Deep Throat is Mark Felt

The second of the FBI was the person who leaked the information.

From the AP

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.

MSNBC

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.

ABC News

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