RSSDeep Throat is Mark Felt
The second of the FBI was the person who leaked the information.
NEW YORK — A 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 reported Tuesday.
W. Mark Felt, 91, who was second-in-command at the FBI in the early 1970s, 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.
Felt was initially adamant about remaining silent on the subject, thinking disclosures about his past somehow dishonorable.
“I don’t think (being Deep Throat) was anything to be proud of,” Felt indicated to his son, Mark Jr., at one point, according to the article. “You (should) not leak information to anyone.”
Felt is a retiree living in Santa Rosa, Calif., with his daughter, Joan, the magazine said. He could not immediately be reached for comment by The Associated Press. His family members disagreed with their father, feeling that he should receive accolades for his role in Watergate before his death.
The Washington Post had no immediate comment on the report.
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.
Despite years of feelings of negativity and ambivalence, O’Connor said, Felt’s family has helped him realize that “he is a hero” and “that it is good what he did.”
In his 1979 book, “The FBI Pyramid: From the Inside,” Felt flat-out denied that he was the famous source.
“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?”
Former Nixon adviser David Gergen, who was suspected as the confidential source himself, reacted in an e-mail to ABC News. “Yes, am pleased that Mark Felt has finally unmasked himself,” he wrote.
“[N]ot wholly surprising but still it is good to resolve … have always thought that it would be someone with (a) access to investigatory records and (b) a motive. Felt clearly had access; the question becomes one of motive.”
Hat Tip Joe V
If you are looking for the original article, here is the PDF file.
Update [21:55] The Washington Post Confirms Deep Throat is Felt. They figure they got scooped so badly by the rest of the world they had to come clean.
Orrin Kerr over at Volkokh hets a kick out of Bradlee’s quote “The thing that stuns me is that the goddamn secret has lasted this long.”
Update: Wizbang did some historical research.
Right Wing Nut House has the goods.
Captains Quarters has also done some good research. Captain Ed thought that Feld was a leading candidate.
Blagdaddy says BFD
Protein Wisdom finds the list of names not used for Deep Throat
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My names RON G BITCHEZ ____ —-____ I just watched Dave Chapelle season 2 on dvd. But on the Deep Throat topic I once called this girl I knew deep throat, she was very interesting and she tickled my mind and my balls.
Out of the shadows at last – Deep Throat
But Joan is quoted as saying that “Bob Woodward’s gonna get all the glory for this, but we could make at least enough money to pay some bills, like the debt I’ve run up for the kids’ education. Let’s do it for the family.” Now, that is heartwarm…
W. Mark Felt is a great American hero. Prior to J. Edgar Hoover’s death, Nixon had unsuccessfully tried to use the FBI as his personal political police. From the formation of the FBI, only two Presidents, Nixon and Kennedy, had tried to use the FBI in this manner. Mr. Hoover stopped Kennedy and, until his death, stopped Nixon. (A fact acknowledged by Jack Anderson, who was, perhaps, Mr. Hoover’s greatest detractor.)
After Mr. Hoover died, Nixon named L. Patrick Grey as Director of the FBI. Grey was a political hack who would do Nixon’s bidding. Mark Felt as the No. 2 man in the FBI and the top career FBI man, was loyal to Mr. Hoover’s legacy and to the FBI. However, unlike Mr. Hoover, Mark Felt did not have the position, popularity or political power to just tell Nixon “no.” Lacking other means, Mark Felt simply did what he had to do to keep Nixon from misusing the FBI.
Pat Buchanan’s comments were way off base. He has to have known that this was a fight between Nixon, who was intent on using the FBI for political gain, and Mr. Hoover and Mark Felt, who were intent on stopping him. It is sophistry to suggest that Felt only went to Woodward out of spite for not being chosen as Mr. Hoover’s successor.
Comments about Felt authorizing wiretaps of “Vietnam War protestors” are also way off base. They are also offensive. The wiretaps were on members of the Weather Underground. The Weather Underground was a terrorist off-shoot of the SDS, which bombed buildings and killed people. The political and legal environment made it very difficult to track and infiltrate such groups, and it had been only a few years since wiretaps did not require a court order. My uncle was an FBI agent in Soviet Counter-Intelligence at that time, and my father, as a ex-agent, received materials from the FBI and the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI, which I read. I can tell you that the Weather Underground also had strong Soviet ties and a commitment to overthrow the United States Government.
Some may disagree with Mark Felt’s tactics, but it is wrong to impugn his motives in the wiretaps. I would also suggest that what Felt did was absolutely necessary to protect the country from more terrorist bombings. I would also note that the convictions were on appeal when President Reagan pardoned him. There is some doubt as to whether the convictions would have been upheld.
Mark Felt’s book is very enlightening in this matter. In addition, as noted, I am from an FBI family. My father is an ex-agent and my uncle was an agent in Washington, D.C. at the time all of this occurred.
I agree with J. Barrett that Mark Felt did the right thing in leaking to Woodward and Bernstein. The FBI’s integrity and the Watergate investigation was at stake. Indeed, there were mixed motives, since Felt had taken umbrage at being passed over for appointment as FBI Director.
I’ve read that most whistleblowers have mixed motives…some altruistic, some selfish, and I think this is the case with Mark Felt. It’s as though the altruistic motives rationalize the very selfish ones.Yet, Felt did do the country a favor in leaking to the Washington Post.
I’ve purchased and read “The Secret Man” by Woodward. It’s a very good book, though not a whole lot of new, fresh info. It can be used as a textbook case of what can happen when political and bureaucratic goals conflict. Nixon’s efforts to politicize the FBI is an extreme example of politicization of a formerly bureaucratic law enforcement agency, but extreme examples saometimes make the best textbook cases.
I also concur that Felt’s feleony conviction in 1980 was, in fact, on appeal when President Reagan pardoned Felt in April 1981. I have also read that the appeal stood a reasonable chance of being successful and that Felt’s conviction may well have been overturned if Reagan had not pardoned him. We will never know, but it’s not true that Felt was headed straight for jail.
Felt had a great career with the FBI. I’m looking forward to the biography that is due out in early 2006.
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W Mark Feld was consiering a suit against WASHINTONIAN for its libelling himas DEEP THROAT .Secretly feeding information to the news media “went against his priciples’” So he is quoted. Could the reason be he did not sue because “truth” is a complete defense___or was it a matter of principle. When he was indicted and convicted of illegal breakins, he stated that the charges against him were “politically” motivated. He was indicted by the CARTER administration. The charges,he said ,was an appeal to ultra-liberals and black sympathizers by the CARTER ADMINISTRATION. reagan GAVE HIM A pRESIDETIAL PARDON, AFTERrichard nixon TESTIFIED IN HIS BEHALF AS A CHARACTER WITNESS. fELD WAS AND IS not A MAN OF PRINCIPLE. hIS NEW BOOK DUE IN2006 WILL BE PURCHASED BY OTHER PRINCIPLED CITIZENS. i PASS
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