Deep Throat is apparently W. Mark Felt.
If it is true, it is kinda sad knowing. It would have been cool to have this remain onke of those great mysteries.
BTW- Many hav long suspected that it may have been Mark Felt.
More here.
*** Update ***
Many people do not believe it was Felts, and when you put that together with Woodward and Bernstein’s reluctance to confirm, it leads me to believe that perhaps ‘Deep Throat’ was a device to cloak numerous informants.
Who knows.
Woodward has now confirmed:
The Washington Post today confirmed that W. Mark Felt, a former number-two official at the FBI, was “Deep Throat,” the secretive source who provided information that helped unravel the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s and contributed to the resignation of president Richard M. Nixon.
The confirmation came from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the two Washington Post reporters who broke the Watergate story, and their former top editor, Benjamin C. Bradlee. The three spoke after Felt’s family and Vanity Fair magazine identified the 91-year-old Felt, now a retiree in California, as the long-anonymous source who provided crucial guidance for some of the newspaper’s groundbreaking Watergate stories.
Watergate Chronology Key events from the 1968 election to President Nixon’s resignation in 1974.
Sights & Sounds The best photos from The Washington Post and other photographers of the period, audio excerpts from the Nixon tapes and TV coverage from the era.The Vanity Fair story said Felt had admitted his “historic, anonymous role” following years of denial.
In a statement today, Woodward and 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.”
How did Felt’s know about the erased tape?
More speculation about Felt as Deep Throat from 1974, 1992, 2002, and 2004.
M. Scott Eiland
If it’s true, Woodward and/or Bernstein should confirm it now–they wouldn’t have any good reason not to if Felt is telling the truth. Waiting until he dies would suggest that the intrepid reporters might not want the curious looking too closely at the details of the “Deep Throat” revelations.
Gary Farber
“Waiting until he dies would suggest that the intrepid reporters might not want the curious looking too closely at the details of the ‘Deep Throat’ revelations.”
Or it could mean that aliens are controlling Woodward and Bernstein’s brains with satellite rays. There’s equal support in presented fact for either hypothesis.
ppgaz
I refuse to pay attention.
As we all know, criticism of the president is unpatriotic. Felt, Woodward and Bernstein should all have been jailed as traitors.
M. Scott Eiland
Or it could mean that aliens are controlling Woodward and Bernstein’s brains with satellite rays. There’s equal support in presented fact for either hypothesis.
Sure–because Woodward’s never been caught making up quotes from people who weren’t in any position to have given them at the time in question or to contradict them personally (cough cough Bill Casey cough cough) or anything.
JG
criticism of a republican president is unpatriotic, criticism of a democtatic president is sport.
Rick
Poor, put upon Dems. And to think the host of this blog thinks Christians overstate their persecution.
Cordially…
ppgaz
Here in Limbaughamerica, I thought overstating persecution was the norm?
I mean, if you are going to have government of, by and for Bathos, how else to be heard?
Rick
Just gotta get that lip-biting/tear squirting schtick down, and the GOP can really rock.
Cordially…
M. Scott Eiland
Post, Woodward, Bernstein confirm that Felt was Deep Throat.
OK, now that it’s official–send some reporters over to talk to the guy while he’s still with us, so that we can have a view of his take on Watergate other than through the Woodward/Bernstein lens.
Gary Farber
M. Scott, his take is that he can barely remember at this point.
Red Right Hand
“How did Felt’s know about the erased tape?”
He didn’t. No source did. The infamous “18 minute gap” was discovered only when the tape was released under court order.
That erasure BTW was what I always considered the really interesting mystery in the Watergate scandal, bigger than Deep Throat’s identity anyway. The conversation occured very shortly after the break-in (the next day I think, or at least when Nixon returned to the White House from California – I’m not sure, I’m working from memory); only Nixon & Haldeman were participants. Just what the hell was so awful about that particular conversation that would necessitate destruction, given the fact that the famous “smoking gun” tape of a few days later was left intact? Interesting…
BTW, for those who are younger: don’t fall for the old story (which still survives as a talking point by Nixon defenders) that Nixon’s secretary Rosemary Woods deleted the tape by accident. An FBI investigation revealed that Woods’ machine could not have done the deed, and electro-magnetic analysis of the tape showed the deletion was caused by “no fewer than five and no more than nine” seperate rewinds and erasures (again, memory may be off a bit). Someone wanted something disappeared awfully badly.
M. Scott Eiland
M. Scott, his take is that he can barely remember at this point.
Yeah, I heard that on the radio this evening–can’t help but wonder if he kept a journal or took any notes, though.
Jorge
Considering that Watergate is seen by many as the ultimate example of the media’s liberal hatred for Republicans, I wonder how it plays into the myth that Deep Throat was a G-man protege of Hoover?
Sure would have worked better if it had been Diane Sawyer or Dean.