In The Ends of Power, H.R. Haldeman (with Joseph DiMona)
offers an idea about the identity of the mysterious “Deep Throat,” the
Nixon Administration official who secretly leaked Watergate information
to reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Bob Woodward would
identify FBI official Mark Felt as Deep Throat, but Haldeman and DiMona
wrote The Ends of Power prior to this revelation.
Haldeman speculates that Deep Throat was Fred Fielding, an assistant
to White House Counsel John Dean. First of all, on the basis of what
Woodward has said, Haldeman notes that Deep Throat was in the Executive
Branch and had access to the Committee to Re-Elect the President, the
FBI, and the Justice Department when Watergate was going on. According
to Haldeman, this would only fit Dean or Dean’s associate.
Second, Haldeman believes that identifying Deep Throat as Fielding
would account for the erroneous information that Deep Throat leaked,
information that “every White House staffer knew was wrong”
(page 187). For example, Deep Throat said that Attorney General John
Mitchell investigated Watergate and that E. Howard Hunt (one of the
people involved in the break-in) was assigned to gather information, and
Haldeman believes that this claim was wrong and “comical”. According
to Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and John Dean did the investigating, plus
why would Hunt be assigned “to investigate his own break-in” (page
188)? Haldeman notes that Dean said that he kept Fielding “out of
things” (Dean’s alleged words) when Watergate was going on, and Haldeman
believes this would explain how Deep Throat had incomplete or distorted
information.
Do these criteria fit Mark Felt? I guess it depends on when Mark
Felt worked for the FBI, and whether that overlaps with the time that
Deep Throat was feeding information to Woodward and Bernstein. Felt was
in the Executive Branch, yet he was not a close adviser within the
Nixon Administration, and (assuming that Felt worked for the FBI when
Deep Throat was divulging information) that would be consistent with
Deep Throat’s incomplete knowledge. As Ann Coulter notes, however, Felt
had left the FBI before the story about the 18 and 1/2 minute gap
(which Deep Throat supposedly fed Woodward and Bernstein) came out (see here),
so she is skeptical about Felt being Deep Throat. At the same time,
Felt probably had contacts within the Executive Branch, and perhaps one
of them could have given Felt that information.
(UPDATE: This article
indicates that Felt was working for the FBI during some of the time
that he was leaking information to Woodward, and also that Haldeman
himself feared that Felt would leak information.)