The well-worn Watergate saga of Deep Throat, the shadowy insider source for Woodward and Bernstein, retains its fascination for one good reason: most secrets are not so well-kept. For this reason, I've never subscribed to conspiracy theories; human nature, my reporting experience tells me, always favors the moving lips and the clucking tongue. And yet 30 years on, Deep Throat retains his cloak of invisibility, known only to himself, Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward, and Ben Bradlee.
So today's news that Deep Throat may be truly on his way into history is (human considerations aside) so Goddamned delicious! John Dean, the former White House counsel turned whistleblower turned commentator/author, writes today:
Bob Woodward, a reporter on the team that covered the Watergate story, has advised his executive editor at the Washington Post that Throat is ill. And Ben Bradlee, former executive editor of the Post and one of the few people to whom Woodward confided his source's identity, has publicly acknowledged that he has written Throat's obituary.
Watergate was such a central event of my adolescence - and Richard Nixon such a towering figure - that the public unveiling of the last riddle is almost too cool to contemplate. So I did a little digging. Patrick Buchanan? Saw him on the McLaughlin Group Sunday chortling healthily away. Al Haig? Busily taping his cable business show, apparently fit and still in charge. Former associate counsel and Republican legal powerbroker Fred Fielding? Last seen on the 9/11 commission stage just weeks ago, still standing. Now here's where it gets interesting. Former President Gerald Ford, 91, did not attend the Bush inaugauration and was described as "in failing health?" Wouldn't that be a blockbuster?
Oh, and Hal Holbrook you might ask? Still packing them in as Mark Twain on the community theater circuit, thank you.
UPDATE: Editor & Publisher picks up on the "mania" the Dean report has generated. Some good stuff, and a silly contest.
