Deep Throat and the role of sources

Edward Jay Epstein explores some interesting aspects to the Deep Throat story that most people seem not to have considered (here and here). He argues quite convincingly that by hiding a source's identity a reporter can effectively render an inaccurate telling of a story by removing the crucial details of who makes the disclosures and their reasons for doing so.

In this case, the source (or sources since it seems some of the revelations attributed to Deep Throat could not have come from Felt) was involved in illegal activities on behalf of the FBI and thus had a vested interest in deflecting attention away from the FBI.

Quotes;

Felt carefully controlled the information he (as well as possibly others in the FBI) fed to journalists. For instance, he did not tell Woodward in the summer of 1972 about the prior break-ins and extensive electronic eavesdropping that the ex-FBI officer Baldwin had revealed to the FBI. Instead, as the prosecutors determined, he supplied Woodward with FBI "302" reports that detailed activities about one Donald H. Segretti. Segretti, a young Republican lawyer, had been playing "dirty tricks" on various Democrats in the primaries-- such as sending two hundred copies of a defamatory letter to Democrats-- but had nothing to do with illegal break-ins or Watergate. Felt, however, told Woodward that these dirty tricks were an integral part of Watergate, and that there were fifty other Segretti-type agents, all receiving information from Watergate-type bugging operations. Felt’s "50 other agents" never materialized anywhere except in a Woodward and Bernstein story. This detour-- which occupied almost one-third of Woodward and Bernstein's reporting-- led to a dead end.

and,

According to Woodward's own book agent, David Obst: "In the original draft of their book, Deep Throat was not mentioned. In the second draft he suddenly appeared and it was a better book for the addition, a much more exciting one." What Woodward perhaps did not antipate is that his character would take on a life of his own-- and 30 years later be adopted by the handlers of Mr. Felt.

As they say, read the whole thing.

Update: The reporter who broke the story of the Downing Street Memos has admitted to destroying the originals in order to protect his sorce (via Captain's Quarter's). Which of course raises the sorts of issues explored by Epstein eg, Concealing such information from the public amounts to a deliberate disguising of the event itself, since such a process hides all the interests that selected, shaped and possibly distorted the disclosures".

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