Our attention has been called to a substantive Albany Times-Union piece by reporter Brendan Lyons, in which retired FBI agent Paul Daly reveals that, in a sense, Deep Throat was a clandestine group of four baritones — not just W. Mark Felt, but also three of his deputies: Richard Long, chief of the FBI’s white-collar crimes section during Watergate; Robert G. Kunkel, agent-in-charge of the Washington field office, which led the Watergate investigation; and Charles Bates, who was assistant director of the FBI’s criminal investigative division.
The four saw themselves, the Times-Union notes, not as disgruntled mavericks, but as a clandestine group in a high-stakes fight to the death with a White House that was itself trying desperately to rein in the FBI’s Watergate investigation. The four met regularly to compare notes and to decide what new tidbits to feed out to the public — with Bob Woodward and the Washington Post selected as their weapon of choice — so as to illustrate just how deep the rot ran.
Looked at this way, the enterprise takes on a new light, one neither noble nor venal. What it was, was office politics at a very high level, employed by powerful bureaucrats intent upon preserving not just their ongoing investigation but also their agency’s very independence.
It was also a classic clash of Red versus Red — a right-wing White House coming off a landslide electoral victory, squaring off against what was still very much J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, even though Hoover had died months earlier.
It doesn’t get much more Shakespearian than that.
Kudos to Lyons and the Times-Union for a nuanced piece of reporting that goes well beyond just rehashing everyone’s favorite movie. And for finding a local source who puts a new perspective on one of the biggest national stories of the past half-century.
A final note: Harry Rosenfeld, editor-at-large and columnist for the Times-Union, was city editor of the Washington Post in the early 1970’s and was in charge of its day-to-day Watergate coverage.
–Steve Lovelady
Steve Lovelady was editor of CJR Daily.