FOSTER: Deep Pangs But No Regrets About Deep Throat

The New York Times breaking-news alert flashed over my Blackberry 11 minutes after midnight Friday morning. Then the nausea returned: “W. Mark Felt, Deep Throat of Watergate, Dies at 95.”

The world learned on May 31, 2005, that Felt – once the No. 2 official at the FBI – was Bob Woodward’s famous Watergate source. I learned it 2½ years earlier but couldn’t tell anybody.

For me, revealing Deep Throat’s identity will always be the one that got away. But it reinforced a belief that ethics and integrity bring their own rewards.

First the background: In the spring of 2002, People magazine assigned me to do a 30-year Watergate retrospective. I interviewed Alexander Haig, Henry Kissinger, John Dean, Leonard Garment, Ron Ziegler and several other of Richard Nixon’s men. I’ll never forget the insult from Dean, who was Nixon’s White House counsel and who every few years or so, needing money, would write yet another book revealing his choice for Deep Throat. He was wrong for 30 years.

During my interview, I told Dean I believed Deep Throat was Felt. “That’s because you’re an amateur,” he barked.

A few days later, I tracked down a W. Mark Felt living in Miami. He was an airline pilot. He was named for his father, who would become famous, albeit anonymous, as played by Hal Holbrook in “All the President’s Men.” Deep Throat also would become the most enduring Washington mystery in a town with no secrets.

I learned from the son that the senior Felt was living in his daughter’s basement in Santa Rosa, Calif. He had suffered a stroke and already was showing signs of dementia.

While on the phone with his son, I employed an old investigative reporter’s trick – the bluff. “Mr. Felt: I’m 99 percent certain that your dad is Deep Throat. Millions of people read People magazine; you won’t find a better venue in which to confirm this.”

I expected a laugh and a “get out of town.” I got a long pause, stammering and the admission that Felt Jr. was writing a memoir about his father and needed to finish the last chapter after talking to The Washington Post’s Woodward.

“Why would you be talking to Woodward if you’re dad isn’t Deep Throat?” I asked.

Silence. Then Felt Jr. promised to call me “some day.”

I couldn’t wait for some day and started calling him every few weeks. “Ready to give me the Deep Throat story?” I would press him.

“Be patient,” he’d always say.

He was an honorable man. For in the spring of 2003, just as I was beginning my first job as a newspaper editor after a career as a reporter, Felt Jr. called me in Waynesboro, Va.

“We want you and People to break the story,” he said.

I was elated but frustrated. I had just taken this new job and was working 100-hour weeks. But I would find a way, I told him.

I called People’s No. 2 editor and explained the situation. I was called back by the magazine’s top editor. From that point forward, I would only deal with her – even my Washington editors had no clue we were working on this. The editor, Martha Nelson, dubbed the assignment “Project Green Door,” named for another porn flick (“Behind the Green Door”) from the early 1970s. We never mentioned the F-word (Felt). It was always “Project Green Door.”

A snag developed quickly. Felt’s family wanted money. They were tired of Woodward cashing in on Felt’s fame. It was their father and grandfather who was the American hero for standing up to Nixon and helping to derail a coverup. They wanted some of the action.

Nelson and Norman Pearlstine, editor and chief of Time Inc., flew to San Francisco to meet with Felt’s attorney. The goal was to structure a book deal and not pay for the magazine article; that would have been a serious ethics breach called “checkbook journalism” amid our industry’s worst scandal in history – the Jayson Blair fabrication morass at The New York Times.

The negotiations began – and the Felt family’s price continued to rise. Not wanting to enter an unethical deal with a source already known to have dementia, Nelson and Pearlstine eventually called me with the bad news: We had to cut our losses. Project Green Door was slammed shut.

I understood completely and went with Plan B. I called an author friend of mine, Jess Walter, who happened to be a rising star for Harper Collins’ ReganBooks. I told him about Felt and Deep Throat and said if he would land us the book deal, I’d give him the lead role and be a supporting cast member so I could continue working my real job.

A six-figure book deal quickly landed, the project began in earnest. Jess made three trips to Santa Rosa to interview Felt one-on-one. I started doing lengthy phone interviews with Felt Jr.

Jess and I traded notes regularly. His interviews with Deep Throat weren’t going well, however, because Felt was not doing well. A recovering alcoholic, Felt mostly denied being Deep Throat and wanted champagne, even though it was 8 in the morning.

Asked about a meeting with Woodward, Felt said on tape: “I don’t remember that at all. But I would like to have some champagne.”

Later, Felt said, again on tape: “Well, I wasn’t a Deep Throat. ... I don’t think I ever provided information to him [Woodward]. ... No. I thought Deep Throat was another source entirely.”

Jess had few doubts that Felt was Deep Throat, but the former FBI deputy director couldn’t remember a single detail. There were no tales of late-night meetings inside echoing parking garages, or flags in flower pots or any other signs that would inform Woodward that his source needed to meet. There was not one scintilla of evidence.
Jess called to deliver the news: Our book contract stated explicitly that we had to be able to prove Felt was Deep Throat. There was no way. And if Woodward had come out after our book was published and said we got it wrong, our careers would have been finished.
We walked away.

Two years passed and then the inevitable hit on May 31, 2005. I glanced up at the TV screen in my Waynesboro office. It was tuned to CNN. It was showing Felt waving from his daughter’s front porch. His attorney had broken the story himself for Vanity Fair magazine.
Woodward wanted to ignore the revelation but was coaxed into coming clean by his former editor, Ben Bradlee.

I quickly wrote a front-page story detailing my involvement with the Felt family two years earlier. Within a span of two days, I fielded calls from The New York Times, Newsweek and several major newspapers from around the world. Friends called to say they heard my name read by Rush Limbaugh and Don Imus. Bill O’Reilly’s producer called and wanted to send a limo to Waynesboro to return me to D.C. for an on-air interview. I said no thanks: This was the one that got away and I didn’t want to think about it anymore.

Meanwhile, Felt’s lawyer had an underling e-mail me and threaten me with breach of contract. By revealing Felt’s demented ramblings, I had breached the confidentiality agreement I had signed with Felt’s attorney, the litigation assistant told me.

That’s funny, I e-mailed back, because I didn’t recall signing a confidentiality agreement. My co-author did. The top editors of People and Time had. Even the editor at ReganBooks had. But Felt’s attorney forgot to get a signature from one of the players: me.

I told the law firm to stick it and then buried all my files in a box.

On Friday, after learning Felt had died, I reached into my dusty, bulging Deep Throat file for the first time in 3½ years. I had forgotten the hundreds of e-mails that poured in from around the world.
“Yes, you did the right thing!” one stranger e-mailed me. “Thank you for having journalistic integrity. I wish more papers had integrity.”
A college professor in California read my Deep Throat account online and wrote: “Fabulous story! Thanks for telling it, and for doing the right thing by not telling it years ago.”
My Deep Throat box also contained a check stub. People magazine wanted to reward my loyalty for coming to them first with the story. “You’ll be getting a check in the mail,” the editor told me. I expected a few hundred bucks.

Two days later it arrived by FedEx. It had five zeroes in it: $15,000.00. It’s the most money I ever made for a story, especially one in which I didn’t write a single word.

That’s when the nausea started to dissipate. Now if I can only track down John Dean and inform him who the real amateur was.