Now he says he is happy to see Felt smile. So there are lots of ironies in this story and lots of anguish also." Turned out later he was investigated and prosecuted for authorizing break-ins by the FBI. "He said, 'Are you crazy?'" Woodward recalls, "When Carl Bernstein and I wrote, 'All The President's Men,' the book about reporting Watergate, we wanted to disclose his identity. What he wanted to do is guarantee that he would not be fingered, that I would protect him and the circumstances of our discussions would be such that no one else would know."Īfter Watergate, Woodward asked Felt if he wanted to go public.
I was just starting my reporting career at that point, so I wasn't sure whether this was typical or not. And that's why (Felt) insisted that we have these really extraordinary and unheard-of clandestine meetings in an underground parking garage. The risk to these people, says Woodward, was "immense. In fact, they understated the level of criminality in the Nixon White House." But by and large, Mark Felt and the other sources that Carl Bernstein and I had, had it right. He was also upset that he had not been made director of the FBI after Hoover died. He didn't like the fact that the Nixon White House was trying to push the FBI around and politicize it. "Like anyone doing something like this, it's a complex series of motives," Woodward says, "He clearly saw lots of law-breaking in the Nixon White House. Going back to the original reporting Woodward did, the question is then: Why did Deep Throat blow the whistle? The person who is in jail is Judy Miller, a New York Times reporter who wrote nothing about this case, but just interviewed some people." And he's not been called before the grand jury in a way that we know about. Woodward says, "The outing was done by the columnist Bob Novak, and he's tried to explain what he was told and why he used the word 'operative.' Whether we're to take him at his word, I don't know.
Referring to the outing of Valerie Plame, Woodward points out that it was columnist Bob Novak who first mentioned her name.
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