Forced to bring 'Deep Throat' to light
Vanity Fair's scoop and family's mission to cash in led Woodward to change his plans
By TODD S. PURDUM and JIM RUTENBERG
New York Times June 5, 2005
WASHINGTON - This was not the way Bob Woodward expected to tell the last chapter of the Watergate story that he and the Washington Post have owned for more than 30 years: the identity of "Deep Throat."
Watergate reporters Carl Bernstein, left, and Bob Woodward meet at Woodward's office at the Washington Post on Tuesday, the day Vanity Fair outed the identity of "Deep Throat," W. Mark Felt.
Woodward, a Washington media machine, has long been largely insulated from normal journalistic rivalries. But last week, in the wake of Vanity Fair magazine's disclosure that W. Mark Felt was his secret source, it became clear that Woodward had been facing months, and even years, of competitive pressure from an unlikely source, the Felt family.
On Wednesday, word came that the family of the ailing, 91-year-old former No. 2 official of the FBI, after failing to reach a collaborative agreement with Woodward, had sought payment in vain for Felt's story not only from Vanity Fair but also from People magazine and HarperCollins Books.
They are apparently still determined to claim their share of the story that has helped make Woodward a millionaire.
Following the money
"It's doing me good," Felt told reporters outside his home in Santa Rosa, Calif., when asked how he was reacting to the publicity. "I'll arrange to write a book or something, and collect all the money I can."
J. Todd Foster, managing editor of the News-Virginian in Waynesboro, said that in 2003, after being frustrated in their efforts to persuade Woodward to cooperate, the Felt family had come to him — roughly six months after he had approached them on his own hunch that Felt was Deep Throat — to propose a collaboration. At the time, Foster was a contributor to People, which he said considered but rejected an article because the Felts wanted payment.
"This was always about the money, and they were very up front with me," he said in a telephone interview.
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"I'll arrange to write a book or something, and collect all the money I can."
— W. Mark Felt
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Felt
Foster and the Felt family then took the project to ReganBooks, an imprint of HarperCollins. But Judith Regan, president and publisher of ReganBooks, said last week that a possible book had collapsed because of concerns that Felt was no longer of sound mind.
It also became clear on Wednesday that the Vanity Fair article had forced Woodward to bow to the institutional imperatives of the newspaper. Senior Post executives said the newspaper had persuaded him the time had come to tell the tale.
Retreat interruption
On Tuesday, Leonard Downie, the Post's executive editor, was speaking at a management retreat on Maryland's Eastern Shore when his cell phone began ringing so incessantly that he turned it off.
He ignored hand-passed notes from the hotel staff. Only when the Post's chairman, Donald Graham, stepped out to take a phone call did they learn of the Vanity Fair scoop.
"He signals me through the door with one of those finger things," Downie said Wednesday. "He said, 'You better call Woodward.' "
For years, the Post has called Woodward on the biggest stories. He holds the rank of assistant managing editor, but is allowed to labor in freedom for months at a time on books — now 11 in all — that almost invariably become best sellers, after their most newsworthy disclosures are doled out in the Post over several days of pre-publication publicity.
Woodward book on the way
The Post reported on Wednesday that Woodward had been preparing for Felt's eventual death by writing a short book about their relationship that his longtime publisher, Simon & Schuster, is now rushing into print.
Woodward said in a brief telephone interview that he had been reluctant to dissolve his pledge of confidentiality, doubting whether Felt was competent to come forward.
Ultimately, after a hastily arranged meeting on Tuesday with Downie, who had raced back to the Post, Woodward's own careful advance planning bowed to the inevitable: Vanity Fair had the goods.
"That story laid it all out, and it's silly to say you have no comment and won't even say whether the ... thing is right, when you know it's right," said Benjamin Bradlee, the Post's executive editor in the Watergate era, who had begun the day, like Woodward and his Watergate co-author, Carl Bernstein, buying time by declaring, "The wisdom of the ages cries out for silence." |
