Reviewers Hit Woodward's Deep Throat Book

By: E&P Staff When Bob Woodward wrote his lengthy and much-awaited article for The Washington Post last month following Vanity Fair?s scoop revealing Deep Throat as Mark Felt, some readers were disappointed. It was more of a tell-some than a tell-all. Well, many deduced, Woodward surely was saving most of the new, surprising, material for his upcoming book.

This assumption was at least partly shot down last week when USA Today found a pre-release copy of the book in a Virginia store and summarized its revelations, which were on the slim side. But perhaps that was not a fair or full reading of the book.

Now, the first major reviews of the book have appeared. One of the leading political writers of today, Ron Brownstein of the Los Angeles Times, declares: ?If Bob Woodward were in journalism school, his professor might have handed back his new book, 'The Secret Man,' as incomplete.?

And USA Today's chief book critic, Bob Minzesheimer, today writes: "Woodward's book is filled with as many questions as answers. It's more about Woodward than Felt. It's fascinating and frustrating, revealing and disingenuous, self-critical and self-serving."

Meanwhile, in a Time magazine item, Alicia Shepard (who is writing a biography of Woodward and Bernstein) takes this shot: "Bob Woodward's memoir ... doesn't shed much new light on Watergate. But it does tell us a lot about how Woodward, the journalist who helped bring down a President, cowered around his secret source, W. Mark Felt."

In his review, Ron Brownstein calls it an ?intermittently engaging but ultimately slight memoir? and says Woodward ?fails to answer the most important question remaining after Felt unveiled his identity in a Vanity Fair story: Why? Why did a career FBI agent who had ascended to the second-ranking position in the bureau, and who didn't think much of the press, leak such critical information about the scandal to Woodward?

?Woodward offers some plausible theories but mostly acknowledges that he didn't really press Felt to answer the question until meetings with him in 2000 and 2002, when the older man's memory had already crumbled and he could barely recall even working at the FBI, much less his post-midnight encounters with Woodward in a suburban parking garage. ?I am disappointed and a little angry at both myself and him for never digging out a more exacting explanation, a clearer statement of his reasoning and motivation,? Woodward writes, in a judgment readers are likely to share.

?Arriving with great fanfare, this book proves only a minor footnote to history.? Brownstein closes his review, however, by noting that the Deep Throat example does suggest the important of reporters using anonymous sources, in certain cases.