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The Debunker: Did Deep Throat Tell Woodward and Bernstein to "Follow the Money"?

by Ken Jennings

The most beloved show in television history about daytime drinking, Mad Men, just wrapped up its eight-year run, with Don Draper and his ad-pitching peers marching boldly into the 1970s. For past Mad Men seasons, Ken Jennings of Jeopardy! fame has helped us debunk some persistent myths from the 1950s and the 1960s so we've asked him to keep on truckin' and do us a solid by debunking some "Me Decade" misinformation as well. It turns out that a lot of what we think we know about the seventies is pretty "far out."

The Debunker: Did Deep Throat Tell Woodward and Bernstein to "Follow the Money"?

Aside from Richard Nixon's immortal declaration "I am not a crook," it's probably the most famous quote of the Watergate era. Picture the scene: Bob Woodward in a darkened parking garage, a broken reporter, all his Watergate leads having turned out to be dead ends. There stands his ace in the hole, a highly placed administration source he calls "Deep Throat." "Follow the money!" urges Deep Throat. Woodward and Bernstein begin tracing donations to Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign, and break the story wide open. The three-word phrase has become a watchword of other investigations, both real and fictional, ever since.

not a crook

We now know that Woodward's secret source was W. Mark Felt, the FBI associate director and a man with an ax to grind against the Nixon White House. Felt did leak plenty of information from the FBI's investigation of the Watergate break-in to The Washington Post, but he never told Woodward to "Follow the money." That quote appears nowhere in the Post's reporting or in the book All the President's Men. It was invented for the 1976 film adaptation, where Hal Holbrook says it to Robert Redford. In the movie, this scene (along with another invented incident, Deep Throat telling Woodstein that their lives are in grave danger) provide the movie with something approaching a dramatic arc and climax. But in reality, Woodward and Bernstein were already tracing the campaign money. They didn't need Felt to tell them that.

In his 2010 book Getting It Wrong, journalist and academic Joseph Campbell argues that the Post's investigation of White House finances really had little to do with Nixon's resignation. Woodward and Bernstein's reporting was mostly powered by leaks from the many ongoing government investigations of the Watergate break-in: by the Justice Department, the FBI, special prosecutors, and both houses of Congress. It was those investigations (specifically the revelation that Nixon tape-recorded himself ordering the cover-up) that ended his presidency, not anything that The Washington Post printed. Woodward himself has called the notion that his reporting brought down a presidency "totally absurd."

Quick Quiz: In 1976, Time magazine speculated that what Nixon speechwriter—and future actor and game show host—might be Deep Throat?

Ken Jennings is the author of six books, most recently his Junior Genius Guides, Because I Said So!, and Maphead. He's also the proud owner of an underwhelming Bag o' Crap. Follow him at ken-jennings.com or on Twitter as @KenJennings.