In Search of Deep Throat

Garment explains how he came to arrive at his conclusion, admitting that there's no "smoking gun"--and that his subject denies the charge vehemently (as do Woodward and Bernstein). He debunks other theories, and also somewhat laughingly describes the wrong turns he made during his investigation. For a time he was mistakenly convinced that Deep Throat was David Gergen, in part because of Gergen's height; in All the President's Men, Woodward describes how Deep Throat had arranged to leave a note on a ledge in the parking garage where the two men met. When Woodward arrived, he was too short to reach it. Gergen was 7 inches taller than Woodward and "could have comfortably placed the note on the ledge without giving a thought to his friend's height disadvantage. At the time, I thought this fact to be of momentous significance."

Unveiling aside, Garment provides an insider's look into the Nixon administration and the Watergate scandal. Garment may well be wrong in his identification of Deep Throat, but his assessment of the state of post-Watergate politics rings painfully true. Though today's federal government appears "cleaner," owing in part to the rise of investigative reporting à la Woodward and Bernstein, Garment feels that "the ironic aftermath of the changes that Watergate and Deep Throat set in train is that politics and government are in substance distinctly meaner and dirtier than they were when Deep Throat decried the 'switchblade mentality' in the White House." As Garment points out, somehow "the idea of politics as inherently corrupt has led to its becoming more so." And that's what's hard to swallow. --Sunny Delaney