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The Significance of ‘Deep Throat’ to Free Press

After being a mystery for over three decades, the identity of the Washington insider that secretly leaked information to reporter Bob Woodward of The Washington Post, allowing them to break the story that ultimately led to the resignation of President Nixon, was revealed to be the number two man at the FBI at the time, Mark Felt, now age 91. Until now, this governmental whistle-blower during the Watergate scandal had only been known by the dubious moniker “Deep Throat”, insisting on remaining anonymous for fear of potential reprisals, including the possibility of death. Given Mr. Felt’s insistence of anonymity, it is unlikely that he would have revealed the information he had, had he not believed that his identity was safe with the reporter to whom he confided.

The White House. (Photo of White House: Ray or Kimberly Feliciano - we don’t remember which!)

There have been recent cases in court, however, where a judge has held reporters who refused to reveal their source in contempt, even sentencing them to jail. Legally, there are limits to the protection and guarantee that reporters and journalists can offer potential sources that their identities cannot under any circumstances be compelled from them by a court of law, especially if a crime has allegedly been committed, and the government insists on knowing.

In a recent case, New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper of Time gained notoriety because of their refusal to reveal their source(s) to U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan regarding who leaked the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame. This resulted in Miller and Cooper being sentenced to remain in jail for 18 months or until they provide the names of their informants.

Some critics of the Bush Administration have suggested the possibility that Mrs. Plame’s secret identity was leaked intentionally to sabotage her career because her husband, the former Ambassador Joseph Wilson had written an opinion piece critical of President Bush’s claim that Niger was supplying uranium yellowcake to Iraq, a claim Bush used to justify the Iraq war, stating “Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq? Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.”

Judge Hogan is more interested in whether or not the laws protecting the anonymity of undercover CIA operatives was broken, and the threat to national security that would imply. This is not a case where the public good was served by the leak, as could be argued in the situation with Deep Throat. In that situation, the informant leaked information to the press regarding an injustice being committed within the system, one that was being covered up by those in power. The case of Valeria Plame’s covert identity being compromised, on the other hand, did not serve the public good, damaged U.S. intelligence capabilities, and potentially endangered the lives of CIA operatives.

Curiously, the person who first publicly identified Valerie Plame as a CIA operative, conservative columnist Robert Novak, has not faced threat of jail time for not revealing his source, which he described as two senior Bush Administration officials. The two reporters that investigated the story after the Novak column, Judith Miller and Matt Cooper have remained free pending appeal.

This past February, shortly before the man known as Deep Throat revealed his identity, John Dean, the former White House counsel for Nixon, wrote an article in where he said that he had been informed that Deep Throat was ill, and the public was likely to soon know his identity since Woodward had committed to keeping the secret until Deep Throat had passed away. “When that posthumous profile reveals the secret name, it will be flash powder on the long-simmering debate about reporters' use of anonymous sources.” Dean did not know at the time that Felt would reveal himself to the world before he died.

He went on to say, however, “Without confidential sources, much of what people need to know in a democracy would never be reported, so unless there is a higher reason, journalists must be able to protect such sources who are willing to impart such information. That said, no news person should agree to provide confidentiality unless it is essential to obtain information that the public should be told and there is no other way to obtain the information. A scoop per se does not justify a pledge of confidentiality.”

Whether or not an inside informer is viewed by the public as a hero standing up for what is right, or as a stoolie with ulterior motives, is often a matter of perspective. Conservative talk-show host, G Gordon Liddy, who went to jail over Watergate, called Felt “a pitiful, pathetic old man.”

Felt’s grandson, Nick Jones, differed saying: “The family believes that my grandfather, Mark Felt Sr., 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 a horrible injustice,” going on to say, “We all sincerely hope the country will see him this way as well.”

According to a The Washington Post article regarding Deep Throat and the paper’s roll in revealing the scandal of Watergate, that period in our history proved pivotal in demonstrating the power of journalism and the media to act as the fourth branch of government, charged with the duty of reporting objectively that which occurs in the other three branches of government. The article claimed that after Watergate, “the triangular relationship between public officials, the media and the public was altered forever.”

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