Op-ed views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author.
The Post’s Bob Woodward deserves inestimable praise for his October 1972, “garage reporting” on Watergate, aided by his mysterious Executive Branch super-source Deep Throat. This reporting shows the power of journalism which sources critically intelligent, knowledgeable witnesses to develop a competent narrative hypothesis out of otherwise mystifying facts, in this case targeting the White House. So kudos have been earned for this spectacular reporting.
But when this same reliable, knowledgeable source, in a highly frightening May 16-17, 1973, garage meeting, later developed the narrative in a new direction, pointing to the CIA’s fingerprints on the Watergate burglaries, Woodward and the Post went radio silent on their source’s dramatic revelations. The differences in the imperatives of each “reporter,” Woodward and Deep Throat, explain this journalistic failing, and in so doing enlighten us as to the profoundly dangerous shortcomings of modern “investigative” journalism.
Mark Felt, a/k/a Deep Throat, the FBI’s number two official and head of the Watergate investigation, sought Woodward’s sensational megaphone when he met him in the garage in the early morning hours of October 9, 1972. He did so because his superiors had tightly restricted the use of the Grand Jury to the burglary itself, even though examination of parallel crimes might be used to connect the White House to it.
Accordingly, Felt thought that with public pressure, the DOJ could be forced to allow the FBI to investigate deeply the “dirty tricks” campaign of Donald Segretti, essentially disruptive pranks used to bedevil Nixon’s electoral rivals, especially formidable potential foe Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine. Close Nixon aide Dwight Chapin had hired his old USC friend Segretti, who in turn was paid by Nixon’s personal lawyer Hubert Kalmbach. So at least the dirty tricks were traceable to the Oval Office.
Intriguingly, Watergate burglary supervisors Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy had from time to time looked in on Segretti’s activities. Therefore, Felt hypothesized, the Watergate burglary might be traced back to the highest levels of the White House, as part of an overall “campaign of spying and sabotage” on electoral opponents. The sensational October 10, 1972, reporting, capturing Felt’s hypothesized connection, was a phenomenon, reviving a moribund Watergate journalism that had run out of steam. The scandal’s investigation as a result began accelerating on October 10, 1972, and never looked back. Great reporting, yes?
It was in fact excellent. But subsequent reporting should have, but did not, measure Felt’s usefully brilliant hypothesis against emerging evidence. Had it done so, the world – and the befuddled Nixon, who never understood the burglaries – would have learned of the virtual certainty of CIA infiltration as the major force behind the burglaries, with some acquiescence by low-level lieutenants ambitiously seeking “oppo” dirt.
By the time of the upcoming January 1973, criminal trial, it was highly likely known to the Post that Howard Hunt had planned a “CIA defense” of legitimate national security, while the prosecution planned a case that Hunt, wishing to gain control of the lucrative CIA “cover contract” with his “day job” employer Mullen and Company, sought the wiretapping for blackmail purposes. Accordingly, both anticipated cases centered on the CIA and embarrassing wiretaps, while neither case was based on a motive of campaign intelligence, as the Post has told us for fifty years. But the Post printed nothing of these dueling cases, which barely escaped public revelation when Hunt pleaded guilty, with the blackmail evidence now inadmissible.
Of course, the Post reporters always had in their back pocket the rationale that, golly Mrs. Cleaver, we never thought that our intelligence agencies would act wrongly! That excuse may have been credible until May 16-17, 1973, when an agitated Deep Throat burst into the garage, exclaiming to Woodward, “Everyone’s life is in danger!”
He went on to explain that the CIA was not so much worried about its exposure in Watergate (where it had arguable, lower-level White House authorization,) but what other CIA operations might be discovered, of course, all illegal if pursued in the United States. In short, the CIA was threatening murder if its role was exposed. Indeed, one potential snitch was poisoned through “aspirin roulette” the very next day, dying soon thereafter.
Why wouldn’t Woodward and his paper print this sensational story, which documented not only CIA purposes in the Watergate burglaries, but also decades of skullduggery? Because they would then be ruining a perfectly successful jeremiad against a sitting president whom its Democratic constituency hated, and for which it was winning a Pulitzer Prize.
Mark Felt was also a “reporter” but one reporting to the Grand Jury and the Justice Department. The FBI could only be criticized if it were untruthful. The Post, on the other hand, could only lose its commercial mojo if it were truthful. After all, giving the beleaguered, hated Nixon a life raft would have been no fun, and certainly not what its readers wanted.
So what lessons were learned by our two Watergate “reporters,” the Post and the FBI? The Post learned that slanted journalism was both profitable and prestigious, to the point of its apotheosis as “investigative” journalism. And it had new-found political power, to boot. Lesson: political impact prevails over the truth, and certainly sells papers.
What about the FBI? For some reason, the FBI, even though the only noncorrupted entity in the entire debacle, suffered post-scandal obloquy, as if it were part of the problem, while in fact, the regular Bureau was the straight-arrow solution to Watergate criminality.
While the Post has stayed on its deceptive, partisan Watergate track for the past fifty years, has the FBI stayed straight? Not exactly. The lure of political power and prestige, using a corrupted media, led to the Bureau’s shameful conduct in Russiagate, which of course its media allies continually downplay. So we indeed have a tale of two reporters: the Post and the FBI. They were the best of reporters of our times, they were the worst of reporters of our times.
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