Woodward's Flowerpot Signal

Bob Woodward’s Flowerpot Signal was a discreet visual system for arranging secret meetings with Deep Throat, turning an ordinary flowerpot into a practical link between reporter and source. Its changing form reflects the pressures surrounding their contact: when Woodward’s apartment changed, so did the signal, and a missed meeting showed how much the clandestine arrangement depended on small, carefully managed details.

The Balcony Signal

At one meeting, Woodward moved the red-flagged flowerpot on his balcony to signal Deep Throat. The appointment carried unusual weight: Woodward anticipated the grimmest meeting they had ever had. After falling asleep at home and waking at 1:30 in the morning, he was angry at being late. He decided not to drive, judging it too risky after he and Carl Bernstein had already been incautious. Instead, he put on warm clothes, hurried down the back stairs, walked fifteen blocks, found a cab, and reached the garage shortly before 3:00 A.M. Deep Throat was waiting in a dark corner.

The flowerpot’s function was simple, but using it depended on Woodward being able to signal from his home and then reach a separate meeting place without drawing attention. Its ordinariness suited that purpose: the cue was embedded in a domestic object, while the resulting appointment required a deliberately indirect journey.

A Signal for a New Apartment

After the election, Woodward moved from a cramped efficiency apartment to a two-bedroom flat in a restored building two blocks from The Washington Post. The new apartment had no balcony, so the old flowerpot-and-flag signal could not be used. Woodward had also heard neighbors say that newspapers were constantly being taken from outside their doors. Before choosing the flat, he had inspected less obvious features of the building, including back stairways, fire exits, and window sills.

At the end of an unhappy meeting concerning H. R. Haldeman, Woodward and Deep Throat adopted a one-way replacement system: Woodward would initiate contact by placing his yellow kitchen wastepaper basket upside down on the fire escape. The arrangement was not immediately put into regular use. Woodward turned the basket upside down only once, in late December, to tell Deep Throat that he was moving again. At their brief meeting, Deep Throat offered little information and advised Woodward to wait and see how the Watergate trial developed.

Woodward soon found a top-floor apartment in a high-rise in Southwest Washington, near the Potomac. With a new flowerpot, the balcony-based method returned. The shifts from flowerpot to wastepaper basket and back again show that the signal was not a fixed code independent of its setting: it had to fit the architecture of Woodward’s home and the practical conditions of his contact with Deep Throat.

Missed Appointment and Alternative Contact

Shortly before L. Patrick Gray’s confirmation hearings were to begin, the reporters decided that Woodward should move the flowerpot on his balcony. Woodward went to the garage that night, but Deep Throat did not appear. The source had said that, when unable to make an appointment, he would leave a message on a particular ledge. Woodward, who was five feet ten inches tall, could not reach it; he found a piece of old conduit pipe and used it to search for the note.

The note instructed him to meet Deep Throat the next night at a bar Woodward had never heard of. Unable to find the place in the phone book, Woodward called directory assistance from a pay phone in his apartment building and obtained its address on the outskirts of the city. He then approached by foot and cab, walking for fifteen minutes before taking another cab to within a few blocks. The destination proved to be a tavern in an old wooden house converted into a saloon for truckers and construction workers. Woodward entered in casual clothes, saw Deep Throat sitting alone at a side table, and sat down across from him. The flowerpot initiated the attempted contact; when the meeting failed, the ledge, improvised tool, note, and staged journey supplied a backup route.