The story behind 'Deep Throat'

By 1974, the Nixon White House was a bunker, where the president and what was left of his loyal staff were holed up and holding out against wave after wave of bad news.

White House Counsel John Dean had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to obstruct justice and he was headed for prison. Many of the president's top aides were indicted on felony charges and later sent to prison.

In the House Judiciary Committee, Republicans joined Democrats in voting for articles of impeachment. And, in a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court delivered the coup de grace—ordering the president to give up the remaining White House tapes. The president had no choice. On one tape you could clearly hear Richard Nixon ordering a cover up of the investigation.

Days later, Richard Milhous Nixon became the first American president forced to resign the office.        

Brokaw: The next day, did you want to dial Mark Felt?

Woodward: Yeah, I did, and I wanted to kind of talk it through. But the last I'd heard from him was the hang-up treatment.

Brokaw: You didn't want to drive out there as you had before when you needed to have a meeting with him?

Woodward: Yeah, I didn't need more information at that point. There was too much. 

Brokaw: But people looking in are going toa say, “Wait a minute, he's done with him. You know, he's used him up. He's gotten everything out of him." 

Woodward:  But I'm also trying to protect him, but I also am gutless. I so testify.

By now Woodward and Bernstein were household names — and wealthy.

“Deep Throat” also had an anonymous fame — but Mark Felt didn't want to cash in on it. Besides, he was soon in a lot of legal trouble.

With J. Edgar Hoover gone and Nixon in disgrace, any past abuse of power became fair game. It was revealed Felt had authorized so-called black bag jobs — burglaries, carried out by the FBI to gather intelligence against members of the radical anti-war movement. 

Now Mark Felt — “Deep Throat” — was a suspect in a series of FBI-directed burglaries. Felt was going be investigated for, of all things, authorizing break-ins.

Bob Woodward's compass and mentor during Watergate was at a low point in his life.

Brokaw: But you don't call him during that time—

Woodward: No—

Brokaw: —in any personal way.

Yet Woodward did call Felt to get a newspaper story about those FBI black bag jobs.

Woodward: He gave me an on the record interview saying, “Oh, these burglaries were absolutely necessary. They were authorized. It was this time of peril and violence in America.”

Brokaw: But your relationship has changed at this point, Bob. It's a lot less personal than it was before?

Woodward: Oh, it sure is.

Just as Mark Felt, the man, was entering this very dark period of his life, “Deep Throat,” his alter ego, was at the peak of his celebrity, played powerfully by Hal Holbrook in the 1976 movie version of “All the President's Men.”

Brokaw: Did he go see the movie?

Woodward: I don't know.

Brokaw: You never talked to him about it?

Woodward: I never talked to him about that.

Brokaw: You never asked him, “What did you think of the movie?”

Woodward: No, because we were not—

Brokaw: You were not at a good stage at that point?

Woodward: We weren't.

In real life, Bob Woodward and “Deep Throat” only met about a half a dozen times in that his garage. But the eerie and realistic garage scenes from “All the President's Men” are fixed in the memories of movie fans. The filmmakers had never seen the real garage. Woodward never showed anyone where it was... until now.

Woodward: It is a little frightening. The whole thing is frightening. At night it's so quiet. You're so alone. You realize that you've kind of given yourself over to a process that somebody else is controlling. And it's unnatural.

It was also in the garage that the fictional “Deep Throat” uttered the movie's most memorable line: “Just follow the money.”

It was a phrase, it turns out, that never appears in Bob Woodward's extensive notes of his conversations with the real “Deep Throat.”

Win McNamee / Getty Images (bottom) Bright lights: Hoffman and Redford portray reporters in a newsroom cast as a beacon of truth (top); Woodward and Bernstein (bottom) reunite in Washington after Deep Throat's identity was revealed

So who gave the fictional “Deep Throat” his most quoted line? It was screenwriter William Goldman. 

“It's just a thing that he would have said, and he says it several times, ‘Just follow the money' and it caught on,” says William Goldman.

And what did it take for the young Bob Woodward to descend into that garage in the dark of night? Robert Redford thought about that as he prepared to play Woodward.

"Bob was a genuine gentleman and a man that was very concerned about well-being and dignity and so forth. But underneath that was another person that was relentless, tenacious, almost savage in his pursuit of getting a story, particularly getting the truth," says Redford.

The movie imprinted “Deep Throat” in the imagination of millions, millions who wondered — who was this guy?

Almost from the beginning, some people suspected Mark Felt. It was a national whodunit. Maybe it was Al Haig, Nixon's chief of staff in the final days. Maybe it was former Nixon speechwriter Pat Buchanan. Maybe it was Diane Sawyer, who worked at the White House in those days.

Woodward had told only a few people the real identity of his source. Woodward didn't tell his boss, Ben Bradlee, until after Nixon resigned. But Carl Bernstein knew almost from the beginning.

Bernstein never told his then-wife, author and filmmaker Nora Ephron. But Ephron, a former reporter, was her own best detective.

"The first is that Woodward always referred to 'Deep Throat' before he was christened 'Deep Throat' as 'my friend.' And the initials of “my friend” — M.F. —are the initials of Mark Felt," says Ephron. "And that, to me, was a dead giveaway."

Woodward sheepishly admits he even put those initials “M.F.” in some of his notes. “Not very good tradecraft on my part,” he now says.

Guessing the identity of “Deep Throat” may have been a parlor game to some, but keeping it secret was no game to Mark Felt. 

That secret almost spilled out in 1976, when Felt landed in front of a federal grand jury. 

“[Felt] said, ‘I had so much business at the White House, some people thought I was ‘Deep Throat,'” recalls Stanley Pottinger, the prosecutor who questioned Felt.

According to Pottinger, one of the grand jurors then raised his hand, turned to Felt, and asked, "Were you?"

"And, at that point, Felt flushed bright red," says Pottinger. Then Felt, under oath, answered “no.”  Pottinger immediately knew that something was wrong. Pottinger says he approached Felt and spoke in a whisper the grand jurors could not hear.

To Felt, Pottinger says, "'Mr. Felt, I have to remind you that you're still under oath, but I don't think that question is relevant to these proceedings. So if you'd like I'll be happy to withdraw the question and your answer. It's your decision." 

Felt replies, “Withdraw the question,” still flushed.

"Now if demeanor ever speaks as loudly as words, he had acknowledged that he was ‘Deep Throat,'" says Pottinger.

Remarkably, Stanley Pottinger kept the secret. All this was only revealed in Woodward's new book.

And what of the secret man, the real “Deep Throat”? In 1980, he went on trial for authorizing FBI burglaries. And, ironically, the key witness for his defense was former President Richard Nixon.

Brokaw: You can't make this stuff up, Bob.

Woodward: That's exactly right. And at one point, I call Felt and he points out that The Post has written an editorial saying he should go to jail. Felt, with full justice says, “I'm getting more help from Richard Nixon than The Washington Post.”

Brokaw: What did you think when you read that?

Woodward: The word that comes to mind is "ghoulish."

Mark Felt was convicted of authorizing those FBI black bag jobs — a felony. That brought some satisfaction to White House aides who had been fingered by Felt.

“There is a degree of irony when you look at the fact that Mark Felt was distressed by Nixon's so-called abuses of power,” says John Dean.

Felt went on to publish his own life story, “The FBI Pyramid.” Almost no one read it. But knowing what we know now, it does provide a window into his mind.

On the dustcover, Felt allowed them to print, “Mark Felt, who was rumored to be famous informer, 'Deep Throat.'”

Brokaw: He'd raise it himself and then deny it. In this book, he says flat out three different times, “I was not the source of information for Woodward and Bernstein. I did not leak information.”

Woodward: Right. And he never leaked to Woodward and Bernstein, because Carl never met him. And, so, you know, maybe there's some twist in his mind of, “Well, I never leaked to both of them.” I don't know. But the denial is very powerful.

Which is what made this year's revelations all the more unexpected.

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