Nixon's Turning Point

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Forty years ago today, it became much more difficult for Richard Nixon's defenders to argue against the barrage of Watergate–related charges he faced.

In my opinion, it was the point of no return for Nixon.

Through most of 1973, the Watergate story progressively ensnared Nixon, but, in those days, the talk was not so much about which illegal acts he might have committed but rather how and whether his presidency would be affected. I don't recall anyone suggesting, even in jest, that Nixon might not serve his full term.

That changed on this day in 1973.

Until this day, it had been relatively easy for Nixon to maintain plausible deniability, even after the existence of his taping system was revealed in the Senate Watergate hearings. It had been largely his word against former White House counsel John Dean's.

Naturally, those who were investigating the case wanted to have access to the tapes. After all, they could verify who was telling the truth and who wasn't. But Nixon refused, insisting the tapes were protected under the principle of executive privilege and because subjects involving national security were discussed in the conversations — and his defenders supported him as long as they could.

One of Nixon's solutions to the standoff over the tapes was to offer transcripts of the conversations to investigators. He would explore that option in greater public detail in the spring of 1974, but the job of transcribing subpoenaed tapes for that purpose began in 1973 shortly after the recording system's existence had been revealed. Transcribing the tapes was a task to which White House secretaries were assigned, including Nixon's longtime personal secretary, Rose Mary Woods.

It was while transcribing one of the tapes in late September 1973 that Woods claimed to have accidentally erased a portion of it while answering a phone call. Her original estimate was that roughly five minutes of a June 20, 1972, conversation had been erased.

Woods later amended her statement, saying that she might have accidentally erased as much as six minutes of the tape, but she strongly denied being responsible for the rest of the erasure.

H.R. Haldeman's notes (consisting of two legal pads of paper) suggested that the conversation, which was between Nixon and Haldeman, was at least in part about Watergate.

Nixon's lawyers had been told of the erasure before they sat down on Nov. 14, 1973, to listen to the tape, and they expected to find an erasure. But it went on longer than five minutes — many minutes longer, not seconds. Eventually, it was determined that 18 minutes and 15 seconds of the conversation had been erased — and the gap appeared to be the result of not one but several erasures. This could be determined by changes in pitch.

The inescapable conclusion was that the gap was not accidental.

This had been suggested earlier in the month by "Deep Throat," Bob Woodward's secret source in the early days of the investigation. Deep Throat told Woodward there were "gaps" in some of the tapes, implying they were the result of deliberate erasures.

At the time, there was some doubt among Nixon's lawyers whether the conversation was even covered in the subpoena. But, by the time they reported their findings to Al Haig, the White House chief of staff, the lawyers had determined that the conversation was, in fact, included in the subpoena.

The lawyers discussed their options and finally decided that, if they didn't tell the judge what they knew and the special prosecutor found out about it some other way, they could be suspected of destroying evidence.

Thus it was that, on this day in 1973, Nixon's lawyers informed the judge in the Watergate trials, John Sirica, of their discovery, which, in turn, was made public.

Sirica appointed an advisory panel of experts (nominated by Nixon's lawyers and special Watergate prosecutor Leon Jaworski) to examine the tapes. An "index and analysis" of the existing tapes was given to him five days later. The clamor for the tapes grew louder, not softer.

Nixon's defense was starting to fall apart — irretrievably.

The Death of Deep Throat

For three decades, he was a man of mystery, known only as "Deep Throat," the man who blew the whistle on the Nixon White House.

The world speculated endlessly about his identity until he made the decision, with input from his family, to reveal it in 2005.

Three and a half years later, Mark Felt died Thursday at the age of 95, apparently of congestive heart failure.

When Felt broke his silence, "Vanity Fair" broke the news to the world in an article headlined "I'm the Guy They Called Deep Throat."

Felt's family insisted on calling him an "American hero" for his contributions to the Watergate investigation as "Deep Throat" while associate director of the FBI, and he was praised by others as well. Among his motives, reportedly, was the belief that the revelation would be lucrative, helping to pay for his grandchildren's education.

Still others were not nearly as charitable, alleging less than altruistic reasons for blowing the whistle. They claimed that Felt — a known admirer of and loyalist to J. Edgar Hoover — had personal motives for his actions — including resentment for being passed over when Hoover's replacement was chosen after he died in 1972.

"[I]t is true I would like to have been appointed FBI director," Felt said, but he insisted that "I never leaked information to Woodward and Bernstein or anyone else!"

I don't know what the truth is, whether Felt was motivated by patriotic or personal reasons. Does it matter? As an amateur observer of human psychology, I'm kind of inclined to apply my favorite Forrest Gumpism to it: "I don't know if we each have a destiny, or if we're all just floating around accidental-like on a breeze, but I think maybe it's both. Maybe both is happening at the same time."

Richard Nixon, who died in 1994, believed Felt was "Deep Throat," perhaps in part because, as Nixon's own tape recordings revealed, Bob Haldeman, his chief of staff, told him that Felt "knows everything that's to be known in the FBI." Nixon never revealed Felt's identity, perhaps because he knew he would have been hurt more by the revelation than Felt.

"If we move on him, he'll go out and unload everything," Haldeman told Nixon.

In hindsight, it's hard to imagine Nixon being hurt more than he was. He resigned in August 1974.

The Washington Post's managing editor, Howard Simons, was the one who made the early decisions in 1972 for the paper to follow the story and to assign Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to cover it, according to Barry Sussman, a former Post editor and author of "The Great Coverup: Nixon and the Watergate Scandal."

And Simons was the one who dubbed Felt "Deep Throat" — which was a bit of word play, using the name of a popular pornographic movie of the day and the fact that the celebrated source in the story was on what is known in the newspaper business as "deep background."

I don't know if Simons knew Felt's true identity. Woodward and Bernstein always claimed that only three people on the newspaper knew who "Deep Throat" was — the reporters and editor Ben Bradlee — and that they had made an agreement with the source not to reveal his identity until after his death — or unless he voluntarily chose to reveal himself.

Interestingly, it has been suggested that Felt may have believed he could plausibly deny revealing information to "Woodward and Bernstein" because he never met Bernstein.

(Bernstein confirmed, in an interview with CNN, that he did not meet Felt until this year.)

It is my understanding that, with the possible exception of some of the earliest articles, Woodward and Bernstein shared the byline credit on the Watergate-related stories — which would have led to the natural (although erroneous) assumption that any information source that one reporter knew, the other also knew.

It appears likely to me that only Felt's name was known to Bradlee as well — unless the esteemed editor accompanied Woodward on one of his late-night parking garage rendezvous with Felt.

I was a teenager in the Watergate years, and I've read many books and articles about Watergate, but I've never seen descriptions in any of the accounts of the meetings between Woodward and Felt of any additional people being present.

If Felt wasn't known to many people at the time, it seems certain that his name will be known to future generations of history students.

And his portrayal, by Hal Holbrook, as the shadowy source in the Dustin Hoffman-Robert Redford film "All the President's Men," may not be the only time his character is depicted on screen. After Felt's true identity was revealed in 2005, Universal Pictures and Tom Hanks' production company bought the movie rights.

To my knowledge, such a movie has not been started yet, but Felt's death may renew any flagging interest in the project.

And Woodward's rapidly written 2005 book about his relationship with Felt, "The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate's Deep Throat," may see an uptick in sales following Felt's death.