Deep Throat, the anonymous source who helped two reporters bring down a president, has been revealed. Yesterday the Washington Post confirmed that Mark Felt, a man who held the number two position at the FBI was the man who helped Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward pull together the threads of Watergate and follow that scandal all the way to the White House.
From the shadowy parking garages where many of the meetings took place and the whispery voice dramatized in the film “All the President’s Men,” Deep Throat became the most celebrated anonymous source in history.
Today, as the use of such information is once again being debated by journalists and politicians, we look back at the secret that changed the course of American history and we look at its effects today on politics and journalism. Watergate’s long-awaited season finale – Deep Throat unmasked.
Guests:
Daniel Schorr, NPR’s senior news analyst, Geneva Overholser, former ombudsman at the Washington Post and now chair of Public Affairs Reporting at the Missouri School of Journalism
Daniel Okrent, former ombudsman at the New York Times
Charles Colson, Special Counsel to the White House during the Nixon Administration who spent seven months in prison for his role in Watergate
and David Gergen, former Nixon aide now director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.