Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

'Deep Throat' Saw Himself As 'Lone Ranger'
AP on Yahoo ^ | 4/25/06 | Louise Chu - ap

Posted on 04/25/2006 2:43:36 PM PDT by NormsRevenge

SAN FRANCISCO - The man who revealed himself as Watergate's "Deep Throat" says in a new memoir that he saw himself as a "Lone Ranger" who could help derail a White House cover-up.

In the memoir, which hit bookshelves Monday, former FBI second-in-command W. Mark Felt explains what motivated him to become the key source for Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein during the Watergate investigation.

Felt said he was upset by the slow pace of the FBI investigation into the Watergate break-in and believed the press could apply some much-needed pressure on the administration to cooperate.

"From the start, it was clear that senior administration officials were up to their necks in this mess, and that they would stop at nothing to sabotage our investigation," Felt wrote in "A G-Man's Life: The FBI, 'Deep Throat' and the Struggle for Honor in Washington."

Co-written by family friend John O'Connor, who revealed Deep Throat's identity in a 2005 Vanity Fair article, the book includes excerpts from Felt's 1979 memoir, "The FBI Pyramid: From the Inside," and an unpublished memoir that Felt wrote in the mid-1980s.

Felt, now 92, was unable to offer much fresh insight in the book because of his age and weak memory, O'Connor wrote in his prologue. Felt suffered a stroke in 2001 and has been in declining health.

The scandal that brought down President Nixon began with a break-in and the attempted tapping of phones in the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate office building during the 1972 campaign. It went on to include disclosures of spying by Nixon's henchmen and retaliation against the administration's perceived enemies.

Felt discusses his hesitation about working with Woodward. On one hand, he didn't want the FBI to be blamed for allowing Nixon to get away with a crime; on the other, he feared criticism if he violated his loyalty to the agency.

O'Connor says in the introduction that Felt was angered when the reporters revealed they had a senior source in the executive branch that they were calling Deep Throat.

"Deep Throat was a journalistic joke; Mark Felt never accepted the name," O'Connor wrote.

Felt also dismisses speculation that he became Deep Throat because he was angry at being passed over as J. Edgar Hoover's successor and wanted to sabotage the new boss, L. Patrick Gray.

"It is true that I would have welcomed an appointment as FBI director when Hoover died. It is not true that I was jealous of Gray," he wrote.

The book reveals that Felt's wife did not die of a heart attack in 1984, as he told people, but killed herself with his service revolver following years of depression. Audrey Felt's suicide, revealed in O'Connor's introduction, is never directly addressed by Felt himself.

While drawing few conclusions about his role in Watergate, Felt remained stalwart in his belief that the public needed to know the truth.

"People will debate for a long time whether I did the right thing by helping Woodward," he wrote. "The bottom line is that we did get the whole truth out, and isn't that what the FBI is supposed to do?"


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Government; Politics/Elections; US: California
KEYWORDS: deepthroat; felt; himself; loneranger; markfelt; watergate
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-48 next last

1 posted on 04/25/2006 2:43:37 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: NormsRevenge

Joan Felt and her father W. Mark Felt appear in front of their home Tuesday, May 31, 2005, in Santa Rosa, Calif. A memoir released Monday, April 24, 2006 by the man known as 'Deep Throat' sheds little new light on former FBI agent Mark Felt's relationship with reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Instead, 'A G-Man's Life: The FBI, 'Deep Throat' and the Struggle for Honor in Washington' combines unpublished writings with material from Felt's 1979 memoir. It also reveals that Felt's wife did not die of a heart attack in 1984, but killed herself with his service revolver because of the strain from his legal troubles and FBI duties. (AP Photo/Ben Margot, File) (AP Photo/Ben Margot)


2 posted on 04/25/2006 2:44:15 PM PDT by NormsRevenge (Semper Fi)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NormsRevenge

He wasn't a leaker, He was a whistleblower.


3 posted on 04/25/2006 2:44:53 PM PDT by NormsRevenge (Semper Fi)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NormsRevenge
...was a whistleblower...

Wasn't that Monica's codename?
4 posted on 04/25/2006 2:46:25 PM PDT by true_blue_texican (grateful texan!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: NormsRevenge

and Mary McCarthy sees herself as who?


5 posted on 04/25/2006 2:46:42 PM PDT by YaYa123
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

Felt said he was upset by the slow pace of the FBI investigation into the Watergate break-in and believed the press could apply some much-needed pressure on the administration to cooperate.


6 posted on 04/25/2006 2:46:44 PM PDT by NormsRevenge (Semper Fi)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: true_blue_texican

Using the words Whistle-Blower and Deep Throat in the same article just ain't right.


7 posted on 04/25/2006 2:47:18 PM PDT by Lekker 1 ("Computers in the future may have only 1000 vacuum tubes..." - Popular Mechanics, March 1949)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: NormsRevenge

Who was Tonto?


8 posted on 04/25/2006 2:47:25 PM PDT by JmyBryan
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

Felt also dismisses speculation that he became Deep Throat because he was angry at being passed over as J. Edgar Hoover's successor and wanted to sabotage the new boss, L. Patrick Gray.

"It is true that I would have welcomed an appointment as FBI director when Hoover died. It is not true that I was jealous of Gray," he wrote.


9 posted on 04/25/2006 2:48:06 PM PDT by NormsRevenge (Semper Fi)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NormsRevenge
Watergate's "Deep Throat" says in a new memoir that he saw himself as a "Lone Ranger"

A couple of fine movies, I must say.

10 posted on 04/25/2006 2:48:25 PM PDT by Lekker 1 ("Computers in the future may have only 1000 vacuum tubes..." - Popular Mechanics, March 1949)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: YaYa123

a thin broad.


11 posted on 04/25/2006 2:52:50 PM PDT by Rakkasan1 (lead ,follow or get out of the majority.start with our borders.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: NormsRevenge

Self-glorifying, lone wolf, wannabe hero.

Like any absolute loser who wants to make history by assassinating someone or becoming a double spy.... Oswald, Mcveigh, Robert Hanssen. And this guy.


12 posted on 04/25/2006 2:53:06 PM PDT by SteveMcKing
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: NormsRevenge

There is no fool like an old fool.


13 posted on 04/25/2006 2:53:42 PM PDT by bmwcyle (We got permits, yes we DO! We got permits, how 'bout YOU?;))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: NormsRevenge

One more dick in a long line of dicks.


14 posted on 04/25/2006 2:54:01 PM PDT by toddlintown (Lennon takes six bullets to the chest, Yoko is standing right next to him and not one f'ing bullet?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: SteveMcKing

If he was so proud of what he did why didnt he come out instead of hiding all these years.


15 posted on 04/25/2006 2:55:03 PM PDT by sgtbono2002
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies]

To: NormsRevenge
...another example of the MSM trying to compare (or ease) McCarthy's deeds to something heroic....Sandy Berger will become a fine example of a heroic figure before long. ANYTHING to protect the legacy....???...what legacy?
16 posted on 04/25/2006 2:55:18 PM PDT by Doogle (USAF ...8thTFW...408MMS..Ubon ,Thailand..."69"..Night Line Delivery ..AMMO!!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NormsRevenge

Or a senile old coot who Woodward has duped into believing that he was "Deep-throat". I still believe that there was no deep throat.


17 posted on 04/25/2006 2:58:11 PM PDT by stop_fascism
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: Lekker 1

Yup, some might say, right up there with Harry Reid's soon to be released remake of

"Dirty Harry"
The Searchlight Kid


18 posted on 04/25/2006 3:00:20 PM PDT by NormsRevenge (Semper Fi)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: NormsRevenge

I don't recall anything that he provided to Woodward and Bernstein that would have brought down Nixon.

Whoever was in charge of the Nixon tapes early on was the one that provided the first hand information that brought down the President.

And I don't think anyone knows who that was.


19 posted on 04/25/2006 3:01:52 PM PDT by PeaRidge
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NormsRevenge



Special Report
Deep Throat and Genocide
By Ben Stein

Published 6/1/2005 12:22:42 AM
Re: The "news" that former FBI agent Mark Felt broke the law, broke his code of ethics, broke his oath and was the main source for Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward's articles that helped depose Richard Nixon, a few thoughts.

Can anyone even remember now what Nixon did that was so terrible? He ended the war in Vietnam, brought home the POW's, ended the war in the Mideast, opened relations with China, started the first nuclear weapons reduction treaty, saved Eretz Israel's life, started the Environmental Protection Administration. Does anyone remember what he did that was bad?

Oh, now I remember. He lied. He was a politician who lied. How remarkable. He lied to protect his subordinates who were covering up a ridiculous burglary that no one to this date has any clue about its purpose. He lied so he could stay in office and keep his agenda of peace going. That was his crime. He was a peacemaker and he wanted to make a world where there was a generation of peace. And he succeeded.

That is his legacy. He was a peacemaker. He was a lying, conniving, covering up peacemaker. He was not a lying, conniving drug addict like JFK, a lying, conniving war starter like LBJ, a lying, conniving seducer like Clinton -- a lying, conniving peacemaker. That is Nixon's kharma.

When his enemies brought him down, and they had been laying for him since he proved that Alger Hiss was a traitor, since Alger Hiss was their fair-haired boy, this is what they bought for themselves in the Kharma Supermarket that is life:

1.) The defeat of the South Vietnamese government with decades of death and hardship for the people of Vietnam.

2.) The assumption of power in Cambodia by the bloodiest government of all time, the Khmer Rouge, who killed a third of their own people, often by making children beat their own parents to death. No one doubts RN would never have let this happen.

So, this is the great boast of the enemies of Richard Nixon, including Mark Felt: they made the conditions necessary for the Cambodian genocide. If there is such a thing as kharma, if there is such a thing as justice in this life of the next, Mark Felt has bought himself the worst future of any man on this earth. And Bob Woodward is right behind him, with Ben Bradlee bringing up the rear. Out of their smug arrogance and contempt, they hatched the worst nightmare imaginable: genocide. I hope they are happy now -- because their future looks pretty bleak to me.


Ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer in Beverly Hills and Malibu, and author of "Ben Stein's Diary" each month in The American Spectator.


20 posted on 04/25/2006 3:01:55 PM PDT by Kimmers (If you want peace you must be prepared for war......)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-48 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson