Bob Woodward conta a história do Garganta Profunda

Finalmente, o Washington Post publicou o relato do Bob Woodward sobre como o segundo homem do FBI se transformou na fonte que ajudou a derrubar o presidente Richard Nixon.

Não deixe de ler How Mark Felt Became 'Deep Throat'.

Woodward conta que conheceu Felts em uma sala de espera da Casa Branca qdo estava servindo na marinha Americana. Desse encontro surgiu uma relação de amizade muito antes de Woodward virar jornalista.

I believe I encountered him only one more time at the White House. But I had set the hook. He was going to be one of the people I consulted in depth about my future, which now loomed more ominously as the date of my discharge from the Navy approached. At some point I called him, first at the FBI and then at his home in Virginia. I was a little desperate, and I'm sure I poured out my heart. I had applied to several law schools for that fall, but, at 27, I wondered if I could really stand spending three years in law school before starting real work.

Há detalhes também de como a investigação evoluiu, detalhes cinematográficos do esquema de contra-espionagem para manter o sigilo dos encontros e Woodward especula sobre a motivação de Felt.

It was only later after Nixon resigned that I began to wonder why Felt had talked when doing so carried substantial risks for him and the FBI. Had he been exposed early on, Felt would have been no hero. Technically, it was illegal to talk about grand jury information or FBI files -- or it could have been made to look illegal.

Felt believed he was protecting the bureau by finding a way, clandestine as it was, to push some of the information from the FBI interviews and files out to the public, to help build public and political pressure to make Nixon and his people answerable. He had nothing but contempt for the Nixon White House and their efforts to manipulate the bureau for political reasons. The young eager-beaver patrol of White House underlings, best exemplified by John W. Dean III, was odious to him.

His reverence for Hoover and strict bureau procedure made Gray's appointment as director all the more shocking. Felt obviously concluded he was Hoover's logical successor.

Veja tb esta pequena entrevista em video na qual Woodward conta com recebeu a reportagem da Vanity Fair e tb esta entrevista com o editor, Ben Bradlee, e terceiro detentor do segredo mais bem guardado do jornalismo.

Outra coisa que vale a pena ler é o artigo do Post comentando o "furo" que eles levaram da Vanity Fair

To Bradlee, who was the paper's executive editor during Watergate, there was no decision to be made. "If you give your word you're not going to do it, you can't do it," said Bradlee, now a Post Co. vice president. "We were the only people who were clinically and morally bound not to break this story, so how could we break it?"