Deep Throat (Watergate)

:This article is about the source of information for Watergate; for other uses of the term, see Deep Throat.

Deep Throat revealed

Although confirmation of Deep Throat's identity remained elusive for over 30 years, there were suspicions that Felt was indeed the reporters' elusive source long before the public acknowledgment in 2005.

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• Richard Nixon himself believed that Felt was Deep Throat, but did not try to oust him. His stated rationale for this was that if he had done so, Felt would have publicly revealed information damaging to the FBI and to other powerful people and institutions. Nixon at the time stated Felt "knows everything there is to know in the FBI". Nixon's motives in not ousting Felt may not have been entirely altruistic and purely patriotic. There is no doubt that the powerful person that would have been most damaged had Felt publicly revealed all that he knew would have been Richard M. Nixon.
• Carl Bernstein did not even share Deep Throat's identity with his immediate family, including wife Nora Ephron (As he said on NBC's Today Show on June 2, 2005, "I was never dumb enough to tell ." "...which was very smart because I would have told the whole world by now," Ephron once commented.) Ephron became obsessed with figuring out the secret and eventually correctly concluded it was Mark Felt.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/nora-ephron/deep-throat-and-me-now-i_1917.html In 1999, a 19-year-old college freshman, Chase Culeman-Beckman, claimed to have been told by Bernstein's son that Felt was Deep Throat. According to Culeman-Beckman, Jacob Bernstein had said that he was "100 percent sure that Deep Throat was Mark Felt. He's someone in the FBI." Jacob had reportedly said this approximately 11 years prior, when he and Culeman-Beckman were classmates. Ephron explained that their son overheard her "speculations" and Carl Bernstein himself also immediately stepped forward to refute the claim but many did not believe these claims.
• James Mann, who had worked at the Post at the time of Watergate and was close to the investigation, brought a great deal of evidence together in a 1992 article in The Atlantic Monthly that fingered Felt and convinced many. He argued that the information Deep Throat gave Woodward could only have come from FBI files. Felt was also embittered at having been passed over for the Director General position and believed that the FBI in general was hostile to the Nixon administration. In previous unrelated articles, Woodward had made clear he had a highly placed source at the FBI, and there is some evidence he was friends with Felt.
• Woodward has kept in close touch with Felt over the years, even showing up unexpectedly at his house in 1999, after Felt's dementia began. Woodward showed up unexpectedly at the home of Felt's daughter, Joan, in Santa Rosa, California, as well. Some suspected at that time that Woodward might be asking Felt if he could reveal him to be Deep Throat, though Felt, when asked directly by others, had consistently denied being Deep Throat.
• In 2002, Timothy Noah called Felt "the best guess going about the identity of Deep Throat."
• In February 2005, Nixon's former White House Counsel (and current columnist) John Dean reported that Woodward had recently informed Bradlee that Deep Throat was ailing and close to death, and that Bradlee had written Deep Throat's obituary. Both Woodward and the current editor of the Post, Leonard Downie, denied these claims. Felt was a primary suspect, especially after the mysterious meeting that occurred between Woodward and Felt in the summer of 1999.

On May 31, 2005, Vanity Fair magazine reported that William Mark Felt, then aged 91, claimed to be the man once known as Deep Throat. Later that day, Woodward, Bernstein and Bradlee released a statement through the Washington Post confirming that the story was true, finally bringing to rest an enduring mystery in modern American politics.

Related Topics:
May 31 - 2005

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On June 2, 2005, the Washington Post ran a lengthy front-page article by Woodward in which he detailed his friendship with Felt in the years before Watergate. Woodward wrote that he first met Felt by chance in 1970, when Woodward was a Navy lieutenant in his mid-twenties who was dispatched to deliver a package to the White House's West Wing. Felt arrived soon after, for a separate appointment, and sat next to Woodward in the waiting room. Woodward struck up a conversation, eventually learning of Felt's high position in the FBI. Woodward, who was about to get out of the Navy at the time and was unsure about his future direction in life, became determined to use Felt as a mentor and career advisor, and so he got Felt's phone number and kept in touch with him.

Related Topics:
June 2 - 2005 - West Wing - Mentor

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After deciding to try a career as a reporter, Woodward eventually joined the Washington Post in August, 1971. Felt, who Woodward writes had long had a dim view of the Nixon administration, began passing pieces of information to Woodward, although he insisted that Woodward keep the FBI and Justice Department out of anything he wrote based on the information. The first time Woodward used information from Felt in a Post story was in mid-May of 1972, a month before the Watergate burglary, when Woodward was investigating the man who had attempted to assassinate presidential candidate George Wallace. Nixon had put Felt in charge of investigating the would-be assassin as well. A month later, just days after the Watergate break-in, Woodward would call Felt at his office, marking the first time Woodward spoke with Felt about Watergate.

Related Topics:
August - 1971 - George Wallace

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Commenting on Felt's motivations for serving as his Deep Throat source, Woodward wrote, "Felt believed he was protecting the bureau by finding a way, clandestine as it was, to push some of the information from the FBI interviews and files out to the public, to help build public and political pressure to make Nixon and his people answerable. He had nothing but contempt for the Nixon White House and their efforts to manipulate the bureau for political reasons."

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Interestingly, in 1980, Felt himself was convicted of ordering illegal break-ins at the homes of Weathermen suspects, and their families. Ironically, Richard Nixon testified on his behalf — for the man who did so much to expose the multiple abuses and criminality of his Administration.

Related Topics:
1980 - Weathermen

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