The Secret Man by Bob Woodward

Author:Bob Woodward
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

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DURING 1976, WHEN I WAS reporting the FBI break-in story, I had lunch with a senior Justice Department official. It was a highly confidential, off-the-record discussion. But in 2005 he released me and agreed to go on the record. The official was Stanley Pottinger, the assistant attorney general heading the civil rights division. He was in charge of the grand jury investigation into the FBI break-ins.

Sitting in a downtown Washington, D.C., restaurant in 1976, Pottinger said that something strange had happened when Mark Felt had testified before the grand jury.

I stiffened, certainly telegraphing my discomfort.

Pottinger said that Felt was asked if the Nixon White House had pressed the FBI to conduct the black-bag jobs.

Felt denied any pressure but volunteered with a smile that he was such a frequent visitor at the White House that some people thought he was Deep Throat. After Pottinger and the other Justice lawyers were finished with their interrogation, Pottinger, as was the custom, asked if any grand jurors, who are ordinary citizens, had questions for the witness. One man raised his hand and asked, “Were you?”

“Was I what?” Felt inquired.

“Were you Deep Throat?”

Felt looked so stunned, Pottinger said, he seemed to go white. Listening to this over lunch, I probably went white as well.

“No,” Felt initially answered.

Continuing his story, Pottinger said he stood up abruptly and instructed the stenographer to stop taking notes for the record. He then walked over to the witness chair and whispered to Felt, “You are under oath, so you have to answer truthfully. On the other hand, I consider the question to be outside the bounds of our official investigation, so if you prefer, I’ll withdraw the question. What would you like me to do?”

Flushed, Felt very rapidly requested, “Withdraw the question.”

Pottinger, smiling broadly at me, said he formally withdrew both question and answer, adding ominously that it was all he needed. Obviously Felt had been the secret source.

I was jumping out of my skin, but trying to keep a poker face. Pottinger remembers that I did some kind of dance—trying not to affirm or deny. At one point later, Pottinger recalls that I even babbled something like, “Well, just because someone might be a source doesn’t necessarily make them Deep Throat” or “A source himself might think he’s Deep Throat even if he’s not.” I hope I did not go to such extremes and utter such absurdities, and I don’t believe I did. But I was profoundly worried that his identity would get out. Felt’s trust in me was already shaken after all that had been written about our meetings in All the President’s Men. He must have worried they would try to get him on perjury about Deep Throat. Overall, I realized he must have felt dangerously exposed.

Pottinger said he would not tell anyone. But with something like this—too good not to repeat—even given the strict grand jury secrecy rules, I was convinced the story would get out in some form. It had to, and I held my breath waiting for the unmasking at any moment.

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