Clearing my Throat

  Mixed feelings on the huge news broken yesterday by Vanity Fair about the identity of Deep Throat, former FBI assistant director Mark Felt. On one hand, as a longtime Watergate buff and semi-crusading journalist myself, what a thrill to be around when his identity was finally revealed — kind of like an archaeologist must feel when some Rosetta Stone-like artifact comes to light after years of speculation.

Truly a circle has closed, as the biggest mystery of the Watergate saga is now out in the open (the second biggest mystery being what was in that 18 minutes of erased tape). I hope that this media blitz about Felt will fire up some interest in study of the Watergate era among young voters in this country — especially young journalists whose only experience with “scandal” was the Monica Lewinsky thing.

I have a sinking feeling, however, that in the current repressive American political climate young people will study Watergate less out of a crusading zeal to uncover government impropriety than as a revisionist effort to martyr the Nixon administration as a victim of the media, a la the twin Dan Rather & Newsweek fiascos.

But I do hope to be proven wrong on that.

There are so many delicious ironies surrounding Deep Throat’s unveiling. My first take — shared by the Washington Post’s own Howard Kurtz — was “why the hell is this story being broken by Vanity Fair?”

I’m a fan of the magazine and all — they’ve done some really good investigative work over the years — but come on. The Post itself couldn’t break this?

I also remain skeptical about Bob Woodward in general. As the book Silent Coup points out, Woodward not only had precious little journalistic experience before being hired by the Post and put on the Watergate story, but he was a former communications officer with the Office of Naval Intelligence, with close ties to the U.S. intelligence community, many members of which seemed to have a vested interest in discouraging Nixon on several fronts.

Perhaps the unmasking of Deep Throat is just another red herring. Despite a feeling of completion and symmetry in the revelation of his identity, the truth is that there are many more questions to answer.

The truth is that times have changed immensely since the Watergate days. Richard Nixon — archconservative of his era, almost on a par with Barry Goldwater — couldn’t get nominated as a Republican today. He would be considered too liberal.

And the media has fallen so far since those days it’s painful to watch. There have always been boot-lickers and toadies in my profession, hacks who think a journalist’s job is to suck up to power and help keep a foot on the throats of the downtrodden. But that seems to be the norm these days rather than the exception. The phrase “use it or lose it” certainly applies to freedom of the press. It is a right that must be fought for, because those in power are always fighting against it.

Perhaps the buzz about Deep Throat is simply another of our society’s trysts with nostalgia, as the past is cherry-picked to make the present seem like a more comfortable place.

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