Ray Arthur writes…
Has Haig been discounted for practical reasons or just because Woodward, et al, said he was not? My thinking is, if Bernstein had talked too much, which he is wont to do, and Haig was D.T., they would have to lie and deny in order to protect the General. Has anyone checked Al's pulse lately?
Alexander Haig was a suspect as Deep Throat for a number of reasons, one being that he was in the perfect position to know everything. During the Watergate investigation, he went from working under Henry Kissinger to being Nixon's Chief of Staff, and he was never viewed as one of those Nixon folks who thought all reporters were evil. Moreover, the Woodward-Bernstein book, The Final Days, pretty much makes Haig out as a hero who is more interested in the well-being of the nation than in serving Nixon, and he was obviously a major source for the book.
So that suggests a close connection to the authors, and perhaps the sense that they were rewarding him for past favors. Against this, there's the fact that he seems to have been out of town on the date of at least one reported Woodward-Throat meeting. (He was travelling with Kissinger, which presumably would also eliminate Henry as a suspect. I always thought Kissinger was the real longshot surprise to be Deep Throat, but there are those who've offered to bet their homes on it…this, even though Kissinger is a lifelong non-smoker, and we all know Deep Throat liked a cigarette with his Scotch.)
Haig was so bothered by reports that he was D.T. that he not only denied it, he persuaded Woodward and Bernstein to confirm his denial. For a long period, that was the only person they'd ever said was definitely not Deep Throat. At the time, Haig seemed to be a candidate — perhaps a longshot, but he wasn't about to admit it — for the presidency, which might explain why he was so insistent on not having folks think he was Deep Throat. Some might cheer the guy as a hero, but there are still folks high in the Republican party who wouldn't have that opinion.
I think the Woodward-Bernstein denial may be enough to cross Haig off the list. They didn't have to give him the absolution he requested, and they've always known that when the day came that Throat's identity would be revealed, they'd be coping with detractors who'd say it was a lie, there was no Deep Throat. So if I were Woodward and Bernstein, I sure wouldn't want to be on record as firmly denying by name that my source was my source.
There's even footage of Bob Woodward saying, "Al Haig was absolutely not Deep Throat," which would doubtlessly resurface. I don't know if journalistic ethics say that you can lie like that to protect a source, and certainly there have lately been reporters who have absolutely lied in denying sources. But in this case, it seems like it would have been a foolish thing for Woodward and Bernstein to do, and neither of those gents has ever struck me as foolish, especially with regard to protecting their own reps.
Again, though, this is a case where some of us could be assuming way too much.