SPIKE - Department of Journalism - University of Illinois

Talking about Wallace

Deep Throat's role before Watergate

Earlier tips about Wallace shooting point not to FBI agents or prosecutors but to the White House staff

       Alabama Gov. George Wallace was running for president in the Democratic primary election in 1972. On May 15, he was shot in a shopping center parking lot in Maryland and permanently paralyzed by Arthur Bremer, a loner who had stalked several candidates.

      In the movie version of "All The President's Men," after his initial sources ran dry, Woodward went to a pay phone and called Throat. He asked for help on Watergate. "We're not going to talk about that subject," Throat said. "We talked about Wallace." Woodward implored. "This is different -- don't call me again," Throat snapped. But soon after, he contacted Woodward by placing a note in his newspaper.

      Woodward did have exclusive information in his stories about Wallace and the man who shot him. The stories in the Post include attribution to a high government source. This was before Woodward agreed to not name Throat, "not even as an anonymous source."

      In the first Wallace story, the high government source related that Bremer acted alone and was not part of a conspiracy. Later, Woodward had an exclusive story detailing the whereabouts of Bremer during the weeks before the shooting.

      The FBI investigated the Wallace shooting, so the class filed a Freedom of Information Act request for all of those investigative reports. The records showed that the FBI headquarters in Washington immediately became involved and that the investigation was handled by the field office in Baltimore. The kind of information Woodward had could only have come from reports of the Baltimore field office or the bureau at its top-level.

      The Baltimore office did not have Watergate information, so Throat was not there. And he was not among the cadre of Washington field office agents. Anyway, it would have been wrong for Woodward to call Throat "a high-level official in the executive branch" if he were merely an FBI agent.

      Yet another group of officials could be eliminated: The U.S. district attorney team in Washington (Earl Silbert, John Campbell and Seymour Glanzer, who prosecuted the Watergate burglars) were not involved in the Wallace investigation. Their counterparts in Baltimore were, but they were not involved in Watergate.

      The Wallace information had found its way to the White House. President Nixon wanted to know immediately about the motives of the shooter, FBI reports were sent to Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, a top-level assistant to Nixon, and Ron Ziegler, Nixon's press secretary.

      No one at the Nixon campaign committee had the information unless it was second hand. Woodward would hardly be calling a friend at the campaign committee to learn specifics of the FBI investigation of Wallace.