Ahira's Hangar

'Deep Throat' Reveals Himself, Magazine Reports



CNN
Mark Felt was No. 2 at the FBI during the Nixon administration.

WASHINGTON (May 31) -- Vanity Fair magazine said Tuesday that Mark Felt, the former No. 2 FBI official, claims to be ''Deep Throat,'' the legendary source who leaked Watergate scandal secrets to the Washington Post and helped bring down President Richard Nixon.

Unmasking the identity of ''Deep Throat,'' a key Watergate source for Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, would solve one of the greatest political and journalistic mysteries of recent history.

The magazine said Felt, now a 91-year-old retiree living in Santa Rosa, California, admitted his role in the scandal to his family and cooperated with the story. It is the first time a major potential source has claimed to be ''Deep Throat.''

Woodward, now a managing editor at the Post, did not immediately return phone messages. Woodward and Bernstein have refused to reveal the name of their source for more than three decades and said they would not name their source until after his death.

Bernstein told WABC-TV in New York: ''We're not going to say anything at this time. When the person is deceased we will identify him.''

Felt had long been a primary suspect on the relatively short list of potential candidates for ''Deep Throat,'' who was instrumental in the Post reporting on the Watergate scandal that led to Nixon's resignation in August 1974 -- the only resignation of a U.S. president in history.

The Vanity Fair article said Felt's family had convinced him that his actions during Watergate were heroic and worthy of acknowledgment and he should come forward. His daughter had spoken to Woodward, who visited Felt in Santa Rosa in 1999, by phone more than a half-dozen times to discuss a potential joint announcement, Vanity Fair said.

But Woodward would often begin those conversations with a caveat, the magazine said, saying, ''Just because I'm talking to you, I'm not admitting that he is who you think he is.''

Woodward has said in the past that ''Deep Throat'' would often meet with him late at night in secluded locations, including underground Washington, D.C., parking lots, to help him with information that kept the reporters moving ahead on the story.


05-31-05 12:34 EDT

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