Ex-FBI official: I'm ‘Deep Throat’

updated 8:47 p.m. ET June 1, 2005

Breaking a silence of 30 years, former FBI deputy director W. Mark Felt stepped forward Tuesday as Deep Throat, the secret Washington Post source that helped bring down President Nixon during the Watergate scandal.

Within hours, the paper confirmed his claim.

“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.

It tumbled out in stages during the day — first when a lawyer quoted Felt in a magazine article as having said he was the source; then when the former FBI man’s family issued a statement hailing him as a “great American hero.” Within hours, the newspaper confirmed Felt’s claim, ending one of the most enduring mysteries in American politics and journalism.

The scandal that brought Nixon’s resignation began with a burglary and attempted tapping of phones in Democratic offices at the Watergate office building during his 1972 re-election campaign. It went on to include disclosures of covert Nixon administration spying on and retaliating against a host of perceived enemies.

But the most devastating disclosure was Nixon’s own role in trying to cover up his administration’s involvement.

‘I’m the guy ...’
“I’m the guy they used to call Deep Throat,” Felt, the former No. 2 man at the FBI, was quoted as saying in Vanity Fair. He kept his secret even from his family for almost three decades before his declaration.

Felt, now 91, 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 to respect his privacy “in view of his age and health.”

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

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

In a statement issued later, Watergate reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein said, “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.”

Among other things, Deep Throat urged the reporters to follow the money trail — from the financing of burglars who broke into the Democratic National Committee offices to the financing of Nixon’s re-election campaign.

The reporters and Bradlee had kept the identity of Deep Throat secret at his request, saying his name would be revealed upon his death. But then Felt revealed it himself.

Cloak-and-dagger box-office hit
Even 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.”

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 met Redford in dark parking garages and provided clues about the scandal.

The movie 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 copy of The New York Times.

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