One of the greatest political and journalistic mysteries of the past century may have been solved after a former FBI official outed himself as ”Deep Throat”, the source of the Washington Post‘s explosive revelations about president Richard Nixon’s Watergate cover-up.
W Mark Felt (91) who was second-in-command at the FBI in the early 1970s, told Vanity Fair magazine he was the key source for the Washington Post reporters whose story brought down the Nixon presidency.
”I’m the guy they used to call Deep Throat,” he told lawyer John D O’Connor, the author of the Vanity Fair article.
The magazine said Felt had kept the secret even from his family until 2002, when he confided to a friend that he had been journalist Bob Woodward’s source.
Felt, who lives in California with his daughter, said he had kept his role in the historic Washington Post report a secret because he did not think it was anything to be proud of.
”I don’t think [being Deep Throat] was anything to be proud of,” Felt told his son Mark Jr, at one point, according to the article in Vanity Fair. ”You [should] not leak information to anyone.”
But according to Vanity Fair Felt’s family convinced him that his actions during Watergate were heroic and that he should come forward.
His daughter had spoken to Woodward — who visited Felt in 1999 — by phone more than half a dozen times to discuss a potential joint announcement.
Her suspicions were raised after she spotted Woodward paying a visit to her father’s home and ultimately persuaded her father to break his silence before he died.
”Aware of his own weaknesses, he readily conceded his flaws,” Woodward and Bernstein wrote, noting that Deep Throat was a whisky-drinking smoker. ”He was, incongruously, an incurable gossip, careful to label rumour for what it was, but fascinated by it… He could be rowdy, drink too much, overreach. He was not good at concealing his feelings, hardly ideal for a man in his position.”
In an article in the Washington Post in 1997, commemorating the 25th anniversary of the paper’s original reports, Felt was named as one of eight prime suspects. The Post described Felt as being ”known by reporters as someone willing to take their calls”.
He was one of a number of FBI suspects, whose motive in leaking information may have been to protect the bureau’s investigation and stop interference from the White House.
Many people thought it was more likely to have been the acting director of the FBI, Patrick Gray.
Felt’s potential motive was said to be anger at being passed over when Gray, who was 10 years his junior, was chosen to succeed J Edgar Hoover in 1970.
In 1999 it was rumoured that Woodward had visited Felt’s house, and reported that Bernstein’s son had told another boy that Felt was Deep Throat — an allegation denied by Bernstein and his former wife.
Felt always denied he was the mysterious source, arguing that no single person could have known what Deep Throat knew.
Over the years, many names — some of them fanciful — have been suggested as potential candidates, only to be discounted when they died.
Others include assistant attorney general Henry Peterson, deputy White House counsel Fred Fielding, and ABC newswoman Diane Sawyer, who then worked in the White House press office.
Earlier this year one Watergate researcher said Deep Throat was George Bush senior, the US president from 1989 to 1993 and a UN ambassador in the early 1970s.
Bernstein told WABC-TV in New York: ”We’re not going to say anything at this time. When the person is deceased we will identify him.”
As recently as February, the net seemed to be closing in on Deep Throat when it emerged that he was close to death.
Woodward, the Washington Post reporter to whom Deep Throat leaked Watergate information on Republican dirty tricks, had confided with the paper’s editor that his source was ill.
”We’ll all know one day very soon,” the former White House counsel, John Deantt wrote, wrote in the Los Angeles Times in early February. ”Ben Bradlee, former executive editor of the Post and one of the few people to whom Woodward confided his source’s identity, has publicly acknowledged that he has written Throat’s obituary.” – Guardian Unlimited Â