Deep Epstein, take 2
We are proud to have reminded our friends at Commentary magazine of its publication of Edward Jay Epstein's brilliant July 1974 essay: "Did the press uncover Watergate?" Commentary has now dug the essay out of its digital archives and made it available online in html at the link.
Nothing published this week on the subject comes close to Epstein's essay in illuminating the issues involved in the the case of Deep Throat and the press. The commentary on Deep Throat in the press this week week reeks of the self-glorifying mythology that Epstein meticulously deconstructed as such thirty years ago.
I said earlier this week in "Deep Epstein" when I linked to the version of the essay at Epstein's site that I vaguely recalled Epstein having named Mark Felt as the likely Deep Throat in his Commentary essay. Epstein wrote to say that he had done so in the version of the essay he published in Between Fact and Fiction. It turns out, however, that he in fact named Felt in his original Commentary essay. Here is the relevant passage of the essay:
If Bernstein and Woodward did not in fact expose the Watergate conspiracy or the cover-up, what did they expose? The answer is that in late September they were diverted to the trail of Donald H. Segretti, a young lawyer who had been playing “dirty tricks” on various Democrats in the primaries. The quest for Segretti dominates both the largest section of their book (almost one-third) and most of their “exclusive” reports in the Post until the cover-up collapsed later that March. Unidentified sources within the government gave Bernstein and Woodward FBI “302” reports (which contain “raw”—i.e., unevaluated—interviews), phone call records, and credit-card records, all of which elaborated Segretti’s trail. Through the FBI reports and phone records, they located a number of persons whom Segretti had tried to recruit for his “dirty-tricks” campaign. The reporters assumed that this was all an integral part of Watergate, and wrote that “the Watergate bugging incident stemmed from a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage. . . . The activities, according to information in FBI and Department of Justice files, were aimed at all the major Democratic Presidential contenders.” They further postulated that there were fifty other Segretti-type agents, all receiving information from Watergate-type bugging operations.It remains to be seen whether Deep Throat was in fact a composite character principally composed of Felt. Epstein may or may not have erred in his speculation in that respect. Nevertheless, the quality of Epstein's 1974 reportage and analysis leaves this week's punditry in the dust.As it turned out, this was a detour, if not a false trail. Segretti (who served a brief prison sentence for such “dirty tricks” as sending two hundred copies of a defamatory letter to Democrats) has not in fact been connected to the Watergate conspiracy at all. Almost all his work took place in the primaries before any of the Watergate break-ins in June 1972; he was hired by Dwight Chapin in the White House and paid by Herbert Kalmbach, a lawyer for President Nixon, whereas the Watergate group was working for the Committee for the Re-election of the President and received its funds from the finance committee. No evidence has been offered by anyone, including Woodward and Bernstein, that Segretti received any information from the Watergate group, and the putative fifty other Donald Segrettis have never been found, let alone linked to Watergate. In short, neither the prosecutors, the grand jury, nor the Watergate Committee has found any evidence to support the Bernstein-Woodward thesis that Watergate was part of the Segretti operation.
The behavior of the officials who steered Bernstein and Woodward onto this circuitous course makes in itself a revealing case study. Bernstein and Woodward identify their main source only under the titillating code-name of “Deep Throat,” and indicate that “Deep Throat” confirmed their suspicion that Segretti—and political spying—were at the root of the Watergate conspiracy. But who was “Deep Throat” and what was his motivation for disclosing information to Woodward and Bernstein? The prosecutors at the Department of Justice now believe that the mysterious source was probably Mark W. Felt, Jr., who was then a deputy associate director of the FBI, because one statement the reporters attribute to “Deep Throat” could only have been made by Felt. (I personally suspect that in the best traditions of the New Journalism, “Deep Throat” is a composite character.) Whether or not the prosecutors are correct, it is clear that the arduous and time-consuming investigation by Woodward and Bernstein of Segretti was heavily based on FBI “302” reports, which must ultimately have been made available by someone in the FBI.
