Nixon Biographer Accidentally Interviews ‘Deep Throat’ Star Linda Lovelace

Story by Emily Wilson 

| Published Jan 26, 2010

After nearly 20 years of researching Richard Nixon, biographer James Charlton has completed his manuscript about the life of the former U.S. president. However this edition isn’t quite ready to be published, “I made a small error,” Charlton said, “apparently I interviewed the wrong deep throat but c’mon, how many people have that nickname?”

Charlton’s newest book was in the beginning stages of printing when his editor Arie Winther noticed a few discrepancies. “To be fair the Watergate informant was named after that porn star,” Winther said. Fans of classic erotic cinema will remember “that porn star” as Linda Lovelace who played the leading role in the 1972 hard core pornographic film Deep Throat.

“I wasn’t going to say anything at first, we’d already pushed back the release date of this book and I thought maybe no one would notice but then I kept reading and I realized it was pretty apparent, let’s just say explanation of how Deep Throat got involved in the business is pretty explicit.” Winther said, “I’m not sure how you become an FBI agent but I’m pretty sure the job interview doesn’t involve preforming fellatio on the director in a unisex bathroom.”

Charlton admits there were a few signs that Lovelace wasn’t the Deep Throat he was looking for. “She was so modest when I asked her how it felt to be an important part of American history, she just said the pleasure was all hers,” Charlton said.

“Plus one time I met her at the parking garage where the meetings allegedly took place and asked her to show me how it all went down, things got pretty freaky.”

Charlton has gone back to working on his book and sees the whole mishap as a valuable lesson, “Looking back I feel like I should have known I had the wrong person, but hindsight is always 20/20. I’m trying not to beat myself up over it, I feel like anyone could have made the same mistake”