Vanity Fair has an exclusive with the fellow who claims he is the Deep Throat of Woodward and Bernstein “Watergate” fame.
I’m the Guy They Ised to Calld Deep Throat (Vanity Fair) PDF
After decades of hiding the truth, even from his family, W. Mark Felt, number two at the F.B.I. in the early 70s,
reveals himself to be the source who leaked secrets about Nixon’s Watergate cover-up, telling lawyer John D. O’Connor, the author of Vanity Fair’s exclusive, “I’m the guy they used to call Deep Throat.”O’Connor reports that Felt, aged 91, is a retiree living in Santa Rosa, California, with his daughter, Joan. After witnessing the
decline of Felt’s health and mental acuity, and after receiving his and Joan’s permission to reveal this information, O’Connor decided to write this article for Vanity Fair. The Felt family cooperated fully, providing old photographs for the story and agreeing to sit for portraits.Felt’s family did not learn of this aspect of his past until 2002, when Felt’s close friend and frequent social companion Yvette La
Garde told Joan that Felt had confided to her he had indeed been Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward’s source. Joan confronted her father, who initially denied it, but after she explained La Garde’s disclosure Felt responded, “Since that’s the case, well, yes I am.” Then and there, she pleaded with him to announce his role immediately so that he could have some closure, and accolades, while he was still alive. Felt reluctantly agreed, then changed his mind. He seemed determined to take his secret with him to the grave.
Via email tip from the girlfriend. I haven’t seen any other coverage, so don’t have any insight as to whether this has been corroborated elsewhere.
Ex-FBI official says he’s ‘Deep Throat’ (MSNBC)
Felt said he was “only doing his duty” and did not seek to bring down Nixon over the cover-up of a break-in at Democratic Party offices in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C.
Carl Bernstein, who with Bob Woodward broke the story as Washington Post reporters, issued a statement neither denying nor confirming Felt’s claim. Bernstein stated he and Woodward would be keeping their pledge to reveal the source only once that person dies.
NBC News commentator Chris Matthews, who wrote a book about Watergate, said he wasn’t surprised, adding that Felt “has always been the leading suspect.” The last Felt boomlet was in 1999, when a high school senior in New York claimed that Bernstein’s son let the secret slip at a summer camp.
I’ve certainly heard a lot of names bandied around, as well as the “composite figure” theory. Felt’s isn’t a name that stuck in my mind, that’s for sure.
I’ll be in meetings the rest of the day and am attending a Braves-Nats game this evening but there’s sure to be lots of coverage of this one around the Blogosphere. Memorandum has the compilation of those hitting the MSNBC story.
