Deception in the Name of Truth
“Though it wasn’t true, Woodward told Deep Throat that he and Bernstein had a story for the following week saying that Haldeman was the fifth person in control of disbursements from the secret fund.
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Bok conceded that “the situation was one of mounting crisis for the nation and of potential danger for investigating journalists who came too close to revealing the facts about Watergate.” Still, Woodward and Bernstein had lied. “In pursuing their investigation, the two journalists came to tell more than one lie; a whole fabric of deception arose. Persons being interviewed were falsely told that others had already given certain bits of information or had said something about them. One of the reporters tried to impersonate Donald Segretti on the telephone. The other lied to Deep Throat in order to extract corroboration of a fact which this witness would have feared to reveal in other ways. And the newspaper was used to print information for which there was not always adequate evidence.
Bok would have enjoyed All the President’s Men a little more if Woodward and Bernstein had sounded an occasional note of moral anguish. A lot of journalists–though maybe not Fuller–would have enjoyed it a little less.
“It’s been wall-to-wall phone calls,” Gaines told me the other day. “I would think because we were wrong, people wouldn’t be interested in what we have to say.”
“‘It’s all in the files,’ Deep Throat said. ‘Justice and the Bureau know about it, even though it wasn’t followed up.’”
Some people have speculated that there was no Deep Throat, that he was a literary device, a composite. Gaines doesn’t go that far, because Woodward has flatly denied it. But he has a hunch the book gave Deep Throat more credit than Felt deserves. “There’s a lot of information Deep Throat conveyed that was insider stuff at the White House. It had nothing to do with the FBI. One time Deep Throat said [John] Ehrlichman told Howard Hunt to get out of town, after the burglary. In testimony by John Dean, Dean said Ehrlichman told him to tell Hunt to get out of town. So Dean told [G. Gordon] Liddy to tell Hunt to get out of town. An hour later he met with Charles Colson, and Colson said it was a dumb idea–they’d be aiding a fugitive. So Dean testified that he called up Liddy and told him to tell Hunt not to get out of town, to stand by. But Hunt says, ‘I’m packed up. I’m leaving anyway.’”
