On the Scandal’s Fiftieth Anniversary, Thoughts from “Deep Throat’s” Attorney
Recently Kevin Price, Host of the nationally syndicated Price of Business Show, interviewed John D. O’Connor.
Watergate was the most impactful political scandal in American history, if not world history. It is universally recognized also as being journalistically impelled, and at that, by but one outlet, the Washington Post. The paper’s reporting was aided immeasurably by Bob Woodward’s mysterious, anonymous source Deep Throat, years later revealed as Mark Felt, the FBI’s number two official and head of the Watergate investigation. So how do we analyze this journalism and the collaboration between these two “reporters”, the Post’s Woodward and the FBI’s Felt? While their work together resulted in some excellent journalism, pointing toward the White House of President Richard Nixon. But when Deep Throat uncovered facts pointing the scandal in a new direction, the Post and Woodward ignored them altogether. The result was an overall narrative that by concealment of key facts was in its essence false. This type of journalism, aimed as it is at political impact, not nonpartisan truth-telling, has profoundly negative consequences for modern society. Watergate, then, at its core is a tale of two reporters.