Deeper Understanding

Of course Deep Throat was a bureaucrat. How could we have expected anything else?

Wasn't it kind of fun watching the air go out of Washington's balloon last month, when everybody found out that Deep Throat was a federal bureaucrat?

You could almost hear the sighs and scratching of heads around town. After all, the parlor game had centered on such luminaries as Pat Buchanan, David Gergen, Diane Sawyer and even former President George H.W. Bush. The notion that the people who really know where the bodies are buried, and who are in the best position to identify systemic problems in the government apparatus, are those who have devoted their careers to federal service-well, there's just nothing exciting about that, is there?

Not to those who believe that the people who know everything about the government are found in what James Mann-who was a Washington Post reporter at the time Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein doggedly pursued the Watergate story-calls "Talk Show World." In a piece in the Post's Outlook section after Mark Felt's family outed him as the legendary leaker, Mann wrote, "Most Americans mistakenly presume their government is run by Talk Show World-even though, in reality, the denizens of this universe may have no power at all and may have no more than a limited connection to the inner workings of government." Mann contrasted Talk Show World with "Hidden World," the faceless but permanent government made up of people with real and lasting authority and knowledge.

Mann knows what he's talking about. After all, he was among the first to sense the real story behind the Post's Watergate coverage. In a 1992 piece in Government Executive's sister publication, The Atlantic, Mann all but fingered Deep Throat, writing, "He could well have been Mark Felt." It turns out the reasons Felt was motivated to become the ultimate leaker were pure Hidden World. He and others were concerned that the Nixon White House was actively seeking to undermine the independence of the FBI in the aftermath of Herbert Hoover's death in 1972-and worse, obstructing the Watergate investigation.

Their concern wasn't so much that Nixon's efforts to launch covert investigations of American citizens subverted our constitutional democracy, but that such "black-bag jobs" should be run out of the FBI, not the White House. After all, Felt himself was convicted of approving illegal break-ins at the homes of people associated with the militant left-wing group the Weathermen. (He was pardoned by President Reagan in 1980, who, it's worth noting, said Felt's actions were justified because he had acted to address the threat of terrorism to the United States.)

What's more, Felt wasn't entirely motivated by concerns about the effects of Nixon's actions on his agency. He also was deeply disgruntled about being passed over for the top job at the FBI when Hoover died. As Mann points out, Felt wrote in his memoir, The FBI Pyramid From the Inside (Putnam, 1979), that he never considered the possibility that Nixon would look outside the FBI for a new chief. "There were many trained executives in the FBI who could have effectively handled the job of director," Felt wrote. "My own record was good, and I allowed myself to think I had an excellent chance."

So on two counts, Felt's motives weren't pure. That puts him in the company of a very large number of other federal whistleblowers.

The bigger mystery is: Why did it take so long for his secret to get out? Partly because everybody was looking for the hero (or culprit, depending on your point of view) in Talk Show World. But more important, it was simply because Felt denied being Deep Throat so many times. Why? Because he had broken one of Hidden World's most important (if oft-violated) codes: Thou shalt not leak. "It would be contrary to my responsibility as a loyal employee of the FBI to leak information," Felt told Timothy Noah, a columnist at the online magazine Slate, in 1999.

So there you have it: In the popular imagination, Deep Throat was the ultimate whistleblower. But even in his own mind, apparently, he was just another federal employee who had a score to settle-and who was embarrassed by the fact that he had used the media to do it.