The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate's Deep Throat [Paperback]

To say that The Secret Man is laconic is like saying Phoenix is somewhat warm. For one of the biggest secrets of our times, Woodward had surprisingly little to say. The book is short! Short on information. Short on revelations. Short on words (about 40,000 I`d guess). Short on interest. Short, Short, Short. That`s not to say the book is totally without merit. Woodward continues to write in his `aw shucks`, `down home' style of writing and he does manage to give Deep Throat a face. A face of a kindly old befuddled gentleman now and the proud, confident, mildly ruthless, extremely secretive informer of the seventies.

Much to the authors chagrin he was unable to ascertain Felt`s true motive`s behind his secretive revelations before his dementia and we are subjected to his rehashing of all that has been said by his contemporaries in the past. However, we do get to see a side of Woodard that I had never suspected. That of a pushy, prodding, sometimes demanding but not ungrateful recipient of Felt's largess. As Woodward recites the events, it seems that Felt, whatever his motives, be it personal, or resentment of the Nixon team for compromising his beloved FBI, was recalcitrant and events would not have moved forward, without Woodward's persistence. This ultimately led to a split of these unlikely friends where Felt wouldn`t take Woodward`s calls and they did not talk for a period of some twenty years.

My feeling is that although Woodward had his book ready to go in draft form, he was taken by surprise by the sudden surprise announcement from Felt's family and was rushed to come up with the finished manuscript. As short as the book is, it seems it was stretched by repeating things in the last third of the book. I found this repetition annoying. In summary I found the book mildly amusing and I`m glad I read it, if for nothing else, to get a feeling for the man they called Deep Throat. Was he a hero or a traitor? My sense is that Nixon and his gang were out of control and Ship of State was dangerously listing and Felt with some help from Woodward and Bernstein were to only ones bailing the water at first. Yeah he was a hero. Wish we had some of his ilk today. He wasn't obsequious. Nor was he a sycophant. He would have never said `Mr. President, it's a slam dunk.'

I have mixed feelings about the book. I feel like the book was rushed for obvious reasons. The story, what there is of if is compelling but seems incomplete. I give it a rating of 3.2 Stars.

This is a surprisingly good book. Woodward is honest and reflective about whether he met the high standards Deep Throat set for him, and that he set for himself. And he grapples with whether Deep Throat was a hero or villain or a little of both -- and concludes, convincingly, that Deep Throat was more hero than villain.

Deep Throat's identity sheds entirely new light on the Watergate scandal. That he was the number 2 man in the FBI whose motive was to protect the agency from Nixon's politicization and subversion of law enforcement goes a long way in explaining Nixon's downfall. Yet, Woodward does not shy away from the sordid doings of Hoover and others, including Deep Throat himself. There is a curious resonance between the FBI and the White House plumbers. Is Deep Throat protecting some idealized view of his agency or just his beloved turf?

Woodward is reflective and self-critical. This is the best book he has written and is quite moving.

Secret Man is an interesting but ultimately unsatisfying review of Bob Woodward's dealings with Mark Felt, the "Deep Throat" of All the President's Men (ATPM) fame. While Woodward does a reasonable job of filling in many of the remaining blanks, it would have been better to release the new material as an additional 100 pages or so in a revised edition of ATPM. Part of this comes from the feeling that most of the truly gripping material here has already been released, part comes from admitted hasty editing, but the biggest disappointment is that what should be the heart of this story - the relationship between Woodward and Felt - isn't compelling as it becomes sadly clear Woodward didn't know Felt all that well. Instead, what Woodward ends up producing is a fairly unflattering autobiographical sketch of himself before and during Watergate. Still, it's worth a read both for political junkies and as the standalone historical footnote it is, but could and should have been a lot more after all these years. One star off for the rehash, and one half each for the results of essentially working without an editor and the poor value proposition here leave this at three stars.

Any retelling of Watergate with Woodward, Bernstein, and Deep Throat is going to have problems living up to the monumental thriller that was ATPM. Love them or hate them for their role in bringing down Nixon and what some view as their unintentional fathering of today's "gotcha" journalism, the movie version of ATPM vaulted all three men to superstardom. In fairness, there's an additional hurdle of trying to make the facts live up to the incredible scenes between Hal Holbrook and Robert Redford. Not an easy task for even one of the principals.

The good news is that this book confirms that most of the scenes in ATPM were dead-on factual. The bad is that most of the truly meaty parts of the story - the counterespionage moves Felt forced on Woodward to meet him, the warning to both that their lives may be in danger - have already been told in spectacular drama in ATPM word for word. Woodward is a good enough writer to recognize this, and instead tries to explore the relationship between himself and Felt. Unfortunately, most the remaining meat here too has also been released; about two-thirds of the most interesting new details ended up under Woodward's byline in the Washington Post a couple of days after confirmation of the Vanity Fair story. (You know there's something inherently wrong when the most salacious newly published revelations here - the shock both writers felt when they finally realized Nixon might be impeached - come from the Bernstein endnote.) It's interesting stuff for sure especially if you didn't catch the Post articles, but not gripping by any means.

Why? Sadly, the underlying theme is Woodward coming off as an ambitious young reporter who is given a career-making gift by Felt yet doesn't bother reciprocating. It's less that Woodward didn't or couldn't help out Felt when he was in his own legal mess in the late 1970s; its more that Woodward didn't even attempt to contact Felt more than as he puts it `halfhearted(ly)' until almost 2000, when Felt's memory was clearly gone. (At least Woodward has the self-honesty to admit the portrait he paints of himself is unflattering and that he comes across as pushy and secretive, which is better than the portrait of Felt's family given the conversation with Felt shows he's nowhere near full capacity nowadays. Not that Felt lacked for ambition either; how he waited years for a half hour meeting with Hoover and parlayed that into working himself into Hoover's inner circle is one of the few great insights on him gleaned here.) A key weakness is that even if Felt wasn't exactly forthcoming with much beyond the bare facts, it still feels as if Woodward really didn't care about trying to figure him out once he got relevant information from him. As a result, Woodward's exploration of Felt's actions comes off as less of a insightful first hand witness than a rushed historian as he uses Felt's novel more than personal stories to explain his actions. Still, at least Woodward's speculation as to Felt's motivation makes sense - following the lead of his boss and hero Hoover to turn down Nixon administration attempts to influence the ITT bribery investigation, the more the Nixon younglings pushed after Hoover's death to control the FBI, the more angry Felt got. Combine that with being passed over twice for the top FBI job (or as Felt called the second snub, "Blue Monday"), its clear Felt had a beef to pick with his bosses on a couple of levels.

It's up to the reader to decide whether this makes Felt a hero, and journalism school students will likely argue whether or not Woodward's almost mythical devotion to protecting his source's anonymity can offset the almost puzzling indifference he displays towards towards Felt in other things. What doesn't require any debate is that the long-secret and dormant manuscript needed more than the admitted 10 day rush edit, as making Woodward add to the too-brief discussion about protecting Felt for 30 years and more analysis of the various Deep Throat 'identifications' would have helped significantly, and that we would have all been better served if Woodward and Felt had long ago collaborated on a tell-all novel instead of the incomplete piece we have here. Hopefully Felt's notes will produce something more compelling from his point of view, and in the meantime this serves as an interesting but not critical footnote to the Watergate saga. Three stars.