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The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate's Deep Throat |  |
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The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate's Deep Throat | |
编辑推荐 Amazon.com Review
Bob Woodward's secret man is no longer a secret, now that former FBI assistant director W. Mark Felt and his family have revealed that he was Deep Throat, Woodward's legendary anonymous source for his Watergate reporting. Soon after Felt made his identity known, Woodward, who "is prone to complete his homework before it is due or even assigned," according to the afterword by his reporting partner Carl Bernstein, himself revealed that he had been working on a manuscript in preparation for that moment, one that would after 30 years tell the inside story of their mysterious, and history-changing, relationship.
Certainly you get in The Secret Man the cloak-and-dagger details you'd expect--and are likely already familiar with from both the book and the superb movie of All the President's Men: the late-night garage meetings, the red flag in the flower pot, the whispered warning that lives were in danger. Woodward retells the still-riveting story of his and Bernstein's unearthing of the scandal with efficiency and with the last puzzle piece in place. And he is able both to explain some of Felt's motivations, as an FBI loyalist disgusted by Nixon staffers trying to run roughshod over his agency, and to trace some of his remarkable bureaucratic tactics, including commissioning an FBI leak inquiry and deflecting it away from himself. Most fascinatingly, he gives a warts-and-all account of his shameless youthful cultivation of Felt, beginning with their first encounter when Woodward was a bored Navy lieutenant on the make, just three years before being assigned to cover the arraignment of five men in business suits arrested in the offices of the Democratic National Committee. But in a crucial way this doesn't seem to be the book that Woodward had wanted to write, for Felt remains a mystery. A shadowy father figure during the Watergate period, Felt soon distanced himself from Woodward after running into legal trouble of his own, and they fell out of touch in the intervening years. When Woodward finally reestablished contact in 2000, Felt had lost most of his memory, and any understanding with his former source, with whom he was so closely tied in both his private and public lives, remained poignantly but frustratingly unreachable. --Tom Nissley --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Rushed into print after former FBI second-in-command W. Mark Felt was unmasked as Watergate's enigmatic arch-informant, this memoir reminds us that the scandal's lasting impact was less on politics than on journalism. Woodward recounts his cultivation of the avuncular Felt as mentor and source during his days as a cub reporter, the cloak-and-dagger parking garage meetings where Felt leaked conclusions from the FBI's Watergate investigation, Felt's ambivalence about his actions and the chilling of their post-Watergate relationship. The narrative drags in later years as the author showily wrestles with the ethics of revealing his source, even after a senile Felt begins blurting out the secret and his family pesters Woodward to confirm his identity. Woodward portrays Felt as a conflicted man with situational principles (he was convicted of authorizing the FBI's own Watergate-style illegal break-ins), motivated possibly by his resentment of White House pressure on the FBI for a cover-up, possibly by pique at being passed over for FBI chief. Unfortunately, Felt doesn't remember Watergate, so his reasons remain a mystery; Woodward's disappointment at the drying up of his oracle is palpable. What's clear is that Deep Throat laid the template for Woodward's career; his later reporting on cloistered institutions-the Supreme Court, the CIA, the Fed, various administrations-relied on highly-place, often unnamed insiders to unveil their secrets. It gave his reporting its omniscient tone, but, critics complain, drained it of perspective and made it a captive of his sources and their agendas. Woodward doesn't probe these issues very deeply, but he does open a window on the fraught relationships at the heart of journalism.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Bookmarks Magazine
Poor Bob Woodward. He is the nation’s most famous investigative reporter, and he gets scooped on the story he’s been prepared to tell for 30 years—the identity of Deep Throat. Woodward rushed The Secret Man into print shortly after Felt exposed himself as Deep Throat to Vanity Fair magazine. It’s no surprise, then, that critics complained the book offered little additional insight and shed almost no light onto the motives of Felt, who suffers from dementia. At its best, the book can be inspiring, reaffirming some critics’ belief that the truth will prevail, the bad guys will be brought to justice, and journalists will continue to serve as the watchdogs of democracy. At its worst, The Secret Man is a Cliff’s Notes version of All the President’s Men, a memoir from a man who, after three decades as confessor to the nation’s powerbrokers, prefers to keep his own counsel.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Booklist
Most of Woodward's books follow a predictable formula: the fly-on-the-wall perspective, the sleight-of-hand sourcing, the omniscient narrative style. Perhaps that's why this unraveling of the Deep Throat mystery seems so out of character. True, Woodward had to publish in a hurry. When Mark Felt, the FBI's number-two man during the Watergate era, disclosed in Vanity Fair that he was Deep Throat, the rug was effectively pulled from under the book Woodward had been planning to write. So it's no surprise that this nearly instant book has a rushed feeling to it; what is surprising is that, unlike Woodward's typical productions, this one comes across as honest, personal, and slightly off balance, seemingly mirroring the author's own ambivalent feelings about his relationship with Felt. Usually Woodward is an unseen presence in his narratives, but this time he's in the middle of everything, explaining how the relationship between himself, at the time a young Washington Post reporter, and Felt evolved to the point that, when Watergate broke open, he felt comfortable about calling Felt directly. Felt's role, we learn, was more to confirm, deny, or steer in the right direction rather than leak, but the FBI man had his own agenda, stemming from being passed over for J. Edgar Hoover's job. He also had his own ambivalence about what he was doing. Equally interesting here is the chance to reprise the various journalistic decisions Woodward has made over the years--particularly relevant, in today's world, is the whole topic of protecting sources. A must for anyone who watched Watergate unfold, but there's plenty here of interest even for those who don't know their Jeb Magruders from their Charles Colsons. Ilene Cooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Review
"Provocative. . . . Reaffirms the vital role that confidential sources play in keeping the public informed."
-- The New York Times
"The Secret Man is one of the best [of the Watergate books] at illuminating the backstage battle to bring President Nixon's team to account. . . . Eye-opening."
-- The Boston Globe
"The best short discussion of the distinction -- between the reporter as private eye and the reporter as stenographer -- that has ever been published. The chapter on the protection of sources is a passage that one hopes will be taught in schools."
-- The New York Times Book Review
"Long live the use of confidential news sources. . . . An inside look at the give-and-take involved in the often-dicey relationships between journalists and their sources."
-- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
"A filling-in of many of the final blanks left in the most explosive political/journalism story ever."
-- Lincoln Journal Star
"A provocative, even stirring contribution."
-- Baltimore Sun
