Felt tipped switchblade

Well, well. That was anticlimactic.

I have to say, though, it is sweet poetic justice that Nixon -- the grand master of bureaucratic infighting and backstabbing -- was brought down, in part, by a perceived victim of Nixon's bureaucratic infighting and backstabbing.

Wounded that he was passed over for the top job, furious at Nixon's choice of an outsider, Assistant Attorney General L. Patrick Gray III, as acting FBI director, and determined that the White House not be allowed to steer and stall the bureau's Watergate investigation, Mark Felt slipped into the role that would forever alter his life.

He makes his first appearance as a literary figure in Chapter 4 of "All the President's Men."

"Woodward had a source in the Executive Branch who had access to information at [Nixon's campaign committee] as well as at the White House," Bernstein and Woodward wrote. "His identity was unknown to anyone else. He could be contacted only on very important occasions. Woodward had promised he would never identify him or his position to anyone."

Felt established extremely strict initial ground rules: He could never be quoted -- even as an anonymous source -- and he would not provide information. He would "confirm information that had been obtained elsewhere and . . . add some perspective," in the words of the book.

At first, the two men spoke by telephone. But Watergate was, after all, a case that began with a telephone wiretap. Felt had been summoned at least once to the White House, before Watergate, to discuss the use of telephone surveillance against administration leakers. He soon concluded that his own phones -- and the reporters' -- might be tapped. That's when he developed the system of coded signals and parking-garage encounters.

The relationship immediately bore fruit. On June 19, 1972, two days after the botched break-in, Felt assured Woodward that The Post could safely make a connection between burglars and a former CIA agent linked to the White House, E. Howard Hunt. Three months later, Felt again provided key context and reassurance, telling Woodward that a story tying Nixon's campaign committee to the break-in could be "much stronger" than the first draft, and still be on solid ground.

One of the most important encounters between Woodward and his source came a month later, on Oct. 8, 1972. In four months the scandal had grown in its reach yet faded in its seeming importance. Nixon was sailing to what would be a landslide reelection, and his opponent, Sen. George McGovern (D-S.D.), was having no luck making a campaign issue of Watergate.

In the wee hours in a deserted garage, Felt laid out a much broader view of the scandal than Woodward and Bernstein had yet imagined.

From the book: Woodward "arrived at the garage at 1:30 a.m.

"Deep Throat was already there, smoking a cigarette. . . .

"On evenings such as these, Deep Throat had talked about how politics had infiltrated every corner of government -- a strong-arm takeover of the agencies by the Nixon White House. . . . He had once called it the 'switchblade mentality' -- and had referred to the willingness of the president's men to fight dirty and for keeps. . . .

"The Nixon White House worried him. 'They are underhanded and unknowable,' he had said numerous times. He also distrusted the press. 'I don't like newspapers,' he had said flatly."

As Felt talked through the night -- of his love for gossip and his competing his desire for exactitude, of the danger Nixon posed to the government and The Post specifically -- he urged Woodward to follow the case to the top: to Nixon's former attorney general, John N. Mitchell; to Nixon's inner brace of aides, H.R. "Bob" Haldeman and John H. Ehrlichman; and even to Nixon himself.

"Only the president and Mitchell know" everything, he hinted.

That meeting and others gave senior Post editors the confidence they needed to stick with the story through withering fire from the administration and its defenders.

And Ronald Reagan's pardon of Felt for illegal wiretapping is just an extra-special flourish!

Now we have another administration performing a strong-armed takeover of the entire federal government, and one which, unlike the Nixon administration, openly lies every day. But today we have no Mark Felt -- and certainly no Bob Woodward and Ben Bradlee -- prepared to expose what's already plain as day. Weird.