This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2010, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Washington • The author of a new book on muckraker Jack Anderson says Utah billionaire Jon Huntsman Sr. was a secret source for the journalist in uncovering corruption during the Watergate controversy — an allegation denied by Huntsman.
Mark Feldstein, a professor at George Washington University, claimed on KUER's RadioWest program on Tuesday that "Anderson actually had his own Deep Throat who perhaps was more valuable to him than Mark Felt was to Bob Woodward."
Feldstein continued that Anderson told him in interviews for the book that Huntsman was disgusted by the corruption in Richard Nixon's White House and had planned to leave his job as an aide to then-Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman until Anderson convinced him to hang on for a few extra months and continue to leak information.
"[Anderson] argued that [Huntsman would] be more valuable that way than anyway else and he portrayed Huntsman as a very idealistic and noble man willing to take a risk to leak to him some of what was going on in the White House," Feldstein told radio host Doug Fabrizio.
Anderson, who died in 2005, was a Mormon who grew up in Salt Lake City and later ended up on Nixon's enemies list and won a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting of U.S. involvement in the war between India and Pakistan. Feldstein's book, Poisoning the Press, looks at the constant battling between Anderson and Nixon.
But Huntsman Sr. — the father of former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and a chemical magnate-turned-cancer research philanthropist who also is Mormon — says he was not a super-secret source during those years.
"I have no idea what Mark Feldstein is talking about," Huntsman said through a spokesperson. "I never saw Jack Anderson and couldn't have talked with him more than twice in my life while in the White House, or anywhere else. It is hard to believe Jack actually said such a thing, but I absolutely deny it."
Anderson's son, Kevin, an attorney in Salt Lake City, says the truth lies somewhere in the middle from what he knows of his dad's sources during his time in Washington. Kevin Anderson says his father did get information from Huntsman Sr., though he believes it more to be in the form of updated assessments of the White House's situation rather than leaking classified information or documents.
"He wasn't the most important [source] dad had," Kevin Anderson said. "He had a couple other good sources that would actually get him the presidential briefing papers."
The attorney said he does recall his father talking about urging Huntsman to remain at the White House, but more because he hoped someone like him, who wasn't corrupt, would be a good influence there — it wasn't about keeping a source plugged in.
In a 2000 interview with a presidential researcher before Felt was identified as Woodword's source, Huntsman expressed doubt in the existence of "Deep Throat."
"Nobody knew all that much information. I knew as much as anybody during the time I was there," he said in the transcribed interview available in the National Archives' presidential library. He described how in his White House job, all the paperwork went through him and he prepared presidential briefing papers.
"You're right at the hub and would see everything that goes in to the president, everything that comes out of his office, everybody's salary, everybody's office. You're just the hub, that's the way it is. As staff secretary, everything sparks out from that."
Feldstein said he didn't include the Huntsman information in his book because Huntsman isn't as well-known nationally. He noted that Jack Anderson told him Huntsman would be hesitant to talk about the situation because he wouldn't want to betray the trust of some still-living Nixon aides. Feldstein said Huntsman didn't respond to his requests for interviews about the book.