NO ANSWERS HERE!

Bob Woodward’s new book THE SECRET MAN, finally tells his side of the story of “Deep Throat” and Watergate. He identifies “Deep Throat” as Mark Felt, who was the number two man at the FBI during the early 70’s. Like Yogi Berra, Felt has spent a good portion of the years since Watergate saying “I never said most of the things I said.” He is still alive, though now suffering from severe dementia, but has at least obliquely owned up. For that and other reasons covered in the book, he remains an enigma. Toward the end of his story Woodward rues, “I am disappointed and a little angry at both myself and him for never digging out a more exacting explanation, a clearer statement of his reasoning and motivation.” The answer, he opines, may lie in the definition of personality as offered by Peter Gay, one of Sigmund Freud’s biographers, who wrote that personality was not “the resolution of an individual’s various impulses but rather the organization of those impulses.” You can’t always conquer your less noble traits, but you can hope to have them dominated by your more admirable ones. A human being’s total essence will always contain multiple contradictions. Felt, says Woodward, is a classic example of that contention and will no doubt forever challenge the speculative imaginations of future historians.

It’s a quick read and brought back some memories for me.

An additional short passage that caught my eye was the mention of an old reporter’s truism that, “All good work was done in defiance of management.” I’ve heard lots of faculty members say that in reference to college deans or presidents as well.