A June 1 article on reaction to the confirmation that former FBI official W. Mark Felt was the Watergate source known as "Deep Throat" incorrectly said that Patrick J. Buchanan called Felt a "traitor" in an interview on MSNBC's "Hardball." Buchanan said that Felt had no personal loyalty to President Richard M. Nixon, "so I don't consider him a traitor in that sense."
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"My hunch has been that Bob and Carl's stories kept the Watergate story alive and in their way served to draw in other journalists," said Leonard Garment, who served as Nixon's counsel and chief troubleshooter during Watergate. "A lot of the material was being dug out by the U.S. attorney's office, but Woodward and Bernstein got a jump on the story and Deep Throat [provided] the corroboration that something was going on."
But Deep Throat also had an influence over the practice of journalism that far outlived the Nixon administration, Garment said.
The existence of a mysterious government source for the articles, revealed in the Woodward and Bernstein book "All the President's Men," "gave drama to the investigative reporter and gave rise to a whole generation of prospective Woodward and Bernsteins by the bushel" that sharpened the adversarial relationship between the news media and the government, Garment said.
A long-term echo of that kind of reporting can be seen even now, in the investigative reporting about the relationship between House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and high-powered Washington lobbyists, Garment said.
Ben-Veniste noted that in going to the press to get the story out, Felt was running a considerable personal risk because he could have been prosecuted for revealing information "if things had gone the wrong way."
"Who could you trust? You couldn't trust the Justice Department. [Top officials] were shoveling information back to the White House," said Ben-Veniste, who recently served on the Sept. 11 commission.
Felt's boss, the FBI director, was also part of the coverup. Gray destroyed evidence at the instructions of a "White House cabal," Ben-Veniste said. "Clearly there was no reason to think he had an ally in L. Patrick Gray."
For some who have been periodically mentioned as the possible Deep Throat, the end of the mystery yesterday closes a final page on the Watergate affair.
One of those, Gen. Alexander M. Haig Jr., who replaced H.R. "Bob" Haldeman as White House chief of staff in May 1973, yesterday blamed Nixon White House counsel John W. Dean III for starting rumors that Haig was Deep Throat. As a result, he was pestered by reporters for years. "I talked to Bob Woodward just once," Haig said. "And that was after Nixon had resigned."
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