(OMED: The following text by our Berlin Bureau Chief is based on an almost universal assumption: that there was a "deep throat."  Recent revelations concerning journalistic practices at the New York Times have led to speculations about "un-named sources" in the big liberal press.  It is quite obvious that some are fictional.  The Washington Post is a big liberal newspaper.  It is of no matter if the identity of Woodward's "deep throat" is held back until Woodward's death.  What matters is if it is held back until the source Woodward called "deep throat" is dead.)

   At the beginning of April, the Watergate archival papers of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, 75 file drawer sized boxes of the notes, clippings and other materials they assembled in their reporting of the Watergate scandal were sold to the University of Texas Library for $5 million dollars. It was an historic sum of money for a collection of this kind. But it was an historic collection. After these resources had led to the only resignation by an American President-- Richard Nixon.
   Not surprisingly there were a few conditions attached to the sale protecting the identity of confidential sources they had used. Archival papers often have time limits established by their donors for accessing what they consider “sensitive” issues. So do documents released by the Federal government to the National Archives. 

  So despite the high price paid for the Watergate papers, the question of the identity of Nixon White House insider “Deep Throat,” Woodward’s most valuable source, was not likely to be answered by any research done on their archives at the University of Texas. Woodward had promised Deep Throat that his name would not be revealed until his death and he has kept his word. Bob Woodward had already endured over 30 years of charges that there was no such individual or that Deep Throat was really a composite character, as well as theories as to who Deep Throat might be. It looked like the world might just have to wait until Woodward released the name.

  A thousand miles away at another university, the University of Illinois, a former reporter with two Pulitzers of his own, now Knight Professor of Journalism Bill Gaines, was just concluding a project. He had challenged his students to a fascinating exercise in investigative journalism. Their goal? To find out the identity of Deep Throat, the man Gaines termed “the most elusive, anonymous news source in history.” 
  After 30 years of speculation by Watergate experts and journalists in print and on the air, Gaines had sent a “children’s crusade” of students in pursuit of the great white whale of journalism.  Pouring over 16,000 pages of FBI files and other Watergate documents without the benefit of the Woodward and Bernstein files, 60 students over four years and eight semesters of work finally came to their own conclusion this week.

   At a press conference appropriately held at the Watergate Hotel in Washington on Easter Tuesday, Gaines and two of his students announced their candidate— consummate Washington insider Fred Fielding. Fielding, deputy counsel to President Nixon worked under John Dean in the White House. He has had a number of jobs in Republican Administrations serving as legal counsel to President Reagan and on various commissions and teams for the first Bush Administration before joining a law firm in the Washington area.

   The University of Illinois students assembled clues that increasingly pointed to Fielding and eliminated other candidates. Fielding and Deep Throat smoked and drank Scotch. Deep Throat gave a quotes to Woodward from John Ehrlichman and others he had overheard in connection with John Dean and Fielding’s cleaning out Howard Hunt’s safe, that later appeared in testimony. Deep Throat told Woodward about the payments to the Watergate burglars which Woodward and Bernstein had confirmed by the Committee to Relect the President’s bookkeeper. Fielding had already seen the report summarizing the bookkeeper’s detailed discussion with the FBI. The students came up with 12 clues and Watergate buffs can now look them up online at a fascinating website on the internet.

Deep Throat Uncovered 

   But the only other study that pointed to Fred Fielding as Deep Throat was Nixon’s Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman’s 1978 book THE ENDS OF POWER. After seeing Haldeman stonewall Mike Wallace at CBS’s 60 Minutes after being paid $50,000 for a “candid” interview in one of the first classic cases of checkbook journalism, Haldeman’s editor at Times Books pressed him for his conclusions on several of the key issues in the Watergate case. one of which was the identity of Deep Throat.
   Since Deep Throat’s coaching of the “Woodstein” duo led to a jail sentence for Haldeman, he had done some serious thinking about which of the people in the White House he had run as Chief of Staff had been Woodward’s indispensable source.

   Haldeman’s case for Fred Fielding was all the stronger for his looking at “Not what he told Woodward that was accurate—but what he told Woodward that was wrong and almost every White House staffer knew was wrong. This could only happen if Deep Throat had access to much information, but was deliberately ‘kept out of things’ as Dean had said.” And the person Dean had personally kept out of things was his assistant Fred Fielding. Deep Throat had passed on a number of howlers to Woodward including some bizarre notions about secret electronic surveillance and “everyone’s life is in danger” and Haldeman’s supposedly being one of the five controllers of the Watergate hush money, which ended up embarrassing Woodward at The Post.

   An interesting hint came from a 1981 story in The Washington Post itself by Elisabeth Bumiller. She stated that there had been a story around Washington that while Fielding was suffering from a pulmonary embolism he said he was Deep Throat and “then cackled uproariously.” When he was asked if the story was accurate, Fielding said, “Probably so.”
   Wouldn’t it be marvelous if Bill Gaines’s student exercise finally gets a distinguished 64 year old attorney like Fred Fielding to loosen up and take a well-deserved bow before he dies? And in the meantime, “J schools” like Columbia’s School of Journalism which are having an identity crisis might learn a few things from the kids at The University of Illinois.
 

© 2003 Oregon Magazine