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| Former FBI deputy director Mark Felt, seen here
31 May 2005, was hailed as a hero and denounced as a villain after
confessing to being the Watergate scandal's 'Deep Throat' -- a
disclosure that startled even President George W. Bush
(AFP) |
Breaking a silence of 30 years, former FBI official W. Mark Felt
stepped forward Tuesday as "Deep Throat," the secret Washington Post
source who helped bring down President Richard M. Nixon during the
Watergate scandal.
Within hours, the newspaper confirmed his assertion.
"It's the last secret" of the story, said Benjamin
C. Bradlee, the newspaper's top editor at the time the riveting
political drama played out
three decades ago.
The revelation tumbled out in stages during the day - first when a
lawyer quoted Felt in a magazine article as having said he was the source;
then when the former FBI man's family issued a statement hailing him as a
"great American hero." Within hours, the newspaper confirmed Felt's
assertion, ending one of the most enduring mysteries in American politics
and journalism.
"I'm the guy they used to call "Deep Throat,' " Felt, the former No. 2
official at the FBI, was quoted as saying in Vanity Fair.
He kept his secret even from his family for almost three decades before
his declaration.
Felt, now 91, lives in Santa Rosa, Calif., and is said to be in poor
mental and physical health because of a stroke. His family did not
immediately make him available for comment, asking the media to respect
his privacy "in view of his age and health."
A grandson, Nick Jones, read a statement. "The family believes that 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," it said.
In a statement issued later, Watergate reporters
Bob Woodward and Carl 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."
Among other things, "Deep Throat" urged the reporters to follow the
money trail - from the financing of burglars who broke into Democratic
National Committee offices to the financing of Nixon's re-election
campaign. The reporters and Bradlee had kept the identity of "Deep Throat"
secret at his request, saying his name would be revealed upon his death.
But then Felt revealed it himself.
Even the existence of "Deep Throat," nicknamed for an X-rated movie of
the early 1970s, was kept secret for a time. Woodward and Bernstein
revealed their reporting had been aided by a Nixon administration source
in their best-selling book "All the President's Men."
A hit movie starring Robert Redford as Woodward, Dustin Hoffman as
Bernstein and Hal Holbrook as "Deep Throat" was made in 1976. In the film,
Holbrook's shadowy, cigarette-smoking character met Redford in dark
parking garages and provided clues about the scandal.
The source's identity had sparked endless speculation. Nixon chief of
staff Alexander M. Haig Jr., acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray III,
White House Counsel John W. Dean III and his deputy, Fred Fielding, and
former Nixon deputy counsel John Sears were among those mentioned.
Felt himself was mentioned several times over the years as a candidate
for "Deep Throat," but he regularly denied that he was.
"I would have done better," Felt told the Hartford Courant in 1999. "I
would have been more effective. "Deep Throat' didn't exactly bring the
White House crashing down, did he?"
Felt had hopes that he would be the next FBI director, but Nixon
instead appointed Gray, an administration insider who was an assistant
attorney general.
The Vanity Fair article, by California lawyer John D. O'Connor,
described Felt as conflicted over his role in the Watergate revelations
and over whether he should publicly reveal who he was.
A Nixon associate who wound up behind bars, G. Gordon Liddy, said he
did not consider Felt a hero for going to the Post reporters.
"If he were interested in performing his duty, he would have gone to
the grand jury with his information," Liddy, who was finance counsel at
Nixon's re-election committee and helped direct the break-in, said on CNN.
According to the article, Felt once told his son, Mark Jr., that he did
not believe being the Post's key confidential source on Watergate "was
anything to be proud of. . . . You (should) not leak information to
anyone."
Felt was convicted in the 1970s for authorizing illegal break-ins at
homes of people associated with the radical Weather Underground. He was
pardoned by President Ronald Reagan in 1981.
(Agencies) | 
Updated: 2005-06-02 10:42
