On Sunday, Carroll Kilpatrick, our White House correspondent, saw McCord’s name in the paper and called his desk to say McCord more currently was employed by the Nixon re-election campaign, where he was in charge of security.Īlso that Sunday, Larry Fox, our night city editor, told me that D.C. Woodward, at the arraignment for the arrested men, heard one of them, James McCord, identify himself as formerly employed by the CIA. The first day, a Saturday, I had ten reporters working on the story. The Post’s aggressive coverage started the moment of the break-in. But that’s it, as far as I can remember, and my memory is aided by a book I wrote in 1974, “The Great Cover-up: Nixon and the Scandal of Watergate.” An investigator in Miami who helped us one time was a lot more important than Deep Throat. In October 1972, Deep Throat gave us confirmation on an important story dealing with dirty tricks. It wouldn’t be correct to say we never got any help from him. His role as a key Watergate source for the Post is a myth, created by a movie and sustained by hype for almost 30 years. I helped create Woodward and Bernstein as a team, and was in charge of the day-to-day coverage, working most intensely on it for the next 15 months.ĭeep Throat was nice to have around, but that’s about it. I was District of Columbia editor when the break-in occurred on June 17 th, 1972, and soon afterward was made special Watergate editor, relieved of other duties. “The reason Deep Throat remained anonymous, so that even Washington Post editors didn’t know who he was, is that his contribution was unimportant.” This essay first appeared on By Barry people have asked for my take on Deep Throat, or Mark Felt, as a source for the Washington Post in its coverage of the Watergate scandal. Why Deep Throat was an unimportant source and other reflections on Watergate COMMENTARY | July 29, 2005
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