9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Last Watergate Book?, July 4, 2006
This review is from: A G-Man's Life: The FBI, Being 'Deep Throat,' And the Struggle for Honor in Washington (Hardcover)
I've been a student of Watergate for years. Maybe in part because I was born in October 1973, and I enjoy asking people who was Vice President the day I was born (answer: no-one). Maybe also in part because ten years ago I picked up "The Haldeman Diaries" off the remainder rack at Barnes & Noble, and then started collecting all the Watergate autobiographies still in print (yes, that includes your own, Jeb Stuart Magruder).
I never really had an intelligent guess as to who Deep Throat actually was. When Mark Felt's name was released by his family last year, I finally understood why -- he's only a tangential part of the books I read, not mentioned by name in the Woodward/Bernstein books, not mentioned even in "The Haldeman Diaries" or the Oliver Stone "Nixon" movie, both of which fixated on J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson, Felt's immediate FBI superiors.
When I purchased "A G-Man's Life", I thought I'd bought my last Watergate book. I was wrong. This book necessarily leaves lots of questions unanswered, primarily because Felt is now essentially senile and then, according to my reading of co-author John O'Connor's portions of the back, he took no active role in the writing. "G-Man" is drawn mostly from Felt's long-forgotten FBI memoir, and supplemented by unpublished writings and interviews with family members (who learned Felt's secret only at the same time as did family friend O'Connor).
Oddly, even the unpublished writings do not acknowledge that Felt was Deep Throat (hence the odd parsing of his phrase last year, "I'm the guy they used to call Deep Throat"). O'Connor does explain this gap in two different ways: first, he points out where Felt didn't identify with the Deep Throat character portrayed in the movie; and second, he prints his speculation that Woodward's Deep Throat was a composite of which Felt was only a part. That speculation, however, is not echoed in Woodward's own "Secret Man", a book about Felt written before the public announcement.
Felt's own writing, about his rise through the FBI ranks, well reflects the fatigue of hard work with the rewards of a job well done. This is a more than adequate crime memoir, with lots of decent anecdotes along the way. The FBI is not publicly regarded the way it used to be, so "A G-Man's Life" is not only an effective period piece, but a reminder of what good a governmental organization can achieve when motivated solely by the public interest.
The toll that Felt's career took on his own family is mentioned not at all in the memoir chapters-- that is left to O'Connor to describe in the epilogue. O'Connor, whose daughter went to college with Felt's grandson, has become a family friend and is thus in the best position to write objectively about these struggles. Where Felt's own writing also seems naive in retrospect is his celebration of Hoover the man -- there are tens of thousands of pages of well-documented books offering contrary evidence -- and also in his take on the New Left, the obsession that ultimately brought down his FBI career. Whether the New Left was a Communist-infiltrated organization that actively conspired with foreign governments to overthrow the United States is not a question answered by Felt, although he does try.
The aftermath of Felt's authorization of "black bag jobs" against the Weather Underground resulted in his conviction in federal court -- after a trial in which Richard Nixon testified in his favor. Felt's principled refusal to come forward as Deep Throat in the midst of his trial postponed his receiving the accolades he so richly deserved. The question remains... was Felt's three decades of secrecy worth the wait?
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Interesting Life that I Wouldn't Have Wanted to Live, June 16, 2006
This review is from: A G-Man's Life: The FBI, Being 'Deep Throat,' And the Struggle for Honor in Washington (Hardcover)
I give this book a high grade but with a caveat. And the caveat is that this is not relly a book on Watergate. It is a book on 'A G-Man's Life.'
This book really has several parts, any of which would make a book on their own. ==First is the introduction by John O'Connor. This covers Mr. Felt's role in Watergate, the relationship with Woodward, and particularily the decision to become public.
Second is a history of being in the FBI. Mr. Felt entered the FBI in January 1942, just in time for the counter spy efforts of World War II. He went on to spend thirty years as an agent.
Then there is the story of the witch hunts that the Government was going through as part of Watergate and it's aftermath. During this time he was tried and found guilty of making 'black bag jobs.' He had made them, but was doing so in what he felt was the best interest of the country's fight against terrorism. He was pardoned by the President.
All in all, a most interesting book that presents a slightly different view than that of Woodward's 'The Secret Man.'
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Questions abound., January 29, 2008
I have given a three as it seems that the book we all clamour for is like "Deep Throat" himself was.
A secret hidden away brilliantly.
The same will apply to the book as Felt ages and unfortunately already is a man who is quite sick,with poor memory etc.
I believe that the family should come first and that the realisation that Mark Felt cannot tell the story as many would like it should also be respected,
As for one comment about this being the "last of the Watergate books then".
Nothing could be further from the truth,the American public and their unquenchable thirst for scandal and hearing scandal at such a level is something that will always grow no matter how strange and wild the premise of future books where there is literary gold you have to mine it until it collapses in on itself and then pick through the rubble again.
Ian.
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