Politics

Watergate: Deep Throat

W. Mark Felt appears on CBS’ “Face The Nation” in Washington Sunday Aug.30, 1976. The former FBI official claims he was “Deep Throat,” the long-anonymous source who leaked secrets about President Nixon’s Watergate coverup to The Washington Post, Vanity Fair magazine reported Tuesday, May 31, 2005.

Vanity Fair reports that W. Mark Felt, second-in-command at the FBI in the early 1970s, was “Deep Throat,” the long-anonymous source who leaked secrets about President Nixon’s Watergate coverup to The Washington Post.

W. Mark Felt, 91, kept the secret even from his family until 2002, when he confided to a friend that he had been Post reporter Bob Woodward’s source, the magazine said.

“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 in a news release, the AP reports.

With all the speculation which preceded the announcement it seems anticlimatic now.

But, thank God for a free press and the first amendment which shields reporters who avail themselves of anonymous sources.

Update #1

Washington Post confirms that Felt was “Deep Throat”. Read it here:

The Washington Post today confirmed that W. Mark Felt, a former number-two official at the FBI, was “Deep Throat,” the secretive source who provided information that helped unravel the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s and contributed to the resignation of president Richard M. Nixon.

The confirmation came from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the two Washington Post reporters who broke the Watergate story, and their former top editor, Benjamin C. Bradlee. The three spoke after Felt’s family and Vanity Fair magazine identified the 91-year-old Felt, now a retiree in California, as the long-anonymous source who provided crucial guidance for some of the newspaper’s groundbreaking Watergate stories.

Joan Felt and her father W. Mark Felt wave to the media gathered in front of their home Tuesday, May 31, 2005, in Santa Rosa, Calif. Felt claims he was “Deep Throat,” the long-anonymous source who leaked secrets about President Nixon’s Watergate coverup to The Washington Post, his family said Tuesday.

Woodward, Bernstein and Bradlee had kept the identity of “Deep Throat” secret at the source’s request, saying his name would be revealed upon his death. “We’ve kept that secret because we keep our word,” Woodward said.

But with the Vanity Fair article and the family’s statement, the three decided today to break their silence.

Bradlee, who was the Post’s executive editor during Watergate, said today, “The thing that stuns me is that the goddamn secret has lasted this long.”

Isn’t that the truth!

Update #2

Patterico thinks it really was Lloyd Bridges

Close but no cigar!

Update #3

“Deep Throat” Revealed

Slate magazine columnist Tim Noah was online Tuesday, May 31, at 5 p.m. ET to discuss the Vanity Fair article naming former FBI official W. Mark Felt as “Deep Throat,” the figure who leaked secrets about President Richard Nixon’s Watergate cover-up.

Read the Transcript here including the fact that Felt was once pardoned by President Ronald Reagan.