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But there are other reasons to doubt that Felt is Deep Throat.

Colodny and Hoff point to the claim in the Woodward/Bernstein book, All the President's Men, that Deep Throat provided the Post reporters exclusive information about the "deliberate erasures," as "Throat" told Woodward in November of 1973, on the White House tapes. "There's no reason to believe that Felt had access to that information because it was closely held in the White House," says Colodny, "and Felt had left the FBI in April--six months earlier."

Hoff agrees. "It's conceivable that as the second in command at the FBI, the deputy director, he could have gotten information from somebody about this," she said. "But I don't think he gave them this information. I think it was somebody in the White House. At that point, the White House was so embattled over the tapes and the possible subpoena [of them], there were only 3 or 4 people who had access to those tapes."

That means, apparently, that either Felt is not Deep Throat or that he had his own Deep Throat.

But if Felt did somehow have access to that information and provided it to Woodward, important questions are raised.

"The guy is deputy director of the FBI," Colodny says. "Why is he not protecting the tapes? Why is he not arresting the people who are doing this? Why doesn't he go to [Watergate Judge John] Sirica's court, which is hearing this? He's a sworn law enforcement officer. He knows there's a crime being committed. But instead of doing something about it, he goes in a garage and talks to Woodward."

Hoff makes the same basic point. "He is the top law enforcement officer in the country because there's only an acting director [of the FBI] at that point," says Hoff. "Why didn't he go to Sirica or a grand jury and blow the story open?"

If Felt was concerned about the hostility between the FBI and President Nixon, Hoff counters, "This is the very story that he could have killed the Nixon Administration with. Why in God's name would a top law enforcement officer meet in a garage with a rookie reporter and give him this information? It makes no sense."

Hoff predicts that the story will rebound to the discredit of Woodward. It's another flashy story, she concedes, "but I think they made a mistake in choosing Felt."

Last February 4, when the University of Texas in Austin opened the Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein Watergate papers (for which it had paid them $5 million), Hoff participated in a symposium with Woodward and suggested that he put Deep Throat on videotape. Hoff wrote that she told Woodward that "he should video tape that individual as soon as possible so the public could be sure of the authenticity of the man Woodward would ultimately reveal as Deep Throat when the person could not deny it."

Of course, this should have been done years ago. The Felt family has affirmed the Deep Throat designation but it's now clear that they had a financial interest in doing so as well. And the questions about the conspiracy behind the Watergate conspiracy will be shunted aside and will remain unanswered.

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Cliff Kincaid is editor of the AIM Report. www.aim.org

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Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.

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