Woodward Finally Tells All

By Alicia C. Shepard

Bob Woodward's memoir, The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate's Deep Throat, 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.

AFTER ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN WAS PUBLISHED: "When he heard my voice, he hung up ... Hanging up was worse than any words he might have uttered. I wanted to know what he was thinking, but I did not have the courage to phone him again."

AFTER THE MOVIE VERSION CAME OUT: "I was tempted to call Felt and see what he thought ... Perhaps being played by [actor Hal] Holbrook in a dramatically heroic role would melt the iceberg that had risen between us. Or was the iceberg still growing? But I was basically gutless. I did nothing."

AFTER VISITING FELT, WHOSE DEMENTIA HAD SET IN, IN 2000: "I left in a tangle of emotions ... there were still those ultimate questions, the ones I could not bring myself to ask or had not asked 28 years earlier, and that I could not seem to reach now: Why were you Deep Throat? What was your motive? Who are you? Who were you?"