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Executive Times |
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2005 Book Reviews |
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The Secret
Man by Bob Woodward |
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Rating: ••• (Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Motivation It came as no surprise
that shortly after W. Mark Felt and his family revealed that he was the
famous Deep Throat of Watergate legend, Bob Woodward finished off a
manuscript about Felt that he began years ago. The
Secret Man tells the story of the relationship between Woodward,
Bernstein and W. Mark Felt, who at the time of Watergate,
was second-in-command at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. As expected,
Woodward tells the story from his front row perspective. What’s missing is
insight into why Felt did what he did. At the time of Watergate, Felt was a
reluctant source, as The
Secret Man describes in detail. By the time Woodward tried for the last
time, in 2000, to hear from Felt about why he did what he did, Felt’s memory
had failed, and the secret resolving questions about his motivations remains
unsolved, and will remain conjecture. Here’s an excerpt, from the beginning
of Chapter 7, pp. 85-90: On October 19, I moved
the flowerpot back, hoping to set a meeting that night in Rosslyn. That same afternoon, as
we would learn years later, Nixon met in his hideaway office in the Haldeman reported that he had learned
authoritatively from his own secret source, which he would not name for the
president, that there was a leak in the FBI. “Somebody next to Gray?”
Nixon inquired. “Mark Felt,” Haldeman said. “Now why the hell would
he do that?” the president asked. “You can’t say anything
about this, because it will screw up our source and there’s a real concern.
Mitchell is the only one that knows this and he feels very strongly that we
better not do anything because—” “Do anything?” Nixon interrupted,
adding incredulously, “Never?” “If we move on him,” Haldeman warned, “he’ll go out and unload everything. He
knows everything that’s to be known in the FBI. He has access to absolutely
everything.” Haldeman reported that he had asked John Dean
what to do about Felt. “He says you can’t prosecute him, that he hasn’t
committed a crime. . . . Dean’s
concerned if you let him know now he’ll go out and go on network television.” “You know what I’d do with him, the
bastard,” Nixon said. “Well, that’s all I want to hear about it.” Haldeman said that Felt wanted the top spot at
the FBI. “Is he Catholic?” the president asked. “No, sir. He’s Jewish.” “Christ, put a Jew in there?” Nixon
replied. “Well, that could explain it too,” Haldeman said. Later Nixon asked, “What’s the conveyor
belt for Felt?” “The Post,” Haldeman
answered. Nixon pressed for the White House’s
source, and Haldeman said the information came to
them from some “legal guy,” presumably someone who worked at the Post. “He
knows that the FBI is leaking to a reporter in his publication,” Haldeman said. “So say nothing. . .“ Nixon
ordered. This meant that we at the
Post perhaps had our own Deep Throat problem, someone who was leaking
information to the Justice Department and the White House about our sources.
We never found out who might have been providing information from the Post,
but the White House apparently came very close to establishing that one
of our sources was Felt. That evening, October 19,
I took all the precautions— two cabs, watchfulness, patience. When I arrived,
it was 2:30 A.M. I was late but Felt was not there. I waited an hour. In the underlit cold garage I had some paranoid thoughts. Surely
those mad enough to hire Gordon Liddy and Howard
Hunt might do something unthinkable. It was hard to assess the level of
danger if indeed there was any. Surely Haldeman
could learn that Carl and I were making inquiries. Had Felt been spotted? Had
I been followed? It seemed irrational on my part, so I walked outside to look
around. Steeling myself, I finally walked back down into the black. I looked
around, spent some time stewing in my fear, calmed myself and finally left. I
was terrified. I ran out and raced home. I told Carl that Deep
Throat had not shown up. We were worried. The following day, my New York
Times had page 20 circled and the time indicated 3 A.M. I arrived early.
Felt was already there. He said he had not been able to check the balcony but
that everything about Watergate was heating up even more. He didn’t have to
tell me. Though Carl and I did not in fact have
it, I told Felt that we were going to publish a story the next week saying
that Haldeman was the final and fifth person to
control the secret fund. “You’ve got to do it on your own,” Felt
said. I said that I expected him to warn me
if we were wrong. Felt said he would. So he was essentially confirming Haldeman? “I’m not,” he said. “You’ve got to do
it on your own.” It was a distinction that didn’t make
sense to me. I was tired of this dancing around. “You cannot use me as a source,” Felt
said. “I won’t be a source on a Haldeman story.” He
warned me to be careful. But he said he would try to keep us out of trouble. Are we in trouble on Haldeman? I asked. “I’ll keep you out,” Felt said
ambiguously. Well, I said, that meant he was
confirming the Haldeman story. Shifting direction once again, he said
ominously that if I expected him to warn me off an inaccurate story that “would
be a misconception of our friendship.” On that terrible note, we shook hands
and he left. I was persuaded that Haldeman was the
correct name, but I was also convinced that Haldeman
had frightening power. Monday, October 23, I
went over all this with Carl, who was uncomfortable. Did we have a
confirmation? Yes and no, I said. We
both knew that in practical newspaper terms that meant no. We went again to see Hugh
Sloan, the treasurer who had kept the secret fund. Sloan, who had earlier
worked in the Nixon White House for Haldeman, was
also cagey about his former boss. Carl asked him if there would be anything
wrong if we wrote that Haldeman was the fifth
person. “Let me put it this way,
then,” Sloan said. “I have no problems if you write a story like that.” Sloan
also said that he had told everything to the Watergate grand jury— answered
all the questions accurately and fully. After some memorable
contortions with other sources, who seemed to
confirm the story, we went with it. This was a different story. It named Haldeman as the fifth person to control the secret fund
that had financed Watergate and other campaign spying and sabotage. We
attributed it to Sloan’s grand jury testimony. That would give it a solid
basis. No more citing unidentified sources. The headline to the Post’s lead
story October 25, 1972: “Testimony Ties Top Nixon Aide to Secret
Fund.” After all, Sloan had not only told us explicitly that it was Haldeman, he pledged that he had answered all the grand
jury questions. This was a case where one
plus one didn’t add up to two, as we would soon find out. The next day
Sloan’s attorney, James Stoner, said before the television cameras, “Our answer
to that is an unequivocal no. We did not—Mr. Sloan did not implicate Mr. Haldeman in that testimony at all.” All hell broke loose.
Carl and I thought we might have to resign from the Post. Sloan
finally told us that yes, indeed, Haldeman had
controlled the fund, but Sloan had never been asked about that by the grand
jury. So, of course, he had not testified about it. It was a near disaster. At the White House, as
the tapes would later show, Nixon had been planning to challenge the
television licenses owned by the Washington Post Company. At 12:29 P.M. on
the day the Haldeman story ran, Nixon met with
Charles Colson. Of the Post, the
president said, “We’re going to screw them another way. They don’t really
realize how rough I can play. . . . But
when I start, I will kill them. There’s no question about it.” Woodward tells the tale he has quite
well on the pages of The
Secret Man. The tale many readers would like to hear, about understanding
Mark Felt’s motivations, remains untold, and probably untellable. Steve Hopkins,
October 25, 2005 |
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ã 2005 Hopkins and Company, LLC The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the November 2005
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/The
Secret Man.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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