Watergate's "Deep Throat" comes forward?

[Rain Man]

Hmm. Whadd'ya think?



http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8047258/

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, 2005W. 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.

Reporter won't confirm or deny
Felt said he was "only doing his duty" and did not seek to bring down Nixon over the cover-up of a break-in at Democratic Party offices in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C.

Carl Bernstein, who with Bob Woodward broke the story as Washington Post reporters, issued a statement neither denying nor confirming Felt's claim. Bernstein stated he and Woodward would be keeping their pledge to reveal the source only once that person dies.

NBC News commentator Chris Matthews, who wrote a book about Watergate, said he wasn't surprised, adding that Felt "has always been the leading suspect."

The last Felt boomlet was in 1999, when a high school senior in New York claimed that Bernstein's son let the secret slip at a summer camp.

Honor and money?
In the article, O'Connor reports that Felt's children, Joan and Mark Jr., urged him to go public after he revealed his secret to them in 2002.

Felt argued with them, O'Connor writes, saying he didn't want the story out there.

“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.”

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."

O'Connor adds that Felt finally agreed, saying "that's a good reason" even though Mark Jr. recalls him as saying "he wasn't particularly interested" in disclosing the secret.

Other names raised in past
Felt is one of a number of people who have been named over the years as the source whose disclosures helped bring down the Nixon presidency. Others include Assistant Attorney General Henry Peterson, deputy White House counsel Fred Fielding, and even ABC newswoman Diane Sawyer, who then worked in the White House press office.

In 1999, Felt denied he was the man.

“I would have done better,” Felt told The Hartford Courant. “I would have been more effective. Deep Throat didn’t exactly bring the White House crashing down, did he?”

[J Diddy]

I saw a movie called deep throat once.

It didn't have anything to do with watergate, though.

[siberian khatru]

I saw a movie called deep throat once.

It didn't have anything to do with watergate, though.

In both cases, though, a lot of people got screwed.

[Amnorix]

Definitely possible. Hoover and his, ahem, boyfriend Clyde Tolson had run the FBI for quite a long time. Shortly before Watergate, Hoover dies, Tolson quits, and Felt, who was a longtime #3 if memory serves, moves up to #2 under a guy who was clueless about cleaning up the FBI.

[Mr. Kotter]

Linda Lovelace was hot, back in the day...heh.

[Amnorix]

In both cases, though, a lot of people got screwed.

All of whom no doubt deserved it...

[Ultra Peanut]

Definitely possible. Hoover and his, ahem, boyfriend Clyde Tolson Would it be wrong of me to assume which one gave the other head more frequently judging solely on their names?

[Baby Lee]

Any concern that this guy was involved in criminal investigations when he leaked this?

[Eleazar]

Shouldn't be hard to corroberate if true. I thought I remembered seeing that Woodward/Berenstein were only supposed to keep it secret until the source was dead. If he volunteers, then they should be able to validate it right?

The book is a very interesting read, I thought, if anyone has not checked it out.

[Jenson71]

Linda Lovelace was hot, back in the day...heh.

John Dean was pretty hot as well..

[Baby Lee]

Shouldn't be hard to corroberate if true. I thought I remembered seeing that Woodward/Berenstein were only supposed to keep it secret until the source was dead. If he volunteers, then they should be able to validate it right?

The book is a very interesting read, I thought, if anyone has not checked it out.
http://www.latsa.com/images/products/BK%2011%20BERENSTAIN%20BEARS%20GO%20TO%20THE%20DOCTOR.JPG
:shrug:

I know, I know. It's Berenstain.

[Amnorix]

Any concern that this guy was involved in criminal investigations when he leaked this?

Ab-so-freakin'-lutely.

[J Diddy]

All of whom no doubt deserved it...


No porn stars don't deserve what they get.

They should leave some of that for the simple folks.

[Rain Man]

What kind of investigations? I'm not following.

[Baby Lee]

What kind of investigations? I'm not following.
The information he provided the press came from his knowledge of active federal investigations of the matter.

[Amnorix]

Rumors and facts swirl around Watergate, Hoover and the FBI like an unholy tornado, but some rumors have it that senior FBI members were very annoyed at the White House for (a) interfering/trying to exert control over the FBI following Hoover's death, and/or (b) interfering with the Watergate Investigation.

Rumor had it that some may have been disgruntled that an outsider was brought in as the new director, rather than having an insider elevated to the post.

In any event, the FBI was investigating Watergate, which was a simple burlary of a sensitive location, long before the Nixon WH came crashing down.

If Felt leaked info derived from an FBI investigation, I'd suspect that could result in several felony indictments. Being 91 years old, however....

[patteeu]

Any concern that this guy was involved in criminal investigations when he leaked this?

Yep, that's a good point.

[Amnorix]

Felt should write a book, if he is Deep Throat, before he kicks it. He could resolve some serious questions.

Doubt he will, though.

[Rain Man]

If Felt leaked info derived from an FBI investigation, I'd suspect that could result in several felony indictments. Being 91 years old, however....

A life sentence? Or two years, whichever comes first?


I see what you guys mean now. I thought you were talking about unrelated criminal investigations.

[Ultra Peanut]

<img src="http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Video/050531/n_matthews_deepthroat_050531.275w.jpg" style="width: 271px; height: 204px; border: 0" alt="" />

"We'll be back after this commercial break. Stay tuned to The Price is Right!"

[ChiTown]

<img src="http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Video/050531/n_matthews_deepthroat_050531.275w.jpg" style="width: 271px; height: 204px; border: 0" alt="" />

"We'll be back after this commercial break. Stay tuned to The Price is Right!"

And remember to have your dogs and cats spade and neutered............

[Mr. Kotter]

Pics of Felt in his underwear will soon be posted by British rags....

[Goapics1]

I saw a movie called deep throat once.

It didn't have anything to do with watergate, though.
ROFL

[chiefqueen]

I always thought Deep Throat was Ben Stein. Why else would a high ranking offical transform himself into a comedic figure?

[memyselfI]

Felt should write a book, if he is Deep Throat, before he kicks it. He could resolve some serious questions.

Doubt he will, though.

I don't, I bet it's written and already has a publisher pending release upon his death...

[Rain Man]

Washington Post just confirmed it via Woodward and Bernstein.

I'll bet they're ticked off that they didn't get to break the scoop themselves.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8047258/?GT1=6657

Ex-FBI official:
I'm ‘Deep Throat’
Washington Post confirms
claim by agency's
former deputy director
The Associated Press
Updated: 7:07 p.m. ET May 31, 2005The Washington Post said Tuesday that the former deputy director of the FBI, W. Mark Felt, was “Deep Throat,” the confidential source known as who provided the newspaper information that led to President Nixon’s eventual resignation.

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The paper made its announcement on its Web site after Felt, 91 and living in California, talked to a lawyer who wrote a magazine article for Vanity Fair magazine.

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 Bradlee.

“The No. 2 guy from the FBI, that was a pretty good source,” said Bradlee, who had been the key editor at the Post in the Watergate era.

“I knew the paper was on the right track” in its investigative stories, Bradlee said, citing the “quality of the source.”

Felt, the second-in-command at the FBI in the early 1970s, kept his secret even from his family for almost three decades before confiding that he was Post reporter Woodward’s source on the Watergate scandal, according to a Vanity Fair article published Tuesday.

‘I'm the guy’
“I’m the guy they used to call Deep Throat,” he was quoted as telling lawyer John D. O’Connor, author of the magazine article.

Felt, who lives in Santa Rosa, Calif., 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 news media to respect his privacy “in view of his age and health.”

Click for related stories
MSNBC.com on 30th anniversary of Nixon's resignation
Timeline: Downfall of a president




Legendary mystery
Woodward, Bernstein and Bradlee had always maintained they would never go public with the identity of Deep Throat until after his death.

Felt’s family members said the account was true.

“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,” a family statement read by grandson Nick Jones said. “We all sincerely hope the country will see him this way as well.”


AP file
Former FBI official W. Mark Felt in 1973.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The existence of Deep Throat, nicknamed for an X-rated movie of the early 1970s, was revealed in Woodward and Bernstein’s 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 would meet Redford in dark parking garages and provide clues about the scandal.

The movie portrayed the cloak-and-dagger methods that Woodward and Deep Throat were said to have employed. When Woodward wanted a meeting, he would position an empty flowerpot containing a red flag on his apartment balcony. When Deep Throat wanted to meet, the hands of a clock would appear written inside Woodward’s copy of The New York Times.

Years of speculation end
The identity of the source has sparked endless speculation over the last three decades. Nixon chief of staff Alexander Haig, White House press aide Diane Sawyer, White House counsel John Dean and speechwriter Pat Buchanan were among those mentioned as possibilities.

Felt himself was mentioned several times over the years as a candidate for Deep Throat, but he regularly denied that he was the 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?”

Felt had expressed reservations in the past about revealing his identity, and about whether his actions were appropriate for an FBI man, his grandson said.

According to the article, Felt once told his son, Mark Jr., that he did not believe being Deep Throat “was anything to be proud of. ... You (should) not leak information to anyone.”

His family members thought otherwise, and persuaded him to talk about his role in the Watergate scandal, saying he deserves to receive accolades before his death. His daughter, Joan, argued that he could “make enough money to pay some bills, like the debt I’ve run up for the children’s education.”

“As he recently told my mother, ‘I guess people used to think Deep Throat was a criminal, but now they think he’s a hero’,” Jones said.

Groundbreaking reporting
Woodward and Bernstein were the first reporters to link the Nixon White House and the June 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Headquarters in Washington’s Watergate complex.

Nixon, facing almost-certain impeachment for helping to cover up the break-in, resigned in August 1974. Forty government officials and members of Nixon’s re-election committee were convicted on felony charges.

In 2003, Woodward and Bernstein reached an agreement to keep their Watergate papers at the University of Texas at Austin. At the time, the pair said documents naming Deep Throat would be kept secure at an undisclosed location in Washington until the source’s death.

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 Reagan in 1981.

[BIG_DADDY]

How come when I look at meme posting in a deep throat thread I envision some type of camel beasteality? :shrug:

[Rain Man]

Why nickname the source Deep Throat? Did they think it was a good cover to have everyone in the office think they were porn freaks?

"Where you off to?"
"I'm going to see Deep Throat."
"Again? You saw Deep Throat 10 times last week."

It'll probably emerge later that Nixon secretary Rosemary Woods tried to be an informer, but quit in disgust after Woodward and Bernstein kept calling her "cum dumpster."

[patteeu]

Felt should write a book, if he is Deep Throat, before he kicks it. He could resolve some serious questions.

Doubt he will, though.

Something I read, maybe even in this thread (although I'm not going to go back and check) suggested that his family encouraged him to reveal his secret so they could cash in on it instead of leaving all the glory (and economic opportunity) to Woodward et al.

[memyselfI]

It's been an absolute gut bust ROFL to see the CONS reporting this story as Mark Felt was the one 'who betrayed' the POTUS.

Nothing about him actually doing his job in enforcing the law...

he 'BETRAYED' Nixon. ROFL ROFL ROFL

[huskerdooz]

The information he provided the press came from his knowledge of active federal investigations of the matter.

Might it be possible that he didn't particularly care that his boss or someone in the administration was applying pressure to suppress evidence in the case.

Although my political leanings are conservative in nature, I still think that our law enforcement officials and agencies should be non-partisan for the most part. Breaking the law is still breaking the law.

I'm sure Felt thought the only way to bring the truth to light was to leak the information. He himself has said that he wasn't at all sure he had done something to be proud of. Although it is an assumption on my part, I'm sure he felt the only way to insure that the evidence wouldn't be buried or lost, was to do what he did.

[Amnorix]

Something I read, maybe even in this thread (although I'm not going to go back and check) suggested that his family encouraged him to reveal his secret so they could cash in on it instead of leaving all the glory (and economic opportunity) to Woodward et al.


:shrug: That's fine with me. I like Woodward and Bernstein just fine, but it's not like they have a shortage of books and other sources of income. Heck, they might be the wealthiest newspaper journalists EVAH! :)

[Braincase]

No porn stars don't deserve what they get.

They should leave some of that for the simple folks.

Was that a cleverly devised Paris Hilton crack?

[patteeu]

It's been an absolute gut bust ROFL to see the CONS reporting this story as Mark Felt was the one 'who betrayed' the POTUS.

Nothing about him actually doing his job in enforcing the law...

he 'BETRAYED' Nixon. ROFL ROFL ROFL

You've got a dramatic hole in your knowledge base if you think leaking information to reporters is part of a law enforcement officer's job.

[patteeu]

Might it be possible that he didn't particularly care that his boss or someone in the administration was applying pressure to suppress evidence in the case.

Although my political leanings are conservative in nature, I still think that our law enforcement officials and agencies should be non-partisan for the most part. Breaking the law is still breaking the law.

I'm sure Felt thought the only way to bring the truth to light was to leak the information. He himself has said that he wasn't at all sure he had done something to be proud of. Although it is an assumption on my part, I'm sure he felt the only way to insure that the evidence wouldn't be buried or lost, was to do what he did.

Just to name one alternative that was obviously available, Felt could have held a press conference and publicly diseminated the information he had instead of sneaking around in parking garages and providing it to reporters under an agreement of anonymity.

The fact that he himself wasn't proud of what he'd done suggests that he didn't think it was clearly the right thing to do. He was torn over it and he wasn't anything close to an objective observer.

[patteeu]

:shrug: That's fine with me. I like Woodward and Bernstein just fine, but it's not like they have a shortage of books and other sources of income. Heck, they might be the wealthiest newspaper journalists EVAH! :)

I was just adding to what you were saying about Felt having an opportunity to cash in. :)

[Baby Lee]

It's been an absolute gut bust ROFL to see the CONS reporting this story as Mark Felt was the one 'who betrayed' the POTUS.

Nothing about him actually doing his job in enforcing the law...

he 'BETRAYED' Nixon. ROFL ROFL ROFL
Geez, it's like a guy who would prosecute a criminal case in the press would, say, bypass the warrant process to get the goods on a leftist organization.

[Baby Lee]

Don't take the RWNJ's word for it;
Felt, in a 1974 interview with Edward Jay Epstein:

When asked whether, if he were Deep Throat, that would be so terrible. His reply:

" 'It would be terrible. This would completely undermine the reputation that you might have as a loyal, logical employee of the FBI. It just wouldn't fit at all.'

"But wasn't Deep Throat a hero?

"'That's not my view at all. It would be contrary to my responsibility as a loyal employee of the FBI to leak information.' "