Deep Throat

Yeah, I loved Linda Lovelace too. As for this whole Mark Felt thing, I have to agree with Hank Stuever that the knowledge takes away much of the thrill of the anonymous source. Now Deep Throat is just another tired old man. But maybe that's just me and Stuever. There were certainly enough previous attempts to discover Deep Throat's identity, that maybe knowledge doesn't take any of the sheen off. Maybe future University of Illinois students will stick to cheering for their basketball team, rather than embarrass themselves on the internet with their poor investigative skills.

In some ways the most intriguing part of this revelation is how it actually went down. Why would Felt, after having Woodward and Bernstein keep his identity secret for 30 years, not let them reveal his identity to the public? Farhi touches on this in his essay in the WaPo:

Vanity Fair's story hinted at but did not answer a key journalistic question: Was Felt, who is 91 and in ill health from a stroke, of sound enough mind to have confirmed his identity to O'Connor[the Felt family's lawyer and driving force behind the Vanity Fair article], or to have told Woodward that their agreement had ended?

The Vanity Fair story muddies the issue somewhat. O'Connor notes in the story that Felt told him, "I'm the guy they called Deep Throat," but the context is lacking. For one thing, O'Connor played a dual role: He was providing the Felt family with legal advice while also writing a magazine story, which meant that Felt's revelation may have been information provided under attorney-client privilege and therefore not subject to unilateral disclosure.

What's more, as O'Connor makes clear in his story, the Felt family was seeking to profit from Felt's secret identity and therefore had an incentive to pressure a clearly conflicted Felt into going public.

Seems kind of questionable to me, but who am I? Just some internet commentator. Perhaps I need a sleazy family lawyer and greedy children to make all of my decisions for me.