From the WSJ Opinion Archives
OFF THE RECORD
Throat Clearing
John Dean threatens to unmask me--again.
So former Nixon White House counsel John Dean is bringing out an electronic book--that is, a book no one can be bothered to print on paper--on the 30th anniversary of the Watergate break-in. Moreover, he has announced that he will name Deep Throat. This will be John's third "naming" of me. Well, everyone needs a hobby.
I can't decide whether to own up, in the event he finally gets it right. I'm not trying to be coy. I'm just not sure what, really, there is to gain by "coming out" after all these years. Consider:
Gordon Liddy will issue calls on his radio show for my scalp, among other body parts, resulting in a full tape of death threats on my answering machine. Henry Kissinger will go on "Nightline" and say, "Vell I haf to say at least I am relieved it did not turn out to be me," and then blame me for the collapse of South Vietnam. Julie Nixon Eisenhower will go on "Nightline" and blame me for her father's phlebitis. (I always liked and admired Julie.) Tina Brown will be holding on line two with an offer of $5 million for my memoirs, plus a Miramax movie starring George Clooney as me then and Hal Holbrooke as me now. Assuming Mr. Holbrooke's still alive, Harvey's mad for the idea!
As the only Watergate figure who has yet to cash in--forgive me a moment of preening after three decades--I admit to being tempted. Mrs. Throat has been after me for 30 years to buy her a condo in Florida. She's especially been after me ever since Bob Dole--whom we know socially--bought his place in the sun down there with his Viagra advertisement royalties.
And yet, and yet . . . I see myself in bed, channel surfing past a pornographically themed David Letterman "top ten" list; watching Chris Matthews mist Al Haig with spittle; listening to Diane Sawyer pour her heart out to Larry King about the "human cost" of Watergate. I can't have that on my conscience.
Whatever I decide to do, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. If you yourself happen to be in government and are thinking about spending some time in underground garages revealing to reporters that President Bush really did know all about 9/11 way back in July, I can recommend Bob and Carl to you. These boys can keep a secret. I never worried about Bob. He's a Midwesterner and a former Navy man, and he keeps things tight. I was a little concerned about Carl during his years of wine and roses, but I relaxed once he settled down and started writing admiring biographies of popes. For a while there, I was bracing for a Nora Ephron book titled "Throatburn." Maybe Miramax will hire her to direct the movie. Thanks, too, must go to Ben Bradlee, who also knew and never even told his wife, Sally Quinn. That cannot have been easy.
There have been some interesting moments these last 30 years. How many dinner parties have I attended that were interrupted in mid-cassoulet by the tink-tink of silverware on glass and the host saying, "All right--who's Deep Throat?" Here I would purse my lips and deliver my pronouncement gravely, as if I'd been asked to divulge the author of the Dead Sea Scrolls, naming some obscure clerk in the deepest bowels of the bureaucracy. As the years went on, I would affect boredom and yawn, "But it's so obvious--Felt." (That would be W. Mark Felt, a top FBI official at the time of Watergate.)
After 20 years, I would announce with world-weary impatience that there is no Deep Throat--for heaven's sake--that all along it was a composite, a meta-journalistic device and then toss in for good measure the fact even David Obst, Woodward and Bernstein's agent, agreed. But if Len Garment were present--and he often was--I could never resist winking at the assembled and saying, "Come on, Len, don't you think it's about time you came clean?" The only problem was getting him to stop. One time, the hostess had to douse him with fingerbowl water.
Toward the end of his life, Nixon told his pretty young amanuensis Monica Crowley that "Dean was a traitor, [but Deep Throat] went even beyond that." This places me squarely in the innermost circle of the Milhouse Inferno. I think I can handle it.
For the record, I don't regret what I did back then. History will be the judge. I do regret that I tormented the old man into the winter of his life. But karma is inexorable. Perhaps it's apt that, having come to prominence for having unmasked a spy, Nixon should have spent his final days obsessing about the one who helped to bring him down. Or perhaps I overstate my importance. See how heady all this is?
Best to demur in the (unlikely) event that Mr. Dean hits the bull's-eye this time. When the reporters swarm, I will respond, "Get a life, John."
Anyway, why give him the satisfaction? Nothing is owed to him. What gnaws at his soul that he feels this serial compulsion to unmask the Second Man?
No, I think I will let him twist slowly, slowly in his wind. Sure, I could take a bow after 30 long years, write my memoirs, get my radio show, executive-produce my TV miniseries.
But that would be wrong.
Mr. Throat is . . . well, never mind. Mr. Buckley is editor of Forbes FYI. His novel "No Way To Treat A First Lady" will be published by Random House in October.
