Deep Throat (Watergate)

:This article is about the source of information for Watergate; for other uses of the term, see Deep Throat.

Other suspected candidates

Fred Fielding

Another leading candidate was generally considered to be Fred F. Fielding. In April 2003 Fielding was presented as a potential candidate as a result of a detailed review of source material by William Gaines and his journalism students, as part of a class at the University of Illinois journalism school. http://deepthroatuncovered.com/ http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues03/dec03/presence.html Fielding was the assistant to John Dean and as such had access to the files relating to the affair. Gaines felt that statements by Woodward "ruled out" Deep Throat being in the FBI and that Deep Throat often had information before the FBI did. H.R. Haldeman suspected Fielding as being Deep Throat.

Related Topics:
Fred F. Fielding - April 2003 - William Gaines - University of Illinois

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Dean had been one of the most dedicated hunters of Deep Throat. Both he and Leonard Garment dismissed Fielding as a possibility, reporting that he had been cleared by Woodward in 1980 when Fielding was applying for an important position in the Ronald Reagan administration. However this assertion, which comes from Fielding, has not been corroborated.

Related Topics:
Leonard Garment - 1980 - Ronald Reagan

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One reason that many experts believed that Deep Throat was Fielding and not Felt was due to Woodward's apparent denial in an interview that Deep Throat worked in the intelligence community:

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: LUKAS: Do you resent the implication by some critics that your sources on Watergate?among them the fabled Deep Throat?may have been people in the intelligence community?

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: WOODWARD: I resent it because it's untrue. Quote from Playboy interview, 1979

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In retrospect, it appears that Woodward was only excluding the CIA with that statement, and not the FBI.

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Other credible candidates

Other suggested candidates included:

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• John Ehrlichman: Nixon advisor. Passed away prior to Dean's 2005 article which indicated Deep Throat was still alive.
• Ron Ziegler: press secretary. Passed away prior to Dean's 2005 article which indicated Deep Throat was still alive.
• William E. Colby: head of the CIA. Passed away prior to Dean's 2005 article which indicated Deep Throat was still alive.
• Charles W. Bates: FBI executive that Mann mentioned but considered less likely than Felt.
• William C. Sullivan: former head of the FBI intelligence operations, fired by J. Edgar Hoover in 1971.
• L. Patrick Gray: FBI director, who lived only four blocks away from Woodward, fingered by a CBS documentary.
• Robert Kunkel: FBI Washington Bureau Chief that Mann mentioned but considered less likely than Felt as he moved to St. Louis partway through the investigation.
• Cord Meyer: CIA agent fingered in Mark Riebling's Wedgie: The Secret War Between the FBI and the CIA. However, in an interview, Woodward stated that Deep Throat was not part of the intelligence community.
• Raymond Price: Nixon speechwriter.
• Stephen Bull: administrative assistant.
• Lowell Weicker: U.S. Senator from Connecticut, believed by Pat Buchanan to possibly be Deep Throat.
• Secret Service technicians: Richard Cohen argued it was whoever in the Secret Service maintained Nixon's secret taping devices.

Famous, but less credible, candidates

• William Rehnquist: Formerly the Chief Justice of the United States, had a position in the Department of Justice early in the Nixon administration, working for Attorney General John N. Mitchell. More than five months before the Watergate break-in he was appointed to the Supreme Court and it would have been almost impossible for him to have had access to much of the information Deep Throat is meant to have provided. In February 2005, Dean reported that Deep Throat was ailing, leading many to believe that Rehnquist was Deep Throat. However, Woodward later stated that the notion that Deep Throat was ailing was a misunderstanding.
• Henry Kissinger: Nixon's National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, was out of the country on some of the dates Woodward reported to have met with Deep Throat.
• George H. W. Bush: Was nominated in February 2005 by Adrian Havill — author of a 1993 biography of Woodward and Bernstein, Deep Truth (ISBN 1559721723) — following the unveiling of Woodward's notes at the University of Texas. Havill had argued in his biography that Deep Throat was a composite figure, but stated in a letter to Poynter Online that based on more recent events and research, he now believed Deep Throat was George H. W. Bush.
• Alexander Haig: Authors Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin speculated in their 1991 book Silent Coup: The Removal of a President that Haig may have been Deep Throat.
• Diane Sawyer: Was hired by White House press secretary Ron Ziegler to serve in the administration of President Richard Nixon.
• Ben Stein: A Nixon speechwriter and the son of Nixon economic advisor Herbert Stein; later an actor and political commentator.
• Gerald R. Ford: Nixon's successor.
• Pat Buchanan: Served as special assistant to the President, was nominated as a potential candidate by Dean in his June 2002 book Unmasking Deep Throat. Buchanan repeatedly denied the claim, stating in a Time magazine article on the 30th anniversary of the Watergate break-in that "The last time I cooperated with the Washington Post...was in 1952, when I was a paper boy delivering the damn thing in northwest Washington."