Ex-FBI official says he's 'Deep Throat'

[Figs]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8047258/
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Ex-FBI official says he's 'Deep Throat'

Magazine quotes him as saying he was 'doing his duty'MSNBC staff and news service reports

Updated: 12:23 p.m. ET May 31, 2005

W. Mark Felt, who retired from the FBI after rising to its second most senior position, has identified himself as the "Deep Throat" source quoted by The Washington Post to break the Watergate scandal that led to President Nixon's resignation, Vanity Fair magazine said Tuesday.


"I'm the guy they used to call Deep Throat," he told John D. O'Connor, the author of Vanity Fair's exclusive that appears in its July issue.

Felt, now 91 and living in Santa Rosa, Calif., reportedly gave O'Connor permission to disclose his identity.

"The Felt family cooperated fully, providing old photographs for the story and agreeing to sit for portraits," Vanity Fair stated in a press release.

[FORD]

I thought JimmyJeff GannonGuckert was Deep Throat?

[DrMaddVibe]

I thought it was Alexander "I'm In Charge Now" Haig.

[The Scatologist]

In other news, Joe Thunder today revealed that he deep throats.


Could this be the next Rob Halford being gay?

[Nickdfresh]

CNN reports that BOB WOODWARD's writing an article for Thursday's WASHINGTON POST.

I think this **EDIT** is confirmed.

[Warham]

Monica is 'deep throat'.

[Nickdfresh]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2005/05/31/GR2005053100747.gif
Washington Post Confirms Felt Was 'Deep Throat'
Woodward, Bernstein and Bradlee Reveal Former FBI Official as Secret Watergate Source

By William Branigin and David Von Drehle
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, May 31, 2005; 6:33 PM

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.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/photo/2005/05/31/PH2005053100856.jpg
W. Mark Felt appears on CBS'
W. Mark Felt appears on CBS' "Face The Nation" on Aug.30, 1976. The former FBI official was the storied Washington Post source known as "Deep Throat." (AP)
Revisiting Watergate

The Vanity Fair story said Felt had admitted his "historic, anonymous role" following years of denial.

In a statement today, Woodward and Bernstein said, "W. Mark Felt was 'Deep Throat' and helped us immeasurably in our Watergate coverage. However, as the record shows, many other sources and officials assisted us and other reporters for the hundreds of stories that were written in The Washington Post about Watergate."

Felt's guidance to Woodward -- provided on "deep background" in secret meetings -- helped keep public attention focused on the June 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington's Watergate office and apartment complex, and on a subsequent cover-up effort. This ultimately led to a congressional investigation that revealed the role of Nixon and a number of his top aides. Under threat of impeachment, Nixon resigned in 1974.

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 said today, "The thing that stuns me is that the goddamn secret has lasted this long." He was the Post's executive editor during Watergate and now is a vice president of the newspaper.

Woodward agreed to confirm his source's identity despite skepticism that the former FBI official was competent to decide to change the ground rules of their secret relationship. Felt has been in declining health since suffering a stroke in 2001.

Woodward, now a Post assistant managing editor, said he is writing an article for Thursday's newspaper that will provide a personal account of his and Bernstein's experience in covering Watergate. Bernstein left the Post in 1976 and is now a freelance writer.

Woodward said Felt helped The Post at a time of tense relations between the White House and much of the FBI hierarchy. He said the Watergate break-in came shortly after the death of legendary FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, Felt's mentor, and that Felt and other bureau officials wanted to see an FBI veteran promoted to succeed Hoover.

Felt himself had hopes that he would be the next FBI director, but Nixon instead appointed an administration insider, assistant attorney general L. Patrick Gray, to the post.

Bradlee, in an interview this afternoon, said that knowing that "Deep Throat" was a high-ranking FBI official helped him feel confident about the information that the paper was publishing about Watergate. He said that he knew the "positional identity" of "Deep Throat" as the Post was breaking its Watergate stories and that he learned his name within a couple of weeks after Nixon's resignation.

"The number-two guy at the FBI, that was a pretty good source," he said.

W. Mark Felt appears on CBS'
W. Mark Felt appears on CBS' "Face The Nation" on Aug.30, 1976. The former FBI official was the storied Washington Post source known as "Deep Throat." (AP)

"I knew the paper was on the right track," Bradlee said. The "quality of the source" and the soundness of his guidance made him sure of that, he said.

"We made only one mistake . . . and that had nothing to do with 'Deep Throat,' " Bradlee said, referring to an error in reporting grand jury testimony.

Bradlee said that over the years, "it was interesting to watch people flounder around with odd choices" about the identity of "Deep Throat," a nickname borrowed from the title of a pornographic film. Although he knew the source's identity, Bradlee said, "I've never met Felt. I wouldn't know him if I fell on him."

In a family statement released today, Felt's grandson, Nick Jones, said, "The family believes my grandfather, Mark Felt Sr., is a great American hero who went well above and beyond the call of duty at much risk to himself to save his country from a horrible injustice." The statement added, "We all sincerely hope the country will see him this way as well."

Jones said in the statement, "My grandfather is pleased he is being honored for his role as 'Deep Throat' with his friend Bob Woodward. As he recently told my mother, 'I guess people used to think "Deep Throat" was a criminal, but now they think he was a hero.'"

In a subsequent appearance before reporters outside their Santa Rosa, Calif., home, Felt's daughter, Joan Felt, and her son Nick said the family, including Mark Felt, feels relieved now that the secret is out.

"We're so proud of him, not only for his role in history . . . but for the person he is," Joan Felt said of her father. She said he is aware that Woodward has confirmed he was "Deep Throat" and is pleased about the disclosure. She said Felt "always remembers Bob very fondly."

"We're all relieved," Joan Felt said. She said her father is "in good health" and "says he's going to live to be a centenarian." Asked how he is feeling today, she said, "He's happy. He's grinning from ear to ear."

"He's always lived with honor," Joan Felt said. "He's a great patriot."

The Vanity Fair article, by California attorney John D. O'Connor, described Felt as conflicted over his role in the Watergate revelations and over whether he should publicly reveal that he was the anonymous source whose identity has been a closely guarded secret for more than three decades.

"On several occasions he confided to me, 'I'm the guy they used to call "Deep Throat," ' " O'Connor wrote. The author wrote that Felt "still has qualms about his actions, but he also knows that historic events compelled him to behave as he did: standing up to an executive branch intent on obstructing his agency's pursuit of the truth."

The article concluded, "Felt, having long harbored the ambivalent emotions of pride and self-reproach, has lived for more than 30 years in a prison of his own making, a prison built upon his strong moral principles and his unwavering loyalty to country and cause. But now, buoyed by his family's revelations and support, he need feel imprisoned no longer."

Watergate Revisted (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/31/AR2005053100655.html)

[Unchainme]

"In birmingham they love the governor
Now we all did what we could do
Now watergate does not bother me
Does your conscience bother you?"
Tell the truth" Sorry I immediatly thought of Skynryd's lryics when they announced this. SWEET HOME ALABAMA WHERE THE SKIES ARE SO BLUE! But this is pretty cool that they found out who this guy was. I always thought it Forrest Gump LOL.

[Big Train]

This is amusing to me. He was thought to be by many as Deep Throat. Skeptics rule " The simplest explanation is usually correct". He was the most obvious and in the end, WAS the guy. The conspiracy nuts around here should take this episode as a lesson.

On a more juvenile note, I wonder if 30 years from now Clinton will step forward as "Cigar Pussy", Rumsfeld as "DP", Bush as "Money Shot", Gore as "Impotent Dick" etc...

[Nickdfresh]

How Mark Felt Became 'Deep Throat'
As a Friendship -- and the Watergate Story -- Developed, Source's Motives Remained a Mystery to Woodward

By Bob Woodward
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 2, 2005; Page A01

In 1970, when I was serving as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy and assigned to Adm. Thomas H. Moorer, the chief of naval operations, I sometimes acted as a courier, taking documents to the White House.

One evening I was dispatched with a package to the lower level of the West Wing of the White House, where there was a little waiting area near the Situation Room. It could be a long wait for the right person to come out and sign for the material, sometimes an hour or more, and after I had been waiting for a while a tall man with perfectly combed gray hair came in and sat down near me. His suit was dark, his shirt white and his necktie subdued. He was probably 25 to 30 years older than I and was carrying what looked like a file case or briefcase. He was very distinguished-looking and had a studied air of confidence, the posture and calm of someone used to giving orders and having them obeyed instantly.

I could tell he was watching the situation very carefully. There was nothing overbearing in his attentiveness, but his eyes were darting about in a kind of gentlemanly surveillance. After several minutes, I introduced myself. "Lieutenant Bob Woodward," I said, carefully appending a deferential "sir."

"Mark Felt," he said.

I began telling him about myself, that this was my last year in the Navy and I was bringing documents from Adm. Moorer's office. Felt was in no hurry to explain anything about himself or why he was there.

This was a time in my life of considerable anxiety, even consternation, about my future. I had graduated in 1965 from Yale, where I had a Naval Reserve Officers' Training Corps scholarship that required that I go into the Navy after getting my degree. After four years of service, I had been involuntarily extended an additional year because of the Vietnam War.

During that year in Washington, I expended a great deal of energy trying to find things or people who were interesting. I had a college classmate who was going to clerk for Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, and I made an effort to develop a friendship with that classmate. To quell my angst and sense of drift, I was taking graduate courses at George Washington University. One course was in Shakespeare, another in international relations.

When I mentioned the graduate work to Felt, he perked up immediately, saying he had gone to night law school at GW in the 1930s before joining -- and this is the first time he mentioned it -- the FBI. While in law school, he said, he had worked full time for a senator -- his home-state senator from Idaho. I said that I had been doing some volunteer work at the office of my congressman, John Erlenborn, a Republican from the district in Wheaton, Ill., where I had been raised.

So we had two connections -- graduate work at GW and work with elected representatives from our home states.

Felt and I were like two passengers sitting next to each other on a long airline flight with nowhere to go and nothing really to do but resign ourselves to the dead time. He showed no interest in striking up a long conversation, but I was intent on it. I finally extracted from him the information that he was an assistant director of the FBI in charge of the inspection division, an important post under Director J. Edgar Hoover. That meant he led teams of agents who went around to FBI field offices to make sure they were adhering to procedures and carrying out Hoover's orders. I later learned that this was called the "goon squad."

Here was someone at the center of the secret world I was only glimpsing in my Navy assignment, so I peppered him with questions about his job and his world. As I think back on this accidental but crucial encounter -- one of the most important in my life -- I see that my patter probably verged on the adolescent. Since he wasn't saying much about himself, I turned it into a career-counseling session.

I was deferential, but I must have seemed very needy. He was friendly, and his interest in me seemed somehow paternal. Still the most vivid impression I have is that of his distant but formal manner, in most ways a product of Hoover's FBI. I asked Felt for his phone number, and he gave me the direct line to his office...

The Rest (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/01/AR2005060102124.html?referrer=email)

[DrMaddVibe]

What 'bout Linda Lovelace?