MORE DEEP THROATS

Deep Throat emerged from the shadows just in time. Anonymous sources had been getting a bad name. Dan Rather had relied on some documents about President Bush’s military service, but their authenticity was disproven. Newsweek reported that a copy of the Quran had been flushed down the toilet at a detention center and had to retract the story when its source expressed doubts.

Mark Felt’s disclosure that he was the mysterious Deep Throat was a timely reminder that whistleblowers are essential in exposing cover-ups and corruption. Without his help, The Washington Post’s reporters probably could not have traced the Watergate burglars to the Nixon White House and begun their exposure of the bribes, bag jobs, wire taps and dirty tricks that eventually destroyed the Nixon administration.

Supporters of the Bush administration have been campaigning to persuade the press and the public that anonymous sources are inherently bad. They landed hard on both Mr. Rather and Newsweek. The result – and no doubt the aim – of the attacks was not only to punish them but to distract attention from the real issues involved.

Knight Ridder Newspapers reporters had relied almost exclusively on unidentified sources for a series of 60 stories starting in September 2002 on the administration’s distortion of intelligence to justify war with Iraq and its failure to plan adequately for the aftermath of war. The stories were so incisive that some papers in the chain would not publish them. But they turned out to be true.

Another leak disclosed that top U.S. military officers estimate that the U.S. troops must stay in Iraq for 10 years. Some future Deep Throat may leak other secrets like the long-sought list of corporations that secretly advised Vice President Dick Cheney’s task force on energy policy.

There is no question that secret informants and whistleblowers sometimes have their own agendas, such as private scores to settle. Mark Felt’s critics complain that he had reason to resent Mr. Nixon for not naming him to succeed J. Edgar Hoover to head the FBI. But the real question is whether the information is sound. A good reporter should take into account the informer’s agenda and judge the value of his information.

Knight Ridder and other news organizations are devising rules to reduce the use of anonymous sources, but few are going as far as Alan Neuharth, founder of USA today, who says they should be abandoned altogether. When Ben Bradlee was editor of The Washington Post, he tried that but had to drop it within a few days.

Like them or not, anonymous sources are here to stay. They provide a safety valve and lubricant that let underlings disclose faults and oversights without losing their jobs. Without them, a tightly disciplined administration can be blind to its own mistakes. With them and with the proper verification, the public – and even an administration that tries to find and punish leakers – can be the true beneficiaries.