At 91, 'Deep Throat' revealed

WASHINGTON -- Watergate whistleblower Deep Throat played a central role in one of the biggest White House scandals ever, helping bring down a president and inspire a political mystery so famous his nickname earned an entry in Webster's. Thirty years later, the source is secret no more.\nAt age 91, after decades of hiding his role as The Washington Post's tipster from politicians, the public and even his family, former FBI official W. Mark Felt told his secret to a lawyer his family had consulted on whether Felt should come forward.\nThe attorney, John O'Connor, wrote a Vanity Fair magazine article revealing Felt's disclosure, and within hours of the story's release Tuesday, Felt's family and the Post confirmed it.\n"I'm the guy they used to call Deep Throat," Vanity Fair quoted Felt, the former No. 2 man at the FBI, as saying.\n"It's the last secret" of the story, said Ben Bradlee, the paper's top editor at the time the riveting political drama played out three decades ago.\nFelt 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 news media horde gathered outside his home to respect his privacy "in view of his age and health."\n"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," Felt's grandson, Nick Jones, said, reading a family statement. "We all sincerely hope the country will see him this way as well."\nWatergate reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein said in a statement: "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."\nFor many, Felt's admission answers one of the biggest questions in American politics and journalism: Who was the source so fearful he'd be found out by the Nixon White House that he insisted on secret signals rather than phone calls to arrange meetings with the Post reporters, a man portrayed as a cigarette-smoking bundle of nerves by Hal Holbrook in the 1970s movie "All the President's Men"?\n"A good secret deserves a decent burial and this one is going to get a state funeral," said Leonard Garment, acting special counsel to President Nixon after the Watergate story broke and author of the book "In Search of Deep Throat."\nFelt "had the credentials, he had the knowledge, he had a series of motives, he probably was very unhappy with the way the investigation was going," Garment said.\nFor some, it raises new questions.\n"I never thought he was in the loop to have the information," John Dean, counsel in Nixon's White House and the government's top informant in the Watergate investigation, told The Associated Press. "How in the world could Felt have done it alone?"\nDean said he couldn't see how Felt, then in charge of the FBI's day-to-day operations, could have had time to rendezvous with reporters in parking garages and leave clandestine messages to arrange meetings. Perhaps FBI agents helped him, Dean suggested.\nThe scandal that brought Nixon's resignation began with a burglary and attempted tapping of phones in Democratic Party offices at the Watergate office building in Washington during Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign. It went on to include disclosures of covert Nixon administration spying on and retaliating against a host of perceived enemies. The most devastating disclosure was the president's own role in trying to cover-up his administration's involvement.\nIU Political Science Professor Marjorie Hershey said without Felt the Watergate story might never have been broken at all and it did hurt the Republican party.\n"Watergate set the Republicans back nationally for almost a decade," she said. "The public outrage lead to a big increase in the number of democratic members in congress. On the other hand, that setback to the Republicans was what lead them to overhaul and reinvigorate their fundraising and their campaigning."\nDeep Throat urged Woodward and Bernstein to follow the money trail.\nThe resulting campaign finance scandal led Congress to overhaul the nation's campaign finance rules, ordering federal candidates and national party committees to disclose their donors' identities and observe new contribution limits.\nWoodward, Bernstein and Bradlee had kept the identity of Deep Throat secret at his request, saying his name would be revealed upon his death. Then Felt revealed it himself, a move that startled Woodward and the Post, the newspaper reported.\nAlso surprised was Nixon chief counsel Charles Colson, who worked closely with Felt in the Nixon administration and served prison time in the Watergate scandal.\n"He had the trust of America's leaders and to think that he betrayed that trust is hard for me to fathom," Colson told the AP.\nEven 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." Felt's name doesn't appear there.\nA hit movie was made of the book in 1976 starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. It portrayed cloak-and-dagger methods employed by Woodward and Deep Throat. 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 New York Times.\nThe identity of the source had sparked endless speculation over the past three decades. Dean, Nixon chief of staff Alexander Haig, White House press aide Diane Sawyer, speechwriter Pat Buchanan and Garment were among those mentioned as possibilities.\nFelt also had been mentioned, but he regularly denied it. His motive for tipping off Woodward and Bernstein remains unknown, but the Post suggested in a story Tuesday night that anger over Nixon's decision to pass him over for FBI director after the death of J. Edgar Hoover could have been a factor.\nFelt had expressed reservations in the past about revealing his identity, and about whether his actions were appropriate for an FBI man, his grandson said. His family members thought otherwise. 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."\nOn Wednesday, the question of whether Felt was more hero or more turncoat had the current White House hoping to keep its distance. "It's hard for me to judge," President Bush told reporters, saying the revelation caught him by surprise.\n"A lot of us have always wondered who Deep Throat might have been," Bush said.\nDefense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, asked during a Pentagon news conference whether Felt should be viewed as a hero or villain, said, "I'm not in any judgmental mood. ... I think that any time any wrongdoing occurs, I think it's important that wrongdoing be reported." He later specified that a person discovering wrongdoing should report that to the appropriate authorities or the Justice Department.\nWoodward and Bernstein were the first reporters to link the Nixon White House and the Watergate break-in.\nNixon, 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.\nFelt was convicted in 1980 for authorizing illegal break-ins in the 1970s at homes of people associated with the radical Weather Underground. He was pardoned by President Reagan in 1981.