Deep Throat's Lessons for Whistle Blowers, Patricia O'Connell, Business Week,

COMMENTARY
By Patricia O'Connell
Deep Throat's Lessons for Whistle-Blowers

Plenty of folks have taken Mark Felt's lonely path
since Watergate days. Here's a look at what it takes
to successfully reveal wrongdoing

Becoming a whistle-blower is one of the loneliest and
most difficult choices one can make in life. Those who
come clean on the wrongdoing they witness in the
corporate suite or in government risk immediate
ostracism. They open themselves up to counterattacks,
loss of livelihood, and sometimes long, costly
litigation, just for the act of speaking out against a
perceived injustice or crime. And even when their
disclosures are revealed to be true, they often have a
difficult time finding work again, as potential
employers fear they can't be trusted.

All of which makes the spate of splashy
whistle-blowing cases in recent years remarkable
indeed. Former Big Tobacco exec Jeffrey Wigand spilled
the beans about what the industry knew and when,
rousing the ire of cigarette giants. (His story was so
dramatic, Hollywood made a movie, The Insider, about
it.)

Sherron Watkins famously -- and futilely -- warned
former Enron CEO and Chairman Ken Lay about the energy
giant's financial house of cards. Watkins, persona non
grata at Enron after writing her memo, left several
months later. Since then, she has co-authored a book,
Power Failure, and does consulting and gives lectures.


NOW OUT OF SIGHT. FBI agent Coleen Rowley wrote about
intelligence failures leading to 9/11 -- now she's
mulling a run for Congress. Army Private Joseph M.
Darby stepped forward after seeing the now-notorious
pictures of Iraqi prisoners being abused in Abu
Ghraib. He was recently given the Kennedy Library
Foundation's Profile in Courage Award by Caroline
Kennedy for "upholding the rule of law that we embrace
as a nation." But he and his family have largely
dropped out of sight.

It was a still-anonymous tipster who informed New York
Attorney General Eliot Spitzer about insurance
kickbacks, setting off a chain of events that left the
industry reeling -- and former AIG (AIG ) CEO Henry
Greenberg, an icon of the business, in disgrace. What
fate awaits the tipster when his or her identity is
revealed?

Yet, when it comes to whistle-blowing, none of them
comes close to Mark Felt, aka Deep Throat, the
recently revealed source who helped Washington Post
reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein unravel the
Presidential scandal Watergate -- and the Presidency
of Richard Nixon.

HERO OR TRAITOR? Whistle-blowing is a funny thing:
For every person who thinks it's noble, someone else
thinks such a break in ranks is the ultimate
disloyalty. Indeed, look at the reaction to the
revelation about Felt. Some praise him as a hero.
Others -- most vociferously and not suprisingly,
former members of the Nixon Administration -- are now
calling him a traitor.

Patrick Buchanan, a former Nixon speechwriter, was
quoted in The New York Times on June 2 as saying, "I
think Deep Throat is a dishonorable man. I think Mark
behaved treacherously. I'm unable to see the nobility
of the enterprise, sneaking around in garages, moving
pots around, handing over material he got in the
course of the investigation."

With the "final secret" -- in the words of former
Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee -- now broken, it's
worth looking back at the granddaddy of all
whistle-blowers and see what lessons can be learned:

Follow the money: That was the advice Deep Throat gave
Bernstein and Woodward, and the money trail was one of
the things that led them to the White House. In
corporate scandals, it's usually all about money, and
often the cash leads to the very top as well -- with a
few stops along the way, at various high-ranking
executives' offices. In her memo to Enron's Lay,
Watkins raised pointed questions about aggressive
accounting. She was following the money.

Cover your tracks: According to Woodward, Felt was
adamant about not talking on the phone, and he
insisted on meeting in underground garages,
communicating through an elaborate series of signals
that involved moving a flower pot and flag on
Woodward's apartment balcony, and a hand-drawn clock
in Woodward's copy of The New York Times. And
according to Woodward and Bernstein, Felt was careful
in what he said to them, mindful not to break the law.

Clearly, such subterfuge helped keep Felt's identity
secret -- and his job at the FBI -- safe, which
presumably kept him in the loop and enabled him to be
a long-term asset to the investigation. And Felt was
smart, but he was also very lucky that his identity
wasn't revealed sooner. Just witness the fury now
aimed at a 91-year-old man in frail health.

Better yet, don't leave any tracks: It's interesting
to wonder how Felt, a old-fashioned G-man right down
to his wool-checkered blazers and fedora, might have
inadvertently spilled the beans in this age of e-mail,
security cameras, and corporate computer networks.
It's hard enough not to leave a paper trail, much less
a digital trail. On the bright side, it's also harder
for the bad guys to cover their tracks these days.
Spitzer, for one, has shown how modern prosecutors can
make amazingly strong cases out of e-mail trails.

One person can make a difference: It's tempting to be
cynical and think an individual can't take on a
corporation like Enron or an institution like the
military or the White House. Watkins' warning was for
naught -- at least in terms of preventing a problem.
But her actions and information were critical in
helping to shed light afterward on the mess at Enron,
which in part centered on such specious accounting
schemes and vehicles as Raptor and Condor.

But one person isn't enough: To be effective, a
whistle-blower has to find the right conduit. And
chances are good it might not be someone the
whistle-blower trusts in the next cubicle or in the
office down the hall. For all the criticism leveled at
Felt for not following "procedure" and not bringing
his concerns to his superiors at the FBI or the
Justice Dept., it's hard to imagine that going to FBI
Director L. Patrick Gray -- Nixon's hand-picked choice
for the job -- about illegality at the White House
really would have been a great idea.

Make sure your confidante is trustworthy: No doubt The
Washington Post was deeply chagrined at having been
scooped by Vanity Fair on the story it's famous for.
Yet Woodward -- who still works for the Post -- and
Bernstein were right to honor the pledge they made to
keep Felt's identity a secret until his death or his
releasing them from their promise. Kudos also to
former editor Bradlee, the only other person privy at
the time to Deep Throat's identity. Laws protecting
whistle-blowers are imperfect at best. If someone goes
to the press, they should feel safe doing so.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that
good men do nothing": So wrote 18th century Irish
philosopher and politician Edmund Burke. O.K., so he
excluded "women" from that phrase, but considering
when he lived, he can be forgiven. However, include
both genders, and his wisdom shines brightly still.

When good men and women do something true and right,
evil is sometimes vanquished. That's the highest ideal
that a whistle-blower can aspire to, even if others
may question his or her motives. Critics think Felt's
motives were less than pure. He never hid his disdain
for Nixon and his minions, whom he regarded as
"Nazis," Woodward revealed in the Post's June 2
editions. Felt was also passed over for the FBI
director's job twice. But he did what he thought was
right.

Perhaps Woodward and Bernstein would have untangled
the gnarly mess of Watergate without Felt's help.
Maybe someone else would have come forward to reveal
the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib if Darby hadn't.
Rowley wasn't the only person in the FBI, let along
elsewhere, to point out the intelligence failures
surrounding 9/11. Had Wigand lost heart, another exec
might have told the truth about the tobacco industry.

But as any historian will tell you, such speculation
-- while fun -- ultimately leads to a futile dead end.

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/jun2005/nf2005063_7881_db045.htm
BUSINESS WEEK ONLINE
JUNE 3, 2005

We'll never know. What's important is what did happen.
Felt, and many whistle-blowers after him, made a
difference. But first, they made a choice.