanced 2005 version presented in "The Secret Man" (Felt as savvy bureaucrat, trying to protect the bureau from Nixon's clutches), the fable hinged on the clandestine-minded Deep Throat and his "deep background" arrangement with Woodward. The late Christopher Hitchens noted as much when he observed, in his New York Times review of "The Secret Man," that Watergate ranked "as the single most successful use of the news media by an anonymous unelected official with an agenda of his own."

So long as there was no consensus about Felt's true design, there was a gaping hole at the center of the narrative. The new documentation fills that void, and fractures the fairy tale at the same time.

Read the entire article here.

Joe Goulden's Review of Leak in the Washington Lawyer

 

Books in the Law

Leak: Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat
By Max Holland
University Press of Kansas, 2012

Review by Joseph C. Goulden

The who of the Deep Throat mystery that captivated Washington for decades was not resolved until Mark Felt, the former number two man at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), revealed in 2005 that he was the unnamed source who fed information to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward during the Watergate investigation. But left dangling was why he chose to breach the bureau’s code of silence and give a journalist inside information on one of the more sensitive criminal investigations of the century.

In their first book on Watergate, All the President’s Men, published in 1974, Woodward and Post colleague Carl Bernstein depicted Deep Throat (who they did not name) as a selfless, high–ranking official intent on exposing the lawlessness of the Nixon White House. Deep Throat, they wrote, “was trying to protect the office [of the presidency] to effect a change in its conduct before all was lost.” A secondary goal was to prevent the FBI from being corrupted by being drawn into a White House cover–up.

That statement turns out to be 100 percent false, according to Max Holland, whose exhaustively researched work is a must-read for any person interested in the tangled scandal that drove President Nixon from office. (And let me admit it: As did uncountable thousands of other Washingtonians, I delighted in “wallowing in Watergate” during the months in 1972–73 when the story unfolded. And despite the flaws pointed out by Holland, I continue to admire Woodward and Bernstein for keeping the story alive when it received scant media attention elsewhere.)

As Holland authoritatively establishes, Felt (who died in 2008) turns out not to be an altruistic hero, but a scheming bureaucrat who yearned to replace J. Edgar Hoover as FBI director, and did so by staging a smear campaign in an attempt to discredit rivals for the job.

His targets were L. Patrick Gray, named acting director after Hoover’s death in May 1972, and eventual successor, William D. Ruckelshaus. (Another aspirant to the position, William Sullivan, already had self–immolated by leaking material derogatory of Hoover to columnists Bob Novak and Rowland Evans in 1971.)

Further, contrary to public perceptions nurtured by Woodward and Bernstein (and by extension, The Post itself) that they “uncovered” Watergate, the truth is somewhat different. Actually, as Holland writes (and documents), “the newspaper essentially tracked the progress of the FBI’s investigation, with a time delay ranging from weeks to days, and published elements of the prosecutors’ case well in advance of the trial.”

Read the entire review here.

 

Athan Theoharis on Leak

 

Reason.com

The Truth About "Deep Throat"

A new book sheds light on the Watergate whistleblower's real motives.

Athan Theoharis | July 18, 2012

Leak: Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat, by Max Holland, University Press of Kansas, 285 pp., $29.95.

The timely publication of Max Holland's Leak, coming on the 40th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, promotes a needed reassessment of two myths about the Watergate scandal. The first myth is that the reporting skills and diligence of two Washington Post cub reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, uncovered the abuses of power in Richard Nixon's White House and led to the president's forced resignation in August 1974.

Holland, editor of the website Washington Decoded, acknowledges the limited importance of Woodward and Bernstein's reporting but contends that their contribution pales in contrast to that of Federal Judge John Sirica, Sen. Sam Ervin's investigation and public hearings, the testimony of White House aides John Dean and Alexander Butterfield, and the inquiries of the special prosecutor and the House Judiciary Committee (the latter when considering articles of impeachment).

The second, more important myth involves W. Mark Felt, the acting FBI associate director who in 1972 became Woodward's secret source, dubbed "Deep Throat." Holland rebuts Woodward and Bernstein's portrayal of Felt as a principled official who leaked information because he was concerned over the lawlessness of the Nixon White House. Felt's motives, as Holland convincingly documents, were more prosaic: He wanted Nixon to question whether he could trust Acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray to control the FBI, thus leading the president to appoint Felt as the permanent FBI director, filling the vacancy caused by J. Edgar Hoover's recent death. Holland further documents that Felt withheld from Woodward some particularly explosive information about the White House attempting to use the CIA to contain the FBI's Watergate investigation. At other times, Felt passed on misinformation.

Holland's disclosure of Felt's insubordination does raise an important question: What emboldened this senior FBI official to betray his ostensible superior (while cunningly conveying the impression of a loyal acolyte), in the process unintentionally undermining Nixon's presidency?

The answer requires an understanding of the FBI's political culture forged during J. Edgar Hoover's 48-year tenure as the bureau's director. Since the mid-1930s, Hoover had expanded the FBI's role beyond federal law enforcement to operate surreptitiously as a political containment agency. FBI agents, accordingly, began to amass derogatory information about the personal and political activities of radical activists and prominent Americans, at times through the use of recognizably illegal investigative techniques. This information did not (and could not) advance legitimate law enforcement interests. Instead, Hoover and his senior aides exploited the information they acquired to advance their own bureaucratic and political agendas.

Read the entire article here.

If You Can't Get Enough Deep Throat . . .

 

By Michael Miner, 3 July 2012 at 01:25 PM

William Sullivan

A few weeks ago investigative reporter Max Holland came out with Leak, his revisionist look at the character and motives of Mark Felt, the onetime deputy associate director of the FBI—the number three job in the bureau. In 2005 Felt was revealed to be Woodward and Bernstein's "Deep Throat," the highly placed secret source whose hints and nudges helped the two young Washington Post reporters get to the bottom of Watergate.

Though anyone with an ounce of romance in his soul would prefer to think of Deep Throat as a patriot with a keen sense of the dramatic, given to blowing the whistle on scoundrels in late-night meetings in parking lots, Leak advises us not to. To quote my April column on Holland's book, it makes the case that Felt's motives were "cynical and opportunistic." President Nixon had passed over Felt for the top job at the FBI after J. Edgar Hoover died in May 1972, and Felt still wanted it. Secretly discrediting L. Patrick Gray, who was Nixon's choice as acting director, by leaking details of the FBI's own Watergate investigation, struck Felt as the way to go.

"Felt held the news media in contempt," wrote Holland, "and was neither a high-minded whistle-blower, nor was he genuinely concerned about defending his institution’s integrity. He was not even hopelessly embittered—just calculating.”

With publication, Holland's interest in Felt, Watergate, and the Post has not abated, and he occasionally writes to pass along things he's turned up. The other day he sent two letters written shortly after Hoover died. They were written by Bill Sullivan, Felt's predecessor as deputy associate director, to former assistant attorney general Robert Mardian. They come from Mardian's papers at the Hoover Institution and were dug up there by Dr. Luke Nichter of Texas A&M University.

Read the entire article here.

C-SPAN Features Leak

C-SPAN Created by Cable. Offered as a Public Service.
Max Holland on Watergate
July 2, 2012, 9:00 PM EDT

Historian and researcher Max Holland critiques the view of the FBI 's Mark Felt presented by Bob Woodward. Using the Woodward and Bernstein papers at the University of Texas, Holland claims that Felt's motivations were selfish: that he wanted to become FBI director and his leaks were intended to get J. Edgar Hoover-successor Patrick Gray fired—not to get Nixon impeached. Holland also compares the Woodward and Bernstein book All the President's Men to their original reporting notes, and he argues that they changed key information.

Here's an excerpt.

July 2 at 9:00 PM EDT - C-SPAN3 (58 MIN)

Watergate: The Director's Cut

 

What Director Alan Pakula’s Papers Reveal About Watergate

Jun 12, 2012 4:45 AM EDT

Ben Bradlee isn’t the only one raising questions about All the President’s Men. Max Holland probes director Alan Pakula’s papers and finds more evidence of literary license.

The New Journalism wave was cresting when Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward published All the President’s Men in 1974. Yet the book, curiously, was not considered an outstanding exemplar. The two were hailed, rather, as New Muckrakers, befitting the emphasis on them as Washington Post reporters rather than Simon & Schuster authors. 

Affixing ATPM in the New Journalism firmament however, even at this late date, explains a lot about the book and the controversy it still generates 40 years after the “third-rate burglary” that brought down a president. Just last month, the revelation (in Jeff Himmelman’s new biography) that Post executive editor Ben Bradlee harbored a “residual fear in [his] soul” about the accuracy of some Deep Throat–related details in ATPM provoked a major media flap.

The basis for evaluating ATPM against the backdrop of the New Journalism comes from an unimpeachable source: the Alan J. Pakula papers at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles. This is mildly surprising because no one was more responsible than Pakula, director of the eponymous 1976 movie, for turning "Woodstein" into the heroes of a mythic Hollywood Western (albeit one set in Washington).

Yet Pakula also sought to inject well-researched verisimilitude in his film. He obtained a heretofore unseen copy of Woodstein’s typewritten notes from a September 1972 interview with a key Watergate source. He interviewed Woodstein in 1975, as well as Harry Rosenfeld and Barry Sussman, the editors who directly supervised their work, and many others. All this occurred well before memories had become distant or gauzy. The Watergate duo had yet to become icons. Their recollections, and recollections about them, were not yet fully scripted.

*    *    *

From left to right: Robert Redford, Jason Robards, Jack Warden, Dustin Hoffman, director Alan J. Pakula, and Martin Balsam, in 1976. (Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images)

Before delving into the papers, it’s useful to recall what the New Journalism was all about. The technique employed literary devices that were normally considered the domain of novels and put them to work in essays and books that purported to be nonfiction. New Journalism apostle Tom Wolfe asserted the style was not only not fiction, but had “already proven itself more accurate than traditional journalism.”

Wolfe identified the four tools New Journalism practitioners used to such great effect:

• Using scenes as much as possible to tell a story rather than a chronological narrative
  
  
• Dialogue in full rather than the use of quotes or statements
  
  
• A point of view (scenes always presented through the subjective eyes of a participant)
  
  
• Attention to everyday details, such as habits, possessions, and friends or family.

Woodstein only had to be nudged to resort to these devices when they wrote ATPM (although they certainly hadn’t used them in their 1972 Watergate coverage for the newspaper). Woodward once aspired to be a novelist. He crafted an entire book before graduating from Yale, only to be devastated when a publisher responded with a boilerplate rejection. Bernstein, according to the 1976 book The New Muckrakers by Len Downie Jr. (Bradlee’s eventual successor), saw himself as “an unappreciated newspaper pioneer of the ‘new journalism,’ in which long, dramatic and somewhat subjective narrative recreations of events would replace terse, dry, just-the-facts reporting”—a form Bernstein regarded as mere “stenography.” After covering the 1967 march on the Pentagon, the subject matter of Norman Mailer’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Armies of the Night, Bernstein had been so “bowled over” by Mailer’s technique, according to Woodstein biographer Alicia Shepard, that he pushed for ATPM to use the same third-person voice in a firsthand account.

The New Journalism was not without its detractors. The critic Dwight MacDonald argued it was actually a bastard form—“parajournalism” he called it—for the style was trying to have it both ways: “exploiting the factual authority of journalism and the atmospheric license of fiction.” In the hands of a less-than-scrupulous writer, the shifting of gears could be so casual that a reader would have no way of knowing, at any given moment, which end was up.

If ATPM owes a debt to the New Journalism, what model of it did Woodstein embrace? Answering this question is where the Pakula papers come in particularly handy.

*    *    *

Pakula conducted one of his frankest interviews in 1975 with Barry Sussman, a city editor at the Post at the time of the break-in. He became the special Watergate editor in mid-July 1972, when managing editor Howard Simons decided to go after the story full-bore. Thus in reality, a troika—not a duo—was responsible for the summer/fall 1972 coverage that won the Post a Pulitzer Prize. Indeed, according to Pakula’s notes, Simons and metro editor Harry Rosenfeld thought Sussman himself should have been put up for a Pulitzer.

Read the entire article here.

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• 12 Jun 2012  culture  Leak: Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat

Forty years after the Watergate scandal, my new book, Leak, investigates the motivation behind one of history’s most successful anonymous sources. [1 of 3]   today’s Very Short List: culture 12 Jun 2012 by Max Holland, a journalist and author who also edits the website Washington Decoded. WEBSITE  WASHINGTON DECODED  BOOK Subscribe Forward Share   This week, The Washington Post hosted a panel on how we remember Watergate. The storied paper is a captive of Woodward and Bernstein’s fairy tale. [2 of 3]   John Ford’s classic Western The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is one of the best films on journalism, as it shows how a legend can trump the facts. [3 of 3]   Images (in order): cover of Leak: Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat; photo by Florian Hirzinger via Wikimedia Commons; still from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.		very short list is a delightful e-mail that shares cultural gems from a different curator every day. Subscribe Forward My Account Unsubscribe tech 11 Jun 2012 Paul Ingrassia On Real Fictional Cars food 8 Jun 2012 Annia Ciezadlo On Lebanese Chef Barbara Abdeni Massaad design 7 Jun 2012 Dylan Lathrop On The Shape Of Design

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Washington Times Reviews Leak

 

Revealing Snitch's Motivation

 

By Wes Vernon

As America approaches the 40th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, which brought down the Nixon presidency, no historical discussion of the scandal will be complete without including the extensive research done by author Max Holland.

Leak: Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat centers on a little-known but significant factor that drove much of the drama: the pure personal pique of one man. Mark Felt, then the FBI’s No. 2 official, was miffed that President Nixon had not appointed him to replace the legendary J. Edgar Hoover upon the latter’s death nearly seven weeks before the break-in.

Washington has long been a magnet for those imbued with the worst instincts of the Machiavellian back-stabber. Even by that standard, Felt’s deceitful maneuvering against the man the president had picked for the job, the decent but altogether too trusting L. Patrick Gray, leaves one breathless.

As a veteran of the FBI, the somewhat obsequious Felt had ingratiated himself to Hoover. With a feigned transfer of that loyalty to the newly appointed Gray, the man who would become “Deep Throat” actually set out to destroy his new boss. It rankled him that Gray had been selected from outside the bureau’s ranks for the top job (pending confirmation).

Felt accomplished his destructive goal in several ways, the centrality of which was leaking to the media details of the FBI’s ongoing Watergate investigation. Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were among the chief beneficiaries of that steady stream of information.

Because the specifics of the probe had not yet been made public, spreading the incomplete findings to the public would make it appear to the White House that Gray was incapable of controlling the agency—and also leave the impression that the FBI was complicit in a cover-up. Felt’s goal was that Gray would be denied the permanent appointment as director and, while making his exit, would recommend his “loyal aide,” Mark Felt.

Read the entire review here.

Miner on Himmelman on Bradlee

Sometimes a Sophoclean Melodrama Is Just a Flowerpot

Posted by Michael Miner 8 May 2012

The excerpt from a new biography of Ben Bradlee that ran the other day in New York magazine is a long story that turns on a small remark about Watergate. As far as the history of Watergate is concerned, what Bradlee apparently said in 1990 is revisionism of utter insignificance. Besides, history is constantly being tinkered with. But among journalists, Watergate is mostly myth, and in myth the quests are forever noble, the deeds forever daring, and virtue forever triumphant. If you’re remembered as a slayer of dragons, you won’t want it to come out that you used rat poison.

The story is called "The Red Flag in the Flowerpot." The cast of characters consists of Ben Bradlee, editor of the Washington Post at the time of Watergate and father figure to Bob Woodward, young and relentless reporter who made his name uncovering Watergate scoops; and Jeff Himmelman, Woodward’s protege at the Post who, thanks to Woodward, was invited by Bradlee to sort through boxes of Bradlee’s old papers with an eye to writing a book about him.

The text is extracted and adapted from that book—Himmelman’s new biography of Bradlee, Yours in Truth.

The critical passage: In 1990 Bradlee was interviewed by Barbara Feinman, who was helping him write a memoir. Bradlee was talking about Watergate, and he allowed: “You know I have a little problem with Deep Throat. Did that potted [plant] incident ever happen? . . . and meeting in some garage. One meeting in the garage? Fifty meetings in the garage? I don’t know how many meetings in the garage . . . There’s a residual fear in my soul that that isn’t quite straight.”

Deep Throat was a character introduced by Woodward and his collaborator Carl Bernstein in their book All the President’s Men, and turned into one of cinema’s all-time Men of Mystery in the movie version of the book. Deep Throat was Woodward’s special source, and Woodward is only being human if he wants no one to think there was anything hinky about him. Himmelman shows Woodward what he’d come across Bradlee saying, and then dwells on Woodward’s reaction.

Seven minutes after he’d started reading, he put the pages down and looked up at me. He was visibly shaken. “I’m not sure what” he said, all vigor drained from his voice. Then, quietly: “What’s the question?”
“There is no question,” I said uncertainly.

Himmelman writes, “The way Bob saw it, the publication of those quotations from Ben would undermine his own legacy, Ben’s legacy, and the legacy of the Post on Watergate.” But Bradlee seems to think Woodward (his protege, as Himmelman was Woodward’s) is being a little hysterical. A meeting is arranged between Bradlee, Woodward, and Himmelman at Bradlee’s home.

When Bob arrived, he didn’t look like he’d slept a lot. We shook hands, but only in the most perfunctory way. Ben sat at the head of the dining-room table, and I sat to Ben’s left, facing Bob. There was no small talk. Bob had brought a thick manila folder with him, which he set down heavily on the table in a way that he meant for us to notice. When Ben asked what it was, Bob said, “Data.” Then he asked Ben what he thought of the whole situation.

“I’ve known this young man for some years now,” Ben said, meaning me, “and I trust his skills and his intent.” Then he looked down at the transcript and said, “Nothing in here really bothers me, but I know there’s something in here that bothers you. What’s in here that bothers you?”

Bob went into his pitch, which he proceeded to repeat over the course of the meeting. He would read the “residual fear” line out loud, and then say he couldn’t figure out how Ben could still have had doubts about his reporting so many years after Nixon resigned. This was the unresolvable crux of the problem, and one they circled for the duration of the meeting: How could Ben have doubted the flowerpots and the garage meetings, when the rest of the reporting had turned out to be true? Bob thought this was inconsistent and hurtful. Ben didn’t. Bob tried everything he could to get Ben to disavow what he had said, or at least tell me I couldn’t use it. Ben wouldn’t do either of those things. “Bob, you’ve made your point,” Ben said after Bob had made his pitch four or five times. “Quit while you’re ahead.”

Himmelman sets up his tale adroitly. He identifies himself as professionally beholden to Woodward ("As a reporter, I was in awe of him") and Woodward as much more than that to Bradlee. (“I mean, you know, it’s ultimately like another father,” says Woodward of Bradlee. "Like with your father, you feel that you never close the deal.”) And having nailed down the always helpful Oedipal dimension, he promptly sets up Woodward to take a fall. Himmelman begins his account with a long discussion of another of All the President’s Men’s mysterious figures, an important source of Bernstein’s identified only as Z. (Z, a political thriller set in Greece, and Deep Throat were both famous films released while Richard Nixon was president, though they didn’t have much else in common. Well, each in its own way was breathless.) Himmelman lays out compelling reasons to believe that Z was actually a member of the grand jury investigating Watergate. If that’s so, it was a violation of the law that could have landed Bernstein and the juror in jail, and the two reporters have always insisted nothing of the sort ever happened.

The reader’s takeaway from this prologue: Woodward and Bernstein were a couple of young reporters chasing a huge, challenging story, and they weren’t above the sort of shenanigans that reporters have been pulling since the Founding Fathers signed off on the First Amendment. They certainly weren’t above putting their names to a romanticized account of their sleuthing in which flower posts were flagged to signal rendezvous and the rendezvous were held in dead of night in deserted garages.

Whoever Deep Throat turned out to be, it would be a letdown, and a few years ago we learned that he was Mark Felt, a high-ranking FBI official who possibly met with Woodward to serve the cause of liberty, but possibly had other reasons. I’ve written before in the Bleader about Leak, a recently published book by investigative reporter Max Holland that argues Felt used Woodward as much, if not more, than Woodward used Felt, and what Felt wanted out of the Washington Post’s reporting was acting FBI director Pat Gray so thoroughly discredited that President Nixon would ask Felt to take over the bureau.

Read entire article here.

All the President’s Editors

New Questions About Deep Throat in All the President’s Men

In a new book, Washington Post boss Ben Bradlee questions the account of Deep Throat in All the President’s Men. Max Holland on the new Watergate debate.

1 May 2012

 

    For several decades following the 1974 publication of All the President’s Men, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward have had to fend off critics of their bestselling account. For the most part, they have succeeded wildly, sloughing them off as ill-informed skeptics, untrustworthy revisionists, and plain sore losers.

    But now comes a criticism from perhaps the one person capable of putting All the President’s Men in its place by poking holes in the Deep Throat saga. That’s because the voice of dissent is Ben Bradlee, the Washington Post editor made equally famous by the book and eponymous movie.

    In a 1990 interview conducted by Barbara Feinman, who was then helping Bradlee compile his memoirs, the Post’s executive editor during its fabled Watergate coverage volunteered the observation, “You know I have a little problem with Deep Throat.”

“Did that potted [plant] incident ever happen? ... and meeting in some garage. One meeting in the garage? Fifty meetings in the garage? I don’t know how many meetings in the garage ... There’s a residual fear in my soul that that isn’t quite straight.”

    Nothing akin to this sentiment appeared in Bradlee’s memoir, A Good Life, when it was published in 1995. The “residual fear” remark was discarded (an “outtake, Woodward would later call it), and the only discordant note Bradlee sounded was that in retrospect, he was “amazed” that he had accepted Woodward’s desire to keep Deep Throat’s identity secret from him. “[Given the high stakes] I don’t see how I settled for that, and I would not settle for that now,” Bradlee wrote.

    Read the entire article here.

Deep Throat Vitriol

By Steven Lagerfeld

A new book recasts the heroes of Watergate.

When the manuscript of contributing editor Max Holland’s Leak: Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat came my way last year, I searched in vain for an excerpt that could run in the WQ. Now I’m doubly sorry it didn’t work out, because Leak’s reconsideration of the myths surrounding Watergate is stirring useful controversy about how the scandal came to light and its lessons for today.

Leak is really two books. One is a dramatic retelling of the story of Mark Felt, the top FBI official who became Deep Throat, the famous anonymous source who helped Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein penetrate the secrets surrounding the Watergate scandal. In the mythology surrounding Watergate, Deep Throat (Felt’s identity wasn’t revealed until 2005) was a public spirited official whose revelations helped save the country from a lawless administration. But in Holland’s persuasive telling, Felt emerges as a villain worthy of Shakespeare, his only goal to win the top spot at the FBI after J. Edgar Hoover’s death. Felt talked to the two reporters only to make his rival, acting director L. Patrick Gray, appear incompetent and to convince Nixon to put the veteran Felt in charge. (And, ironically, Felt was forced out of the FBI by the machinations of another canny rival.)

The second book in Leak looks at the larger mythology surrounding Watergate and its central story line that two intrepid reporters prevailed against all odds in revealing high level malfeasance. In fact, Holland says, Woodward, Bernstein, and other reporters did excellent work, but they didn’t do much that official investigators in the FBI and elsewhere weren’t already doing. “The main effect of Deep Throat’s leaks was merely to accelerate the scandal by perhaps six months or a year.”

That’s where the shooting starts.

 

Read the entire article here.

Former Special Agent Gary Harter Reviews Leak

 

"Deep Throat" Blowback:

Trying To Run a Wily, Venal Intelligence Source Who Is Running You

 

By Gary E. Harter

    In January 2009, a funeral service was held for former FBI Associate Director W. Mark Felt in Santa Rosa, California. Among the many in attendance were journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. As Deep Throat, Felt had been instrumental in furthering their careers as reporters  with the Washington Post.[1] Both were eulogists. During his remarks and perhaps swept away by emotion of the moment, Woodward described his former source as a "truth teller."[2] That statement was at variance with what Woodward wrote just a few years earlier. At that moment of clarity he pointed out that his "truth teller" lied to his colleagues, friends and family.[3] Such is the state of modern journalism.

    Oh, and to set the record straight, Woodward's "truth teller" didn't spare him from his veil of prevarication.

    Richard Nixon once observed the verdict of history depends upon who writes it. While the president was referring to himself and his political legacy, this also applies to Mark Felt. Woodward assigned Felt the noblest of motives for his actions.[4] After his public identification as Deep Throat, his motives were tailored to include saving the FBI from President Richard Nixon, and by inference, Acting Director L. Patrick Gray.[5] Thus began the "Felt is a hero" nonsense. Then came the publication of Woodward's The Secret Man, closing the book on the Felt/Deep Throat saga.[6] Or did it?

    By 1974, the media template was set with the publication of Bernstein and Woodward's book on
their Watergate reporting.[7] Two years later, a movie by the same name was released. In the movie, Felt/Deep Throat, brilliantly portrayed by Hal Holbrook, was always in shadow, cigarette in hand, gently guiding the young Robert Redford/Bob Woodward.[8] With the passage of time, the importance of Felt/Deep Throat in the story seems more myth than reality.[9]

   Enter a new book examining the role, and possible motivations, of Mark Felt. Max Holland challenges the media template in Leak: Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat.[10] The author opines Felt w8s motivated by little more than spite for being passed over for the top job in the FBI. The careful reader will discover Felt saying much the same thing in his 1979 memoir.[11]

    In his reminisces about Mark Felt, Bob Woodward believes him to be a wise teacher, committed
to seeking the best version of the obtainable truth.[12] That said, the Felt record of duplicity is impressive in scope. A short chronicle includes the "Canuck Letter" authorship, Donald Segretti's overall importance to the 1972 presidential campaign, Gray's knowledge of FBI wiretaps against journalists and White House staff members, and perhaps the grandest howler of all, the president was pressured to keep Gray at the FBI.[13]

    The strength of Leak is its quality of research. The author utilizes a wide variety of sources, including interviews with former executives and agents of the FBI, other US government officials, reporters, including Bob Woodward, oral histories, Nixon Library materials, Woodward/Bernstein Watergate Papers, selected US government records, and, of course, Watergate/political books, papers, studies. Out of this archival stew, the author weaves a likely and believable case for Felt's subterfuge and underlying motivation.

    For Watergate aficionados this book is a must. It's also instructive for others interested in how some members of the press conveniently distort the truth to fit their ideology, to support some of their prior claims, and to sweeten future book deals. Felt's many leaks to the press were a naked attempt to distort reality in the Nixon White House with the ultimate goal of removing Pat Gray. His behavior exhibited little concern for those charged with investigating Watergate-related crimes; they were expendable pawns in his drive for power. And Felt realized his actions were shameful, and perhaps unlawful. This was a prime reason he declined the media spotlight.[14] Felt understood his media-generated shelf-life would be brief. Mark Felt was clearly no hero, no savior of the republic, or custodian of the FBI flame. He was nothing more than a self-serving bureaucrat, consumed by career angst and envy, who believed the rules everyone else followed didn't apply to him. This is the underlying story of Leak, and why it is the unvarnished, definitive account of Mark Felt and his twisted relationship with the press.

 

Former Special Agent Gary E. Harter joined the FBI in 1972 and focused on counterintelligence issues and spy cases for much of his career. His appointment letter was signed by legendary FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. He retired after more than 30 years with the Bureau and works for BearingPoint. He is a frequent reviewer for AFIO publications. The views expressed in this article are not necessarily those of the FBI.

 

[1] Felt never met with Bernstein during the Watergate investigation. Felt's first and only meeting with Bernstein occurred in November 2008. At the time Felt was in home hospice care. The visit, described as a "family reunion" by the reporters, lasted two hours.

[2] Michelle Locke, "Deep Throat Regarded at Memorial as Truth Teller," AP, 17 January 2009.

[3] Bob Woodward, The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate's Deep Throat (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), 5.

[4] "In brief, he knew there was a cover-up, knew higher-ups were involved, and did not trust the acting FBI director, Pat Gray. He knew the Nixon White House was corrupt. At the same time he was disappointed he did not get the directorship." From Bob Woodward's website, http://bobwoodward.com/question-answer.

[5] L. Patrick Gray, appointed acting director upon the death of J. Edgar Hoover in May 1972, was a Nixon loyalist working in the Justice Department at the time. Grey antagonized many of the "old guard" at the Bureau for relaxing standards on personal grooming, weight, and hiring women to become special agents. These and other assorted topics were covered in Felt's original memoir, The FBI Pyramid: From the Inside (New York: Putnam, 1979), 351, and its makeover, Mark Felt and John O'Connor, A G-Man's Life: The FBI, Being "Deep Throat," and the Struggle for Honor in Washington (New York: PublicAffairs, 2006), 321. Pat Gray was a decent, if somewhat naive individual when it came to dealing with the Nixon White House as well as senior FBI officials. Fortunately, he has chronicled his eventful 361 days as acting director in his splendid memoir, In Nixon's Web: A Year in the Crosshairs of Watergate (New York: Times Books, 2008), 321. The book was written with his son, Ed Gray, in large measure as a response to Felt's identification as Deep Throat.

[6] The following year, Felt's autobiographical remake, A G-Man's Life, was released to little fanfare. While it was a better presentation than its predecessor, it added little to the Deep Throat discussion.

[7] Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, All The President's Men (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), 349. This book features Woodward's best writing about Deep Throat/Felt.

[8] Theatrical release of All the President's Men was 9 April 1976.

[9] Barry Sussman, editor for the Washington Post, has continually disputed Felt's importance in the Post's Watergate reporting. During most of the scandal, Sussman was the Post's special Watergate editor. See "Why Deep Throat Was an Unimportant Source and Other Reflections on Watergate," Nieman Watchdog, 29 July 2005.

[10] Max Holland, Leak: Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat (Lawrence, KN: University Press of Kansas, 2012), 275.

[11] FBI Pyramid, 226.

[12] The Secret Man, 183; All the President's Men, 131. Woodward believes Felt not only helped with his Watergate reporting, but taught him how to develop trusted relationships with future targets of opportunity. Woodward learned this lesson well.

[13] Leak, 93, 127. The FBI never investigated the Canuck Letter. According to Felt, this alleged discussion [to pressure Nixon] occurred during a meeting between Gray and President Nixon in the Oval Office in early February 1973. This record for this meeting is not found on Richard Nixon's official schedule.

[14] Sussman, "Why Deep Throat Was an Unimportant Source and Other Reflections on Watergate." Sussman believes Felt stayed in the background because his contribution was unimportant.

First published in Winter/Spring 2012 issue of The Intelligencer: Journal of US Intelligence Studies

Adapted with permission.

 

LSU Manship School of Communications

‘Inside Watergate’ Retrospective Details Scandal

By Ferris McDaniel

Contributing Writer

 Tuesday, April 24, 2012

AUSTEN BENNETT / The Daily Reveille

From left: Director of the Reilly Center for Media & Public Affairs Robert Mann, former city editor of the Washington Post Barry Sussman, Watergate federal prosecutor Earl Silbert and author Max Hollard discuss the political ramifications and significance of the Watergate scandal Monday in the Journalism Building.

A scandal many students know only through history books invaded the Journalism Building on Monday night during the Reilly Center’s “Inside Watergate” retrospective.

The panel discussion featured Barry Sussman, the Watergate editor for The Washington Post; Earl J. Silbert, the first Watergate federal prosecutor; and Max Holland, the author of “Leak: Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat.” The trio provided insight into the scandal, Deep Throat and Richard Nixon.

“It started off as a break-in, and almost immediately and endlessly the scandal was peeled like an onion,” Sussman said.

Silbert said most people shallowly perceive Watergate as an investigation of the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters, but it goes deeper.

“It turned into an investigation of a mammoth, extensive and incredible cover-up,” he said.

Holland said the scandal, as told in the book and movie “All the President’s Men,” is the story of two Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, and a whistleblower, Felt, who helped bring order to the chaos. But Holland revealed that there is more to this “fairy tale.”

Felt, who was Woodward’s prized source, the mysterious Deep Throat, was persistently called a truth-teller by the journalist, but Holland suggested that’s not the case. Holland said Felt often provided the Post with misleading information. According to Holland, Felt’s intention was to destroy his rivals and claim the FBI directorship.

Sussman said two main factors eventually led to Nixon’s resignation — Nixon’s tax fraud and public opinion. Nixon was paying income taxes at a rate equal to a janitor’s, which in turn enraged the public’s opinion, he said.

Congress decided it was riskier to keep Nixon in office than to impeach him, Sussman said.

 

----

Contact Ferris McDaniel at fmcdaniel@lsureveille.com

Read entire article here

Erik Wemple in the Washington Post

 

 

When can you identify your confidential source?

By Erik Wemple

(Alex Wong - GETTY IMAGES) Max Holland’s rollicking new book “Leak: Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat” has stirred up some discussions. Did Felt have patriotic motives for his clandestine disclosures to Bob Woodward? And were the Watergate journalists breaking new investigative ground or following the course of a federal probe?

Fun stuff.

Now for a subsidiary chatting point: When do confidential source agreements expire? Holland encounters this question early in his book, and not with respect to the famous relationship between Woodward and Felt, as Deep Throat. At issue was a story by New York Times reporter John M. Crewdson in May 1973. It contained critical details that led Felt to resign his FBI post, according to Holland.

For reasons that would require 23 blog posts to explain, Holland wanted to discover who served as Crewdson’s key anonymous source for the story. So he pressed the longtime reporter on the matter. Here’s Holland’s explanation of how that went down, from Page 8 of “Leak”:

When I asked [Crewdson] in 2008 if the passage of time might allow him to divulge his source, Crewdson initially responded that “it has always been my position that confidential source relationships are to be protected, even after the source in question has been dead for many years.”

The next line alone is worth “Leak’s” price of admission:

But he later wrote to say that he “continue[d] to respect confidential source-reporter relationships even in cases where the source was killed in a hunting accident years ago.”

Aha! Holland writes that such a “description can mean only one thing: Crewdson’s source was William Sullivan, who famously died in a 1977 hunting accident in New Hampshire.” Reached by phone, Crewdson said he had “nothing further to add” — both on the question of what he’d revealed to Holland or on the larger issue of how long confidential-source agreements should last.

 

Read entire article here

Reponse to Barry Sussman

 

 

Deeper into Deep Throat

Posted by Michael Miner 16 April 2012

• Barry Sussman

The Watergate scandal turned the names of Katharine Graham, owner of the Washington Post, Ben Bradlee, editor of the Post, and reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein into household words — or as close to that as print journalists can hope to become. What the scandal itself could not accomplish in celebritizing this quartet was done by the movie, All the President's Men, based on the book Woodward and Bernstein wrote about how they got that story.

And of course Woodward's mysterious source "Deep Throat," introduced in the book and played to high dramatic effect in the movie by Hal Holbrook, attained equal standing—and then some.

One key Post figure never caught the spotlight. Barry Sussman was the editor who quarterbacked the coverage, worked intimately with Woodward and Bernstein, and might have collaborated on a Watergate book with them. But at the suggestion of Robert Redford, who'd direct the movie, Woodward and Bernstein wrote their book about the reporting process and Sussman wrote his own, The Great Coverup: Nixon and the Scandal of Watergate, about the crimes. There was no role for Sussman in the movie and perhaps too small a role in the book. In his book The Powers That Be, David Halberstam called Sussman "the perfect working editor at exactly the right level. Sussman was not simply encouraging, he brainstormed the story, trying to put the pieces together, fitting them and refitting them until finally, slowly, there was the beginning of a pattern. More, he believed in the story, he was sure there was something there." And in the story's aftermath, when the "bitch goddess" stardom had touched some and not others, "Barry Sussman, who had once befriended the young Woodward and Bernstein, felt betrayed by his two former proteges, left out of their book. He no longer talked to either of them."

Recently the investigative reporter Max Holland wrote a book, Leak, about Deep Throat, revealed in 2005 to be Mark Felt, deputy associate director of the FBI at the time of Watergate. Holland argued that Felt's motives were self-serving—he wanted to run the FBI, which meant telling tales that would discredit the acting director President Nixon had put in place above him, L. Patrick Gray. Earlier this month I wrote about Leak, and followed up with a story relating what Woodward and Bernstein had to say about Holland's book and what Holland said in response.

Unless you're someone Watergate still holds spellbound (a lot of people fit that description: the scandal was recently turned into a fat novel by Thomas Mallon and I'm in the middle of it), you might be thinking that a little Deep Throat is quite enough. So it is. But Barry Sussman's opinion of Leak is one that counts, and the other day he published a long critique. "Holland does a service in debunking parts of the Watergate myth and clarifying some relationships. He is good on the perverse office politics at the FBI," Sussman writes. "Deep Throat probably was a conniver— must have been, a reader concludes because of the case Holland builds."

And then the but. "But he is way off base when it comes to the Post."

Holland had written, "Contrary to the widely held perception that the Washington Post 'uncovered' Watergate, the newspaper essentially tracked the progress of the FBI's investigation." Sussman responds, "Day in and day out, the Post did a solid reporting job, and several times it did more than that — it had great stories with major impact, including one story that by itself set in motion the government investigations that eventually forced Nixon out of office.

"Holland accepts a key part of the Watergate myth that really is hokum — that Deep Throat was an important, sine qua non source for the Washington Post. He not only accepts it; it is his basic premise. This is where his book runs into trouble."

Now Sussman assails not only Holland but his two long-estranged former Post colleagues: "Deep Throat wasn't an important source at all. He was nice to have around, helpful on occasion, especially in October, 1972, when he confirmed and added to a story in which the Post introduced Donald Segretti as a political saboteur against the Democrats. But that's about it. Woodward and Bernstein have blown up Felt's importance for almost four decades or nodded in assent when others did, and instead of pricking this big balloon, Holland pumps more air into it."

At the conclusion of his long, detailed critique, Sussman makes this observation: "For decades Felt denied he was Deep Throat. Perhaps, because he gave out so little to Woodward and Deep Throat was reputed to have given so much, he really didn't know that he was."

Sussman's review first appeared on NiemanWatchdog.org (he's editor of the Nieman Watchdog Project), but when it showed up April 12 on the vastly more trafficked Huffington Post site, Holland decided to respond on the record.

Here's that response:

Barry Sussman and I agree that the role of Mark Felt (aka Deep Throat) has received too much emphasis. Indeed, my book Leak ends by stressing that the real Watergate whistleblowers were named Penny Gleason, Judith Hoback, and Hugh Sloan, all of whom worked for the Committee for the Re-election of the President (CRP).

Nonetheless, Sussman and I disagree on the role Felt played during a period of 4½ months in the latter half of 1972 (mid June to November). This is a debate that properly, ought to be conducted between Sussman and Woodward/Bernstein. They all worked at the Washington Post then and I didn’t. Nonetheless, I do have an informed opinion after closely analyzing the coverage, juxtaposing it with revelations in All the President’s Men and The Secret Man [Woodward's book on Felt after Felt was identified], and researching the Woodward/Bernstein Papers at the University of Texas.

Sussman told me that he purposely did not read All the President’s Men when he was writing his 1974 Watergate book, The Great Cover-up, because he did not want his account to be influenced in any way by Bernstein and Woodward’s. I can understand and even sympathize with that impulse. At the same time, not reading the relevant books (putting aside the archives) suggests that Sussman may not be aware of how many times, and in how many ways, Felt figured in.

Even so, in 1974 Sussman did note that,

. . . while the White House and various politicians accused the Post of overplaying the story, [Deep Throat] always assured Woodward that there was more, much more, and not to be misled. When so many members of the press were ignoring Watergate, this was no small succor.

I agree, but would still go further.

 

Read the entire article here

Barry Sussman Reviews Leak

Did Mark Felt Even Know He Was Deep Throat?

COMMENTARY | April 12, 2012

A new book makes the case that Felt, the No. 2 man in the FBI during Watergate, fed information to the press to make his boss look bad and get his job. No idealism there. Barry Sussman, who was the Washington Post’s Watergate editor, has a close-in view on all this.

 

By Barry Sussman
bsussman@niemanwatchdog.org

In his new book Leak: Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat, Max Holland takes on chief aspects of the Watergate myth: that an idealistic, well-placed and mysterious source fed information to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, thereby leading the American press to one of its greatest achievements, the overthrowing of President Richard M. Nixon.

 

The legend is that it was Deep Throat’s disgust over the scandal that moved him to such risky, noble actions. Far from it, Holland writes. Felt’s motive, he says, was personal gain only, a means of making the acting director of the FBI appear a failure, and thus getting the directorship for himself, playing Iago to Patrick Gray’s Othello.

 

Holland would strip from the Post a lot of the credit lavished on it. He writes: “Contrary to the widely held perception that the Washington Post ‘uncovered’ Watergate, the newspaper essentially tracked the progress of the FBI’s investigation, with a time delay ranging from weeks to days, and published elements of the prosecutors’ case well in advance of the trial.” 

 

Holland does a service in debunking parts of the Watergate myth and clarifying some relationships. He is good on the perverse office politics at the FBI, making old, high-placed J. Edgar Hoover assistants come to life. And he must have spent long hours putting the Nixon tapes in the context of events that are now almost forty years old. Deep Throat probably was a conniver – must have been, a reader concludes because of the case Holland builds. 

 

But he is way off base when it comes to the Post.

 

I was the editor in charge of the Watergate investigation for the Post; that was my assignment from the day of the break-in and for the following 15 months, the period that includes all the Post’s main Watergate contributions. I never knew Deep Throat’s identity until it was released in a 2005 Vanity Fair article. But there are some things I know first-hand.

 

Day in and day out, the Post did a solid reporting job, and several times it did more than that – it had great stories with major impact, including one story that by itself set in motion the government investigations that eventually forced Nixon out of office.

 

Holland accepts a key part of the Watergate myth that really is hokum – that Deep Throat was an important, sine qua non source for the Washington Post. He not only accepts it; it is his basic premise. This is where his book runs into trouble. 

 

Here is what Holland writes: “Felt provided vital guidance, imparted knowledge, suggested leads, and gave Woodward (and by extension, Bernstein) confidence that they were on the right track. He sharpened and expanded upon information they had already gathered, and, on occasion, supplied raw information, known only to the FBI, that could be popped into a piece virtually unchanged. He nurtured one front-page story after another, allowing the Post reporters to replicate the FBI’s investigation in several respects.”

 

This sounds, perhaps, like the story as told by FBI agents and indeed, Holland lists several FBI and Justice Department figures as people he interviewed. The FBI did a very good job in investigating Watergate, but this is a bit much, fellas. It didn’t happen. 

 

 

Read the entire review here

Pat Buchanan: Leak a "Hellfire missile"

 

The Outing of Deep Throat 

Pat Buchanan shares premise of new book stripping "hero" label from Watergate leaker

Published: 9 April 2012

by Patrick J. Buchanan

Pat Buchanan was twice a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and the Reform Party's candidate in 2000. He is also a founder and editor of The American Conservative. Buchanan served three presidents in the White House, was a founding panelist of three national TV shows, and is the author of nine books. His latest book is Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?

As the 40th anniversary of Watergate impends, we are to be bathed again in the great myth and morality play about the finest hour in all of American journalism.

The myth?

That two heroic young reporters at the Washington Post, guided by a secret source, a man of conscience they dubbed “Deep Throat,” cracked the case and broke the scandal wide open, where the FBI, US prosecutors and more experienced journalists floundered and failed.

Through their tireless investigative reporting, they compelled the agencies of government to treat Watergate as the unprecedented constitutional crisis it was. No Pulitzer Prize was ever more deserved than the one awarded the Post in 1973.

These young journalists saved our republic!

However, the myth, fabricated in All the President’s Men and affirmed by the 1976 film of the same name, with Robert Redford as Bob Woodward and Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein, has a Hellfire missile coming its way.

Leak: Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat is an exhaustive study of the reporting of Woodward and Bernstein and the leaking by the FBI’s Mark Felt, whose identify as Deep Throat was revealed in 2005.

Leak author Max Holland zeroes in on the last great unanswered question of Watergate: Why did Felt, an FBI No. 2 on the short list to succeed J. Edgar Hoover, risk reputation and career to leak secrets to the Post?

Woodward and Bernstein paint Deep Throat, writes Holland, as a “selfless high-ranking official intent on exposing the lawlessness of the Nixon White House.” But this is self-serving nonsense.

The truth was right in front of Woodward. His refusal to see it made him a willing or witless collaborator in the ruin of the reputation and career of an honorable pubic servant, Patrick Gray.

Read the complete article here