I was Watergate 'Deep Throat', says ex FBI chief

01/06/2005 - 07:09:04
Former top FBI official Mark Felt was branded an American hero by his family after unmasking himself as the Deep Throat source who helped bring down President Richard Nixon in the Watergate scandal.

The revelation solves a mystery that has captivated the US capital for more than three decades.

As the news broke, Felt, 91, stood at his front door in Santa Rosa, California, and grinned, waving to onlookers as he leaned gingerly on a walking frame.

His daughter, Joan, said he was relieved he could finally tell the truth and said the family was “very proud” of him.

Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein said in a statement: “Mark Felt was Deep Throat and helped us immeasurably in our Watergate coverage.”

They broke their silence after Felt told Vanity Fair magazine: “I’m the guy they used to call Deep Throat.”

Ben Bradlee, the Post’s executive editor during Watergate, said: “The number-two guy at the FBI, that was a pretty good source. I knew the paper was on the right track.

“The thing that stuns me is that the goddamn secret has lasted this long.”

Deep Throat became the most famous political source in history after leaking secrets about Nixon’s Watergate cover-up in the early 1970s, when Felt was second in command at the FBI.

As politicians and analysts reeled over the sudden revelation, Felt’s family urged the US to honour and respect his actions.

In a statement, his grandson, Nick Jones, said: “The family believes 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.

“We all sincerely hope the country will see him this way as well.”

He said Felt was pleased he was being honoured for his role as Deep Throat, alongside his friend, Woodward.

“On behalf of the Felt family we hope you see him as worthy of honour and respect as we do,” he added.

Lawyer John O’Connor wrote the Vanity Fair article after witnessing the decline of Felt’s health and mental faculties and having received permission from both him and his daughter Joan.

Felt’s family had no idea about his secret identity until 2002 when his close friend Yvette La Garde told Joan he had confided to her that he had been Woodward’s source.

Felt initially denied it when confronted by his daughter but when she explained La Garde’s disclosure, he reportedly replied: “Since that’s the case, well, yes I am.”

Felt said he was “only doing his duty” and had not intended to bring Nixon down over the scandal concerning the cover-up of a 1972 break in at Democratic party offices in Washington.

He had initially been adamant about keeping silent on the issue, thinking disclosures about his past somehow dishonourable.

“I don’t think (being Deep Throat) was anything to be proud of,” Felt reportedly told his son Mark. “You (should) not leak information to anyone.”

Having learnt their father’s secret, Joan and her brother urged him to go public, explaining that they wanted his legacy to be heroic and permanent, not anonymous, and that perhaps he could profit from his revelations.

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

Felt had regularly denied he was the notorious source.

“I would have done better,” he told Connecticut newspaper The Hartford Courant in 1999. “I would have been more effective. Deep Throat didn’t exactly bring the White House crashing down, did he?”

Woodward and Bernstein reached an agreement in 2003 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 is one of a number of people named as the possible Deep Throat source in recent years, including former deputy White House counsel Fred Fielding, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and even former president George Bush senior. Recent reports suggested the source was close to death.

Vanity Fair said the Felt family had co-operated fully for the story, providing old photographs and agreeing to sit for portraits but stressed they were not paid.

The July edition of the magazine goes on sale in New York on June 8 and nationally in the US on June 14.