Nixon's Secret (72 page)

29
.   Tarpley, Webster Griffin. Chaitkin, Anton. George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, Chapter 15

30
.   Parmet, Herbert. George Bush: The Life of a Lone Star Yankee, p. 226

31
.   Esper, George. “Bush Says No Wrong Involved in Acceptance of Funds,” Associated Press. February 7, 1980

32
.   Gerth, Jeff. Pear, Robert. “Files Detail Aid to Bush by Nixon White House, New York Times June 11, 1992

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

WOODSTEIN

“Obviously, Haig was hiding things from the president, including his Woodward connection. Later, when Woodward was causing so much grief and Haig was not leveling with us about the connection, we wondered why not.”

—Nixon speechwriter Ray Price.
1

J
ohn Dean pulled off an incredible hoax. He pulled it off on the Watergate Committee, he pulled it off on the American people, and he profited wildly off it. But while Dean played a big part in Watergate and the subsequent cover-up, his actions paled in comparison to the duplicitous, premeditated power grab of General Alexander M. Haig. Using journalist Bob Woodward, Haig manipulated the Nixon presidency and drove Nixon from office.

Although I don’t believe there was a “Deep throat,” the alleged source of the
Washington Post
’s Woodward and Carl Bernstein, I am certain Al Haig was one of the key confidential sources who made up a composite for Deep Throat.

I never believed that Deep Throat, the enigmatic figure who, concealed by smoke and shadows, guided cub reporters Woodward and Bernstein to the truths behind Watergate, was number-three FBI man Mark Felt.

I have never believed the claim by Woodward and Bernstein or the claim by Felt himself. Felt himself did not reveal to his family that he was the fabled Deep Throat until 2002. At the time Felt came out as Deep Throat he was enfeebled, had suffered a stroke, and was “in and out of lucidity,” in the words of his daughter Joan.
2
Indeed, Felt’s daughter also admitted that money was a factor in the decision to go public with the identity of Deep Throat.
3

Even after the Felt’s declaration in 2005, the jury is still out on Deep Throat. David Obst, the literary agent for Woodward and Bernstein, responsible for marketing
All the President’s Men,
admitted that Deep Throat was, indeed, a “literary device.” Obst discussed this in an interview with television journalist Brit Hume:

Obst:
I was their literary agent, and I sold the book to Simon & Schuster at the beginning of October of 1972, and the boys kind of got stuck on how to write it. In fact, they turned in a draft, and the publisher kind of hinted that they’d like their money back. And they were really kind of stuck.

And then Bob had dinner one evening with Robert Redford and William Goldman, a screenwriter, and shortly thereafter, he came up with this brilliant idea of doing the book as his own personal story. And suddenly . . .

Hume:
His and Carl’s, right?

Obst
:
Yes, his and Carl’s, of course. And suddenly, this character of “Deep Throat” showed up, and . . .

Hume:
Had you ever heard of this “Deep Throat” figure before that time?

Obst:
No. There was no “Deep Throat” character.
4

White House insider Len Garment would write a book that incorrectly concluded that John Sears was Deep Throat. Garment is wrong, but the point is immaterial. Sears admitted to being a high-level source for Carl Bernstein, described in their book
All the
President’s
Men
as a former, high-level Nixon aide. Sears’s revelations to Bernstein were in fact more important than the information that came from the composite of Deep Throat.

Barry Sussman, the editor who supervised Woodward and Bernstein, said that there was a Deep Throat, but he was for the most part worthless. “The reason Deep Throat remained anonymous, so that even
Post
editors didn’t know who he was, is that his contribution was unimportant,” wrote Sussman.
5

An interview with
Washington Post
editor Ben Bradlee by reporter Jeff Himmelman, revealed Bradlee had candidly admitted to Barbara Feinman, who had aided Bradlee with his memoirs, that he had his doubts about the existence of Deep Throat. “You know I have a little problem with Deep Throat,” Bradlee had told Feinman. “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.”
6
Bradlee would add that he believed Watergate was blown out of proportion. “Watergate . . . (has) achieved a place in history . . . that it really doesn’t deserve . . . The crime itself was really not a great deal.”
7

Himmelman had for years worked as Woodward’s research assistant. In April 2010, Himmelman was helping Bradlee research a book and stumbled upon the 1990 Feinman interview in a box at the
Washington Post
storage facility.
8
Himmelman’s reveal of Bradlee’s doubts about Deep Throat were not out of malice. Woodward was a friend. It was Woodward who had praised Woodward in the dedication to his 2000 book,
Maestro.
9
Himmelman’s “standards of accuracy and fairness . . . are the absolute highest,” wrote Woodward.

It was simply a reporter doing the job of a reporter. Surely, Woodward, who had revealed so many of other people’s secrets would understand, even respect Himmelman’s reporting.

Woodward instead went on the attack. Himmelman was labeled by Woodward as “dishonest” and the information that was published about the reporter was called a “betrayal.”
10
It seemed that Woodward did not enjoy Himmelman’s “accuracy and fairness” when turned against him. “Those standards have not changed; it’s just that I uncovered some information that Bob Woodward happens not to like, and he is doing everything he can to distract attention from it,” Himmelman wrote. “If there is any lesson that Ben Bradlee taught me in the four years I spent working with and studying him, it is that powerful people rarely welcome the truth and will often go to great lengths to keep it from coming out. Ben dealt with that throughout his career, and I am seeing it firsthand right now.”
11
In 2011, Bradlee would reaffirm to Himmelman his doubts about Deep Throat.
12

When Mark Felt finally emerged from the shadows of Watergate, the reception was underwhelming. Perhaps because many correctly believe that the outing of Felt still did not answer the questions of Watergate. Felt probably was
one
of the reporters’ sources, but his access was limited. As the son of former director of the FBI Pat Gray pointed out, when Woodward handed over his “Deep Throat” interview notes in 2007, something was amiss. “The first thing that struck me was that some of the information passed to Woodward in these meetings could not have come from Mark Felt,” said Ed Gray.
13
Gray compared the reporter’s notes to the text of
All the President’s Men
and found several significant tells. One particular segment of the notes dealt with John Mitchell’s orchestration of an internal CRP investigation. A quote from Deep Throat that concerned the investigation read, “
We
had assigned guys to him to help.” This sentence was omitted from the final manuscript.
14
Why? Because
we
would have meant the source was someone who had access not only to the President’s inner circle, but was involved in the internal investigation of the White House staff. Felt could claim neither. Gray confirmed that the source for another interview note that concerned wiretaps was also not Felt, it was Mitchell associate Donald Santarelli. Santarelli himself confirmed this. “That was definitely me,” he said. Subsequently, Bob Woodward was asked if the source was Santarelli and replied, “[A]bsolutely not.”
15
Ed Gray, and his father before him, correctly came to the conclusion that Deep Throat was “the composite fiction that knowledgeable people like my father always insisted he had to be. ‘X,’ whoever he was, was just a part of the fable.”
16

It stands to reason that Deep Throat did exist, but was a composite, an amalgamation of figures that served as informants to the two reporters. Deep Throat
did not
exist in the original
Washington Post
stories. Melding the many sources of the reporters into one certainly added more dramatic effect to the novel. Investigative journalist Edward Jay Epstein also holds this theory. Epstein attributes it to the fact that the information from Deep Throat could not come from one part of the government, but had to derive from “multiple sources who worked in different parts of the government.”
17
It would not be the first time Woodward would invent a story to fit a narrative. In 1987, Woodward claimed to speak to former director of the CIA William Casey before his death for his book
Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA
. “Indeed, Woodward did try to enter the hospital room, but was interdicted by the agent in the hot seat [outside Casey’s door] and gracefully shown to the exit,” said Kevin Shipp, a former CIA agent on security detail outside of Casey’s hospital room. “We, myself included, were there 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Shipp wrote. “All of us were under orders to let no one into the room.”
18
Shipp added that had Woodward impossibly made his way into the hospital room, he could not have gotten an interview. The brain tumor Casey was suffering from had rendered him incapable of speech.
19
Casey’s widow, Sophia, backed Shipp’s claim and added she had seen CIA records and that “Bob Woodward got in and was caught by security and thrown out,” before entering Casey’s room.
20
Yet, Woodward said he
had
gained access to the room and he
had
spoken to Casey. Woodward also claimed that, incredibly, Casey chose Woodward as the recipient of a deathbed confession. Casey reportedly acknowledged to the reporter that he knew about an illegal diversion of funds by the Reagan administration from Iranian arms sales to Contra rebels attempting to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. When my boss and friend President Ronald Reagan saw the fabrication in Woodward’s book and a
60 Minutes
interview coupled with Woodward’s assertion that Casey believed the president was a “strange” man, who was “lazy and distracted,”
21
he was appropriately angry. “He’s a liar & he lied about what Casey is supposed to have thought of me,” Reagan wrote in his diary.
22
William Casey’s widow said that it was all a Woodward-created untruth. “Bill would never say that about the President,” Sophia Casey said. “Bill loved Reagan and they were very close. It’s been very hurtful. It is terrible for the family. You can imagine how Reagan feels.”
23

If Woodward had no problem with inventing the words of a dying man, he surely had no problem inventing Deep Throat. An additional purpose of having a single essential informant, codenamed Deep Throat, was to better dissemble the many informants of Woodward, especially Al Haig and Robert Bennett.

Woodward did not want it known to the public that during his own military service in the navy, while assigned to work for the National Security staff at the White House, Woodward often briefed General Alexander M. Haig, who later became a major source for Woodward. In fact, Woodward told bold lies to conceal this background to anyone who looked into it. “I never met or talked to Haig until sometime in the Spring of ‘73,” Woodward said. “I defy you to produce somebody who says I did the briefing, it’s just—it’s not true.”
24
In fact, it was true and individual’s in Woodward’s past would prove it. Among those who remembered Woodward’s past as Haig’s protégé was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, who, as part of a national security leak, was receiving NSC documents pilfered by Navy Yeoman Charles Radford, who was aided by Haig. “Of course,” Moorer replied when asked if he remember that Woodward was the briefer for Haig.”
25
Defense Secretary Melvin Laird would also concede, “I was aware that Haig was being briefed by Woodward, yeah.”
26
Laird served sixteen years in Congress before serving as Nixon’s defense secretary. He was a shrewd, cagey, and often self-serving leaker. He had deep press contacts and relationships and was particularly close to
Washington Post
columnist Robert Novak. It was Laird who orchestrated the systematic withdrawal of troops from Vietnam. Laird was a valid source to confirm that Woodward worked for Haig.

Pentagon spokesperson Jerry Friedheim would also confirm Woodward’s position. “He was moving with those guys, Moorer, Haig, the NSC staff, and other military types,” Friedheim said.
27
It was only after Woodward learned there were taped interviews with these men of rank who acknowledged Woodward’s role with Haig, the reporter would say that the theory had “surface plausibility to it.”
28

Why would Woodward want to conceal his military intelligence background? There are a few reasons. The Moorer, Haig, NSC staff circle was the very same that young Navy Yeoman Charles Radford worked for when lifting top-secret documents and running a back channel of White House secrets back to the Pentagon. The revelation of Woodward in a similar role around that same time period might warrant extensive questioning. The revelation of Woodward’s assignment as Haig’s briefer would also reveal where the reporter was getting a large portion of his information. Haig would not want it known to Nixon that he was leaking stories that would eventually topple the floundering president. Nixon already had his suspicions of the general, and if Haig were revealed as a source, in the words of Colodny, “even the fourth star would not be enough to protect the general from the president’s well-known wrath.”
29
In essence, the two men were helping each other. Woodward by way of the leaks from Haig was to become, in the words of the
Weekly Standard
editor Fred Barnes, “the best reporter of his generation,”
30
while Haig would maneuver into a position as White House chief of staff.