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Len Garment Kills the Messenger

Timothy NoahPosted Friday, July 28, 2000, at 8:35 PM ET

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein flat-out deny that Deep Throat, the never-identified Watergate Über-source made famous by All the President's Men, was Republican strategist John Sears. So does Sears. The Sears denial is neither here nor there; it's easy to imagine Deep Throat still not wanting his identity revealed. Woodward and Bernstein's denials, on the other hand, carry much weight. Remember, they don't have to comment at all. The Woodstein denial is profoundly bad news for former Nixon White House counsel Leonard Garment, because Garment has just published a book, titled In Search of Deep Throat, that strenuously argues Sears was Deep Throat.

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Garment has been working overtime to spin his way out of this. Here is what he told NBC's Dateline (in a segment that aired July 26, two days after David Carr broke the Woodward-denial story in Inside.com; Bernstein chimed in two days later on CNBC's Rivera Live): "That's unusual that--that--that he would do that, because they have taken, on or off, they have taken the pledge that they would not get into the business of saying somebody is or isn't." Garment also told Dateline that if it isn't Sears, Deep Throat probably never existed. In a Web chat on ABCNews.com the next day, Garment's position hardened further:

The fact that both would come steaming out of their self-imposed silence to issue denials reinforces my belief that it's John Sears. It's simply a case of the source controlling the journalists, for reasons of mutual interest.

But wait a minute. Garment's book points out that Woodward has ruled out Deep Throat candidates in the past--Woodward said it wasn't former chief of staff Al Haig, a recurring suspect, when Haig ran for president in the 1980s, and Woodward said it wasn't former acting FBI director L. Patrick Gray, another recurring suspect, when Gray was fingered by CBS News in the 1990s. Garment's suggestion on ABCNews.com that Woodward and Bernstein are now lying to protect Sears--in addition to having no supporting evidence--contradicts the weight given to Woodward's denials about Haig and Gray in In Search of Deep Throat. ("Woodward waved me off Gray," Garment writes on Page 170, and that's the last we hear of him. Why believe Woodward then, but not believe Woodward now?) Garment's suggestion that Woodward and Bernstein invented Deep Throat is also at odds with the praise Garment's book lavishes on Woodstein for sourcing their Watergate stories so meticulously. The new accusation amounts to saying that Woodward and Bernstein committed literary fraud in All the President's Men (and, prior to its publication, committed journalistic fraud on their Watergate editors at the Post, who were told of Deep Throat's existence; since former Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee claims to know Deep Throat's identity, Bradlee would have to be in on the deception, too). This struck Chatterbox as a pretty sleazy way to fast-talk your way out of a tight corner--book tour or no book tour.

Chatterbox decided to take it up with Garment himself. "I didn't talk with Woodward while I was doing this book," Garment told Chatterbox. Garment said the "Woodward waved me off Gray" passage alludes to a conversation he had while writing his previous book, a memoir titled Crazy Rhythm. In eliminating Gray from consideration, Woodward's waving-off (and his outright public denial that it was Gray) mattered much less, Garment said, than his close examination later on of the evidence. Echoing arguments in his book, Garment further told Chatterbox that he's never taken Haig very seriously as a Deep Throat candidate.

"It's either John Sears or it's either nobody or it's composite," Garment said. Gee, Chatterbox replied, isn't that a pretty harsh accusation to hurl at Woodward, Bernstein and Bradlee? You write a book full of praise for Woodstein; then Woodstein say your central thesis is incorrect; and then you accuse them of conducting a gigantic hoax. "Juno and the Paycock, Sean O'Casey," Garment answered cheerfully. "'Conditions alter circumstances.'" By which, Chatterbox gathers, Garment meant: Truth and reputations bow to my interests.

It's too bad that Garment is behaving so badly, because, apart from the Sears business, In Search of Deep Throat is quite a good book. Garment writes with real flair and insight about life inside the Nixon White House. Among his more original theories is that the poisonous environment surrounding Watergate resulted in part from Nixon's plan to assert control over cabinet agencies via the establishment of four "Super Secretaries" to preside over clusters of cabinet departments--one for Natural Resources, one for Human Resources, one for Community Development, and one for Economic Affairs. Although this plan affected only those agencies involved in making domestic policy, the "Super Secretaries" set a precedent bound to worry the entire federal bureaucracy. Garment doesn't say so, but the "Super Secretaries" plan (which never came to fruition) would surely have worried Mark Felt, the FBI associate director, who was fingered as Deep Throat by James Mann in an Atlantic Monthly article that remains the most persuasive thing Chatterbox has ever read on this subject. We know that Felt was already fretting that the White House was trying to gain control of the FBI in the aftermath of J. Edgar Hoover's death, which occurred one month before the Watergate break-in. (Chatterbox should note here that Felt last year denied to this column that he was Deep Throat.) Garment's book, though, doesn't buy the Felt theory, because in All the President's Men Deep Throat "simply did not sound to me like a career FBI man." Deep Throat, Garment argues, had the kind of intimate knowledge of White House operations that required more "personal experience" of the participants.

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COMMENTS

Response from Leonard Garment:

After Timothy Noah interviewed me for "Chatterbox" about my book, In Search of Deep Throat, I was interested to see what he would say about it.

I now see that Mr Noah is a very smart man but perhaps not a very honest one. For a quarter-century, Woodward and Bernstein have kept silent about Deep Throat, except for two "mercy clearings" (of Al Haig and Fred Fielding, both of whom had pleaded to be let off the hook for exigent career reasons) and one confirmation of what was made explicit in All the President's Men itself (that Pat Gray was not Deep Throat). Then, within a day of my book's publication, Woodward and Bernstein not only abandoned their "no comment" policy but took repeated opportunities to deny, together with John Sears, that Sears was Deep Throat. The effort was co-ordinated to the extent of the two reporters' making the same not-very-persuasive argument in almost the same words.

Their behavior had changed. My attitude changed. "Conditions alter circumstances," I said to Timothy Noah. But what I really meant, Timothy Noah tells his "Chatterbox" readers, was that "truth and reputations bow to my interests." Well, no reasonable listener could have thought that was what I meant. It turns out that Timothy Noah, who in "Chatterbox" accused me of "spinning," is doing some spinning of his own. The same attitude pervades his piecemeal description of an argument I made with considerable care in Throat. And all this is about a book that Timothy Noah says is "quite a good book," written "with real flair and insight." I can't wait to see what he's like when he really gets cranky.

On a serious note, as this controversy develops it becomes clearer that the issue is no longer one of journalistic integrity or protecting a source. Enough time has passed; the issue has become one of history. Watergate was a critical event in the nation's history, and Deep Throat is a major key to understanding Watergate. The longer Woodward and Bernstein keep the secret from us, the longer they reserve to themselves the power to write our history. That was what I tried to tell Timothy Noah and what I hope will move people to read my book.

--Leonard Garment

(To reply, click here.)

[Mr Garment has another post in The Fray here, which he wrote before he had the chance to see the Chatterbox article, dealing more with the book's theory.]

(7/30)

Chatterbox replies:

The only significant way Woodward and Bernstein changed was to say that Garment's identification of John Sears as Deep Throat--which Garment neglected to run by them before publication--was incorrect. I still don't see why Woodstein would bother commenting at all if Garment had the right suspect. Garment's response to this setback is to call Woodstein a pair of liars and to call me dishonest for believing them and not him. I understand that this name-calling technique is accepted practice among lawyers, but in his new role as journalist, or historian, or whatever you want to call him, Garment ought to focus less on damage control and more on finding out the truth. His stance is at odds with his book, which, despite its screwy conclusion, is engaging and fair-minded.

I, too, would like to see Woodward or Bernstein reveal Deep Throat's identity, but quite obviously they can't do so without Deep Throat's permission. Garment would do better to direct his plea to Deep Throat himself--whoever he or she is. The answer probably won't tell us anything we don't already know about Watergate, but it would be fun to know.

--Tim Noah

(To reply, click here.)

Reader Response from The Fray:

Kudos to Len Garment for helping keep this subject alive. Not having read the book, I shouldn't comment about the John Sears theory. But it does seem odd that the reporters are still withholding the name of their source, if he or she exists (and also odd that the source cares so much at this late date). One reason the people on both sides of that equation are not forthcoming (unfortunately, one can only speculate) may be that learning the name gives us the opportunity to speculate about the leaker's motives. I'm sure that sometimes leakers, like spies, act purely out of conscience, but on many other occasions they do so to advance themselves or tear down others. Taking Noah's summary of one of Garment's theories as an example, it would've been much less exciting if Hal Holbrooke had said to Robert Redford in the parking structure during the film of All the President's Men, "See, Nixon and his new budget director, Roy Ash, want to make the government more efficient, and a lot of hardworking deputy assistant undersecretaries like me are going to be out of work." Or if the leaker was affiliated with those at the Pentagon who were then spying on the White House, the fictional Deep Throat might have purred, "My general friends and I think Nixon and Kissinger are selling us out by talking peace with Moscow, Beijing, and Hanoi." That would've been a different movie, too.

There is much America has yet to understand about Watergate, including that its alpha and omega were part and parcel of America's argument with itself about the war President Nixon inherited and prosecuted with courage and skill. And yet since Colodny and Getlin's, and Kutler's, early in the 90s, there have been few if any major books on Watergate. Journalists and academics seem content with the story as it's currently understood. Perhaps one reason is the same one Christopher Hitchens (in his New York Times review of Joe Eszterhas's novel) identifies as the reason Eszterhas thinks the former "flower children" fell for Clinton: Nixon's "heirs and assigns could not ever possibly be allowed to be right about anything."

Which is why we're lucky to have Len Garment stirring the pot!

John Taylor
(Executive Director, the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace Foundation)

(To reply, click here.)

(7/31)

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