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by Paul R. Hollrah, Contributor to Lincoln Heritage Institute
On Tuesday, June 20, 1972, I was a regional chairman for the Committee to Reelect the President in southeastern Pennsylvania. On that particular day, I found myself playing host to Jeb Stuart Magruder, chief deputy to former Attorney General John N. Mitchell, who headed Nixon reelection campaign. The occasion was a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the opening of a major new campaign telephone bank in West Chester, Pennsylvania, some fifteen miles west of Philadelphia.
At a press briefing prior to the ribbon-cutting I introduced Magruder for a Q & A session with members of the press. As I stood at the rear of the platform, next to my Executive Director, Marjorie Emmons, I was puzzled by Magruder’s seeming lack of concentration. He didn’t seem to have his mind on what he was doing.
I whispered to my assistant. I said, “Marge, what’s wrong with him? He seems to be totally distracted.” She agreed, saying, “I don’t know. I was thinking the same thing.”
We didn’t know what it was that weighed so heavily on Magruder until we watched the evening news broadcasts. The networks were reporting on a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. Worse, several men had been arrested inside the DNC headquarters – three of them with close ties to the Nixon reelection campaign. It was suddenly clear to me why Jeb Magruder had been so distracted earlier that day.
In the weeks and months that followed, the Watergate story was front page news and the lead story of every network news broadcast. The media assault was led by two young reporters from the Washington Post, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who later disclosed that they had a White House source who regularly fed them information on the Administration’s internal handling of the scandal – a source that would soon become known as “Deep Throat.”
In spite of wide speculation, the true identity of “Deep Throat” has been a closely-held secret for many years, known only to the source, himself, and three or four others at the Washington Post. I was told his identity by a senior aide to Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger in the summer of 1977, five years after Watergate, and it was not the 91-year-old former FBI official who now claims to be “Deep Throat.”
Nevertheless, W. Mark Felt, then deputy director of the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover, has now disclosed that he was “Deep Throat,” and since the Washington Post has confirmed that he was their Watergate source, we can be relatively certain that he was at least one of several individuals who provided inside information to the Post reporters.
Of course, Felt’s confession raises as many questions as it answers. For example, as a senior law enforcement official, why did he choose to go outside normal channels with what he felt was wrongdoing? The answer to that question is probably the same as the answer to the question of why the media made so much of Watergate, eventually causing Richard Nixon to resign the presidency, when it was known that the Democrats were doing exactly the same, and more.
Richard Nixon records in his diaries that an official of the McGovern campaign admitted to his close friend, Murray Chotiner, that the Democrats had illegal listening devices in the offices of the Committee to Reelect the President in Washington. The Democrats also maintained bank accounts in the name of The Committee to Reelect the President and laundered money through those accounts that they raised from Nixon supporters, acting under false pretenses. I know that from personal experience.
So what motivated Felt to go, not to the Justice Department and not to a grand jury, but to the Washington Post with what he knew? The likely answer to that question goes back to the death of J. Edgar Hoover in May 1972. As deputy director, it is understandable that Felt would assume that Hoover’s successor would be chosen from within the ranks of the FBI and that he was in the best position to move up to the directorship.
Unfortunately for Felt, that’s not what happened. Nixon was convinced that after 42 years under J.Edgar Hoover, the internal culture of the FBI needed an infusion of new blood. He appointed Assistant Attorney General L. Patrick Gray as Acting Director.
It is not unreasonable to speculate that, as Felt saw things, he had been passed over for a job that should have been his by right of succession. And when he telephoned the Post offering information on the White House’s handling of the Watergate affair, he was not interested in justice, he was interested in revenge. He took his information to a news organization that he knew hated Richard Nixon even more than he did.
Mark “Deep Throat” Felt deserves no medals. Petulance is neither virtuous nor valiant.
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