I was as shocked as anyone to learn that former FBI deputy director W. Mark Felt is Deep Throat. Deep Throat is the patriarch of whistleblowers--the quintessential anonymous source so under attack these days. What shocked me even more was Felt's timing: While his advanced age is an obvious reason for revealing himself as the Washington Post's source, all other indicators counsel against it. Ours is an Administration obsessed with secrecy and loyalty. It is the most opaque, anti-leak, truth-phobic Administration in decades. The Justice Department, where I used to work, even created an interagency anti-leak task force under Attorney General John Ashcroft to plug the holes. The executive branch's punishment of whistleblowers is notorious and unmerciful.

My story is not as well-known as that of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who publicized the fact that there was little evidence that Saddam Hussein had sought uranium in Africa, and whose wife's career was destroyed through the White House revelation that she was an undercover CIA operative. Or that of former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who revealed in a book that an invasion and occupation of Iraq had been planned by the Administration before September 11, 2001. Or that of Richard Clarke, the White House counterterrorism chief who wrote a book and testified before the 9/11 Commission about George W. Bush's lackadaisical response in 2001 to repeated warnings of an impending terrorist attack. Nor is my story in the same league as that of former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki, who told Congress that several hundred thousand troops would be required to conquer and occupy Iraq--an action that ended his career. Or that of Richard Foster, the Medicare system's chief actuary, who was threatened with dismissal if he revealed to Congress the likely cost of the Administration's prescription drug plan.

Rather, I am twisting in the wind with lesser-known people, like US Park Police Chief Teresa Chambers, who was fired for saying her understaffed department had to curtail critical patrols beyond the national Mall because of Interior Department orders requiring more officers to guard downtown national shrines, and FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, who was fired for saying the division was riddled with incompetence and corruption.

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