And Deep Throat is...
 

Vanity Fair: Ex-FBI official W. Mark Felt says he's Watergate source known as "Deep Throat." Details soon.

www.cnn.com

My money was on Haig.

Interesting
Watching on CNN, it seems that now Woodward and Bernstein are holding their vow of confidentiality and are not commenting on the "Felt = Deep Throat" link. Something to the effect of "We agreed not to release their name until they died, and nothing has changed."

/tk

So deepthroat is felt?

I always thought it would be Linda Lovelace.

Deepthroat= My wif.....errr....nevermind:D

While Haig had been a fairly popular choice (largely based on his higher profile), I think Felt was the likeliest according to those who have paid much attention to the matter.

Agreed. It never sat well with me. I always thought a guy with no political connections made much more sense.

...and it always will be!

Didn't some University class take a look at this a few years back and declare that it was someone who served as Deputy Whitehouse Counsel?

Picsplskthx.

Or Movies. Movies are also good.

I found it interesting that several years ago, Bernstein's kid apparently let the secret slip to a classmate, who claimed the son said it was...Felt! I think that answers the "confirm or deny" stuff for me.

Real bang-up job that class did, then.

Woodward and Bernstein confirm that it is Felt:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...053100655.html

It would be a lot more exciting if it were a more "sexy" person. The imagination of who it might be is a lot more exciting than the reality. We'd be having a field day if it had been Al Haig, Pat Buchannan or Diane Sawyer.

If it was Diane Sawyer, I'd be in line. Or did we change the topic?

Someone like Felt makes sense, though - not political, but upset that Nixon was trying to politicize his agency, and in a position to know a great deal of damagining information about Nixon.

I've been watching the coverage quite a bit over the past day and I find it very compelling. For those of us not alive in the early 70s, it gives a little slice of Watergate, letting us somewhat relive one of the biggest stories of the last 50 years.

SI

G. Gordon Liddy is going to lecture someone on the ethics of law enforcement? Really? Insert your favorite Michael Jackson as a Boy Scout leader joke here.

G. Gordon "I advocated shooting for those jack booted thug-- err- cop's head because they wear vests" Liddy?

SI

Ditto. Makes me want to go read "All The President's Men" again, too, even though my dad said he didn't care for the book. He mentioned that he didn't care for it because he watched it religiously as it was all unfolding--so for him, the book just rehashed what he knew. For me, though, too young to have seen any of it...

/tk

All things considered, it's not a bad flick either. Weird now that I've seen Felt in 1976 and Hal Holbrook played him in the movie. I am also too young to remember the goings on. The motives are what interests me now:

I'm just curious - but is there any chance he could be criminally prosecuted? I realize there is no way in hell it WOULD happen (90 years old, stroke, politically dangerous, etc.) I'm just asking if it COULD happen?

A tragic figure in the golden age of porn. :)

Doubt it. What he did probably was not illegal in the first place, and even if it was, I'd be surprised if the statute of limitations for something like that didn't expire long ago.

That's been quietly debated, I think, in some circles; if not as a serious consideration for action, then at least from a legal and/or procedural standpoint.

There's so many possibilities that I wouldn't personally know where to start?
Is he/would he be/would he have been covered under various "whistleblower" statues? What oath (if any) does an FBI Agent take? Was he even an actual "agent" at that time, or just an administrator? Could "interests of national security" be invoked somehow? Heck, the list of possibilities goes on & on.

Purely a theoretical exercise almost certainly, but one that could take countless hours to decide completely (and one that I suspect will be the subject of more than a few conversations in future).

As valuable as Felt was as a contributor to Woodward and Bernstein's reporting, to a certain degree the material he shared with them is somewhat exaggerated. He was never quoted in any of their coverage in The Post. His inclusion as a "character" only emmerged in the book and later the movie. What he largely did was "direct" Woodward and Bernstein toward valuable clues and information and directed them away from bad sources and wild goose chases.

It seems that it would be difficult to mount a legal case against him. By accounts, he didn't turn over any documents or reveal any national security information. I saw Pat Buchanan bellowing last night that Felt should have built a case and charged the Watergate conspirators rather than feed the info to the press, but that really didn't seem to be an option, given that his boss at the FBI was hand-picked by Nixon to prevent that kind of thing from happening.

Felt was the SAC in charge of the Kansas City FBI office in the late 50s and early 60s, so there have been quite a few local stories about him the last few days. Most of the personal accounts have suggested that he was a by-the-book investigator who took his job very seriously and was a "hands-on" manager. He seemed pretty well respected by his fellow agents.

If Felt saw a wrong-doing and wanted to correct it, I think the approach he took was the only option.

The Washington Post today had a few very interesting articles about Deep Throat. I read these in the print edition, though I see they're also online. They were definitely interesting to me, anyway...

"How Mark Felt Became 'Deep Throat'": http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...060102124.html

"Leaks Came Against Backdrop of a Post-Hoover Power Struggle": http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...060101778.html

"A 33-Year-Old Pledge Was Kept at a Price: The Post's Lost Scoop": http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...060102021.html

"At FBI, Reflections on Felt and Loyalty": http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...060101831.html

The page devoted to the entire "special report": http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...053100696.html

/tk

In reading the Woodward story on Felt I was amazed at how random the uncovering of Watergate was. If Woodward's Navy service hadn't been extended a year or if someone else had been sent to deliver a package he would have never met Felt and there would have been no Deepthroat.

Thanks for the links, tk.

SI

This may be a stupid question, but why is he called Deep Throat?

Apparently it is because of the porn film. It was a codename that noone could connect to the number 2 guy at the FBI.

It was because he insisted on total anonymity and would only talk on "deep background," so Post senior editor Howard Simmons named him after the porn film.

Yes, I was fascinated by the Woodward article. Now that this part of the story has been revealed, it makes a lot of sense why Felt did what he did.

Traitor or Hero?

The fact that some speak of him as a traitor scares me, frankly.

LOL, I'm not sure which one of us this makes predictable but ... I had the same thought yesterday about those who think of him as some sort of hero ;)

Its been a few days since it was revealed, and I'm a little surprised he hasn't been found dead yet.

He's 91 and in poor health. Mother nature will do a much better job of it without risk of "getting caught" than any hitman could do..

/tk

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/07/06/gra....ap/index.html

Quick they're eliminating the trail! Wait, I guess the horse is already out of the barn.

SI