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Largely lost in last week's tawdry torrent of media self-aggrandizement upon Mark Felt's confession-for-a-price that he was Deep Throat was the plain fact that most Americans didn't really care about the identity of Bob Woodward's Watergate source. What might have been a stunning revelation 25 years ago, when the series of Nixon White House scandals were still fresh, is now, even to those of us who raptly followed Woodward and Carl Bernstein's Washington Post reporting (and books and movie), a vaguely curious footnote. As for those under 40, even the minority of people who are consumed with current events, the...

The FBI is in the news again, and yet again, the news isn’t good. The legendary crime-fighting, spy-catching agency that J. Edgar Hoover founded can’t get a break. First it was revealed that Mark Felt, the number two executive to Acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray, was “Deep Throat,” and that Felt was all but passing out official FBI FD-302’s, which are reports of interrogations with key witnesses in the Watergate case.

Robert Redford played "Washington Post" reporter Bob Woodward in "All the President’s Men." He also produced that film, which included various scenes of Robert Redford as Bob Woodward meeting his source in secluded locations. With the unraveling of the Deep Throat mystery Tuesday, Robert Redford sat down with Chris Matthews to share his experiences making the movie, working with Woodward and Bernstein, and the mystery of Deep Throat. I was attracted to the story, because I think that’s the basis of any good entertainment, starting with a good story. It was 1972 that I actually got involved with it. At...

Why Did Deep Throat Leak? Hint: It wasn't out of a sense of patriotism. By Jack Shafer Posted Thursday, June 2, 2005, at 4:28 PM PT The unmasking of Deep Throat by Vanity Fair bolsters journalist Edward Jay Epstein's outsider view that press coverage of Washington scandals depends as much—or more—on the motives of the government institutions and investigators involved in the story than it does the intrepid reporters "breaking" the news. A "sustaining myth of journalism," as Epstein wrote 30 years ago in Commentary about the book All the President's Men, holds that reporters pry secrets out of government....

I sent Ann's latest article to some friends. One of them a liberal journalist emailed me back and said that Coulter is completely wrong in her latest column. Now, I doubt that she is. But I am not that familiar with Watergate, All the President's Men, or Mark Felt. On the red flag in the flower pot, he says: This makes me think that she never even read the book because his apartment and it's location are described in detail. Woodward described it, pretty much just like above, and said, I don't know how he saw the flag, but the...

Moments ago on Fox News cable show, Dayside with Linda Vester, the guest hosts asked Donald Trump was asked his opinion about Mark Felt's disclosure he was Deep Throat. Paraphrasing Trump, he said Felt was scum, disloyal, betrayed the FBI, his President and the country. The audience applauded. I'm not usually a Trump fan, but I appplauded too. At first, I was not sure he said what he said. But, sure enough, he repeated himself, "He is scum."

Like most people, I had long wondered about the identity of Deep Throat. Now that W. Mark Felt has stepped forward confessing to having been Mr. Throat, I can scratch the two likeliest suspects from my short list. That would be Richard Nixon and me. I suppose some explanation is required. For openers, I never for a moment suspected Alexander Haig. He always loved the spotlight far too much to hide in the shadows, lurking in parking structures, whispering secrets to Robert Woodward and Carl Bernstein. I had a couple of reasons for thinking that President Nixon had orchestrated his...

Nixon's empire strikes back Bush's imperial project has succeeded by learning the chief lesson of Watergate - muzzle the press. Sidney Blumenthal Thursday June 9, 2005 Guardian The unveiling of the identity of Deep Throat - Mark Felt, the former deputy director of the FBI - seemed affirm the story of Watergate as the triumph of the lone journalist supported from the shadows by a magically appearing secret source. Shazam! The outlines of the fuller story we now know, thanks not only to Felt's selfunmasking but to disclosures the Albany Times Union of upstate New York, unreported so far by...

WOODWARD DOES WASHINGTON by Ann Coulter June 8, 2005 My only regret is that Mark Felt did not rat out Nixon because he was ticked off about rapprochement with China or detente with the Soviets. Rather more prosaically, Felt leaked details of the Watergate investigation to The Washington Post only because he had lost a job promotion — making him the Richard Clarke of the Watergate era. This will come as small consolation to the Cambodians and Vietnamese tortured and slaughtered as a direct result of Nixon's fall. Oh, well. At least we got a good movie and Jimmy Carter...

Is Mark Felt a hero for leaking the information about the Watergate burglary to Woodward and Bernstein that brought down Richard Nixon? A. Yes B. No, if he had resigned and brought his charges before Congress, the issue would have been before the public during the 1972 election and the scandal would have been avoided. C. Yes, that might have meant George McGovern ending up as president. D. No, we ended up with Jimmy Carter E. If he’s a hero how come Gary Aldrich and Linda Tripp aren’t heroes?

I came to believe beyond any reasonable doubt that Nixon did not lie or direct a cover-up, and that if he had gone to trial in the Senate, he would have survived. Why did he then resign? Because he knew a Senate trial would take a year of the nation’s energy at a time when our economy was falling apart underneath him and we were at a point in the Cold War in which the Soviet Union seemed to be winning.

In the Watergate myth, two intrepid young reporters – guided by a conscientious whistleblower sickened at the scent of fascism he has found at the center of power, and backed up by a courageous and crusty editor – bring down the most dangerous tyrant in U.S. history. It is the Great Myth of American journalism. Now, thanks to Mark Felt's family wanting to get the old boy some publicity and themselves some of Woodward's stash, the Great Myth has been demolished. Watergate involved two conspiracies. The first, now ancient history, was the botched cover-up of a break-in at the Democratic...

There can be no doubt that the media is in the throes of self-congratulatory excess as a result of Mark Felt having been mis-identified as the mythical Deep Throat. The celebration continues unabated notwithstanding the existence of evidence that might lead one to conclude that the lynchpin of the affair is fictional. In a February 18, 2005 interview by Fox News personality Sheppard Smith, historian Eric Burns stated: Burns: "The noted historian, who had at Simon & Schuster the same editor as Woodward and Bernstein. Stephen Ambrose told me this. There is in the safe at Simon & Schuster a...

Camelot As Viewed Through The Lens Of Watergate By William A. Mayer, E & P - PipeLineNews June 8, 2005 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews - There can be no doubt that the media is in the throes of self-congratulatory excess as a result of Mark Felt having been mis-identified as the mythical Deep Throat. The celebration continues unabated notwithstanding the existence of evidence that might lead one to conclude that the lynchpin of the affair is fictional. In a February 18, 2005 interview by Fox News personality Sheppard Smith, historian Eric Burns stated: Burns: "The noted historian,...

When I first heard the “big news” of the unmasking of "Deep Throat," my immediate reaction was: who cares? It isn’t just that the whole Watergate brouhaha happened long before I was even born. It was that the whole brouhaha was child’s play compared to what would go on in the Clinton White House. At best, Watergate was a about a second rate breaking and entering, not committed by or with the knowledge of Richard Nixon; one use of executive privilege to slow down the investigation of the break-in for a couple of weeks; and one lie, which wasn’t even...

“PASS ME the binoculars, Dan,” said the beta male from Gamma Wiring. “I want to get another look at her legs.” I passed the binoculars. He got another look at her legs. “Anyway, where was I?” he continued. “Oh yes, our new cable labelling protocol. It’s simple, but ingenious.” And so, as the cheerleaders warmed up the crowd for a London Monarchs game, I endured a half-hour briefing on the best way of telling apart plastic-coated wires. When he finally, finally reached the end of his monologue, he added these words: “And that’s all off the record.” I was able,...

Accuracy in Media (AIM) said today that revelations that former FBI official Mark Felt himself had other sources in the Watergate scandal mean that the real identity of Deep Throat has not been fully disclosed. AIM editor Cliff Kincaid said that a Brendan Lyons story in The Albany Times Union (N.Y), also published on the front page of today's Washington Times, identifies Felt as only one of several FBI officials who fed information to The Washington Post during the scandal that brought down President Nixon. "Felt's role as Deep Throat diminishes day by day," said Kincaid. "It seems clear he...

Ah, Deep Throat. At last we meet. This was one of America's most intriguing secrets, even though Carl Bernstein's kid leaked it to a buddy at a summer camp who wrote a school paper identifying W. Mark Felt and nobody paid attention. We all had our theories, but also somehow knew that none of the more popular ones quite fit. Mr. Felt, shown on TV emerging from his modest Santa Rosa, Calif., home to confirm his self-revelation in Vanity Fair, looked sharp as a whip at 91, and revealed a wry "cat that ate the canary" smile that he's had...

Mmmmmmm; the delicious taste of those well-remembered names: Nixon, Mitchell, Bradlee, Woodward and -- somehow more savory than most -- Deep Throat. The self-outing of W. Mark Felt, who confirmed the expectations of many by revealing himself as a main, early source for Bob Woodward's Watergate stories, came just in time for a country basically out of news; or weary of such news as it had -- filibusters, violence in Iraq, the start of the summer reruns. It was like old times, masticating those names again. And that was just the trouble -- the questionable odor that went with the...

On the trail of the secret informant By J. TODD FOSTER The News Virginian Wednesday, June 1, 2005 I've been waiting three years for what happened Tuesday: That W. Mark Felt would be named "Deep Throat." Actually, he was outed as Deep Throat by relatives and an attorney who began pitching me the story in June 2002, when I was a regular contributor to People magazine. There's little doubt that Felt is indeed the super-secret source who helped topple a president. The Washington Post's Bob Woodward and Ben Bradlee confirmed as much Tuesday. But there's one interview you won't be...

The historical sense … involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence…. – T. S. Eliot Wh-a-a-t? Mark Felt was Deep Throat? And here all along I thought it was Hal Holbrook. For the Nixon Years long ago took on the look of a classic old movie, specifically a film noir you might run across in the middle of the night on TV and be unable to turn off. You know you really should be getting some sleep, but the story — and the characters! — cast a spell. It was Bob Dole,...

 

The Washington Post's media reporter, Howard Kurtz, says that a lesson of Watergate is the "burning need for original reporting" on major issues of public importance. But where is the original reporting on whether former FBI official Mark Felt is really Deep Throat? "The 'trust me' journalism that caused Muslim riots in the Newsweek Koran case is being accepted by the major media with regard to the naming of Deep Throat," noted Accuracy in Media editor Cliff Kincaid. "Yet there is no independent evidence that Felt, who repeatedly denied being Deep Throat and now suffers from severe memory problems, was...

The elderly gentleman stood in the doorway of his Santa Rosa, California home with his family behind him and waved to the crowd of reporters gathered on their front lawn as the flash bulbs of cameras captured the moment in snapshot images for historical record. The 91-year-old man appeared to be an average retired American with snow-white hair, ruddy complexion, and energetic smile. There was no indication other than the surprising announcement the he was in fact the notorious ‘Deep Throat’ of Watergate fame. What makes this new information even more fantastical than just the revelation of the vaunted ‘mystery...

Mark Felt, a consummate FBI professional, whom I dealt with often and trusted completely, turns out to have engaged in cloak-and-dagger escapades worthy of a Fredrick Forsythe novel in order to bring down what he believed was a corrupt presidency. Was he a hero? That's the question the secular media have been asking me all week. Now, I understand why Felt wanted to stop Watergate. In my memoirs published this month, titled The Good Life, I recall those moments in the White House when now I realize I should have acted to stop the spreading scandal. One night, when, in...

The Source of Whose Troubles? Up to Our Ears in Deep Throats, Parsing the Lessons of the Leak By Howard Kurtz Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, June 6, 2005; C01 Was Watergate bad for journalism? On its face, the question seems absurd. The drama of two young metro reporters for The Washington Post helping to topple a corrupt president cast a golden glow over the news business in the mid-1970s. Newspapermen became cinematic heroes, determined diggers who advanced the cause of truth by meeting shadowy sources in parking garages, and journalism schools were flooded with aspiring sleuths and crusaders. But...

One by one, the landmark epics of the 1970s are tying up the loose ends -- alas, not always in ways that quite support the great mythic power invested in them. In ''Revenge of the Sith,'' George Lucas brings the ''Star Wars'' cycle to a close by revealing how Anakin Skywalker went over to the Dark Side, transformed himself into Darth Vader, destroyed the Republic and consigned it to the mad imperial ambitions of Chancellor Palpatine -- all because, er, he was a bit worried his beloved Senator Padme might die in childbirth. If Senator Padme had been like Senator...

The Bush Administration prosecutes government officials who leak sensitive information, even when that information is not classified -- as I noted in my column on Jonathan Randal. The Administration is also prepared to send reporters to jail when they refuse to reveal their sources to a grand jury, as I noted in another column. I doubt the Justice Department will go after W. Mark Felt -- the ninety-one-year- old former Deputy Director of the FBI - even if he is the greatest leaker in American political history. Still, in the context of the Administration's stances on leaking, the surfacing of...

MARK FELT WITH the secret revealed for the world, publishers at the Book Expo America trade show were getting a whole new spin on a book deal involving former FBI agent W. Mark Felt, or Deep Throat, who helped topple a president. Agent David Kuhn and author/lawyer John D. O'Connor — in their meetings with publishers — have recast the proposal as a multi-generational saga focusing on three generations of the Felt family. It will include the 30-year career of Felt, who became the No. 2 man in the bureau at a tumultuous time in U.S. history, and the...

C-SPAN

Santa Rosa, Calif. (AP) -- The daughter of a former FBI agent revealed as the famous newspaper source "Deep Throat" told a California newspaper that her aging father deserved to let go of his long-held secret but conceded that money played a part in the family's decision to go public. "He is relieved to get the secret off his chest," Joan Felt said of her father, W. Mark Felt, in an interview published Sunday in her hometown paper, The Press Democrat. W. Mark Felt was the key source in The Washington Post's Watergate investigation that helped bring down President Richard...

What was Watergate? Was it a bungled 1972 third-rate break-in to the opposition's campaign headquarters? Was it a cover-up by Nixon of his run-amok subordinates? Was it persistent jurists, legislators and newspeople piercing the omerta? Was it Nixon's 1974 resignation in disgrace? It was all those things, as matters of historic facts. Yet it was more, much more. Major historic events are so not so much because of their impact at the time, so many of which just become curious footnotes in dry tomes. They are major historic events due to their continuing major impact across decades and their continuing...

Joan Felt, who played a pivotal role in unraveling the 30-year secret that her father was the mysterious "Deep Throat" source, says he is lucid and feels reassured that he made the right decision. He is "relieved to get the secret off his chest," Felt said in the first comments by a family member since the revelation last week that W. Mark Felt, then the No. 2 person in the FBI, was the key source in the Washington Post's Watergate investigation that helped bring down President Richard M. Nixon. As both praise and criticism of Joan Felt and her family...

The Washington Times 'Deep Throat' recalls a forgotten Washington By Tom Knott Published June 2, 2005 "Deep Throat" has come out of his cold, dank, dark parking garage at long last -- and better late than never to some -- as his family tries to scrub the unseemliness out of his actions, cloaked as they were in ax-to-grind anonymity.      It is difficult to turn agenda-driven anonymity into a selfless act of courageousness, but if any city is up to the challenge, it is this gasbag den of the self-important, self-absorbed and self-obsessed.      Deep Throat, of course, is from...

So, finally we know. Deep Throat turns out to be W. Mark Felt, then the number two official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In Watergate lore, he's the mysterious, ultra-secret source meeting furtively in darkened parking garages with the Washington Post's Bob Woodward, helping to bring down Richard Nixon. Do we celebrate this ultimate whistleblower? That depends, in part, on what we think the Watergate scandal wrought. The conventional view, so venerated by the press and Nixon's legions of detractors, sees Watergate as a simple (not to say, simplistic) morality play. A politically corrupt president was driven from office,...

Nixon's crimes were penny ante, even when compared to the dirty tricks routinely played on him by Democratic pranksters, and no break-in or cover-up can be compared with the Kennedys’s\ naked theft of the presidency in 1960. That Nixon, not Kennedy should go down in history as a great presidential criminal is a tribute to the dishonest mythomania of the media... To concoct an impeachment charge out of the “burglars’” antics showed the depths of immorality to which the Democratic Party had sunk. I respected Sam Ervine, chairman of the Senate committee, who had consistently opposed every increase of federal...

"When we give our word, it should be solid, something a source can count on forever" is how I believe Woodward put it. He fulfilled that pledge. Insofar as Felt placed his duty to truth and the honor of country above any loyalties to one corrupt administration, I’ll always see him as far more of a hero of the republic than a violator of agency protocol or policy.Sadly, the remarkable First Amendment reporting that Woodward and Carl Bernstein produced with support from their editors, the exhaustive series of Watergate stories that packed the nation’s journalism schools with youthful idealism just...

Forced to bring 'Deep Throat' to light Vanity Fair's scoop and family's mission to cash in led Woodward to change his plans By TODD S. PURDUM and JIM RUTENBERG New York Times WASHINGTON - This was not the way Bob Woodward expected to tell the last chapter of the Watergate story that he and the Washington Post have owned for more than 30 years: the identity of "Deep Throat." Woodward, a Washington media machine, has long been largely insulated from normal journalistic rivalries. But last week, in the wake of Vanity Fair magazine's disclosure that W. Mark Felt was his...

CNN anchorman Wolf Blitzer revealed Saturday that he had his own "Deep Throat" inside the Clinton White House - a source who blew the lid off Mr. Clinton's then-secret affair with Monica Lewinsky. But the CNN newsman didn't believe his tipster and decided not to report the story. Discussing the journalistic risks of relying on single sources like Woodward and Bernstein's famous Watergate leaker, Blitzer told WABC Radio's Mark Simone that he'd received his share of bombshell tips over the years. "But my experience has been that if a story sounds too good to be true, it almost always is,"...

On the trail of the secret informant By J. TODD FOSTER The News Virginian Wednesday, June 1, 2005 I've been waiting three years for what happened Tuesday: That W. Mark Felt would be named "Deep Throat." Actually, he was outed as Deep Throat by relatives and an attorney who began pitching me the story in June 2002, when I was a regular contributor to People magazine. There's little doubt that Felt is indeed the super-secret source who helped topple a president. The Washington Post's Bob Woodward and Ben Bradlee confirmed as much Tuesday. But there's one interview you won't...

One by one, the landmark epics of the 1970s are tying up the loose ends -- alas, not always in ways that quite support the great mythic power invested in them. In ''Revenge of the Sith,'' George Lucas brings the ''Star Wars'' cycle to a close by revealing how Anakin Skywalker went over to the Dark Side, transformed himself into Darth Vader, destroyed the Republic and consigned it to the mad imperial ambitions of Chancellor Palpatine -- all because, er, he was a bit worried his beloved Senator Padme might die in childbirth. If Senator Padme had been like Senator...

I share the pride of my Post colleagues in our newspaper's pursuit of Watergate, "the biggest political story in modern American history," as reporter Michael Dobbs described it in an article on Thursday. And as a member of The Post's editorial board, I also echo our Wednesday commentary, which said that former FBI deputy director W. Mark Felt, aka "Deep Throat," deserves to be honored for his role in bringing to light Richard Nixon's serious abuses of power. That honor, however, is not the full extent of Felt's legacy. Felt's devotion to J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI caused him...

Rather: 'Deep Throat' Showed Importance of Investigative Journalism By Jon Sarche Associated Press Writer DENVER (AP) - Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather said Saturday he believes that Watergate whistleblower "Deep Throat" showed the importance of investigative journalism and the judicious use of anonymous sources. Former FBI official W. Mark Felt revealed last week that he was the anonymous source dubbed "Deep Throat" who shared information with The Washington Post and helped bring down the Nixon presidency in the Watergate scandal. Rather told about 830 journalists at the annual Investigative Reporters and Editors convention that one of the most important...

Out of the Shadows Why the Deep Throat disclosures are good for the media—and could help Hillary Clinton shape a bid for the White House WEB EXCLUSIVE By Eleanor Clift Newsweek Updated: 4:50 p.m. ET June 3, 2005 June 3 - At a Memorial Day picnic in Washington, the talk inevitably turned to Hillary Clinton and her likely run for president. “What motivates her?” one man wanted to know. He wouldn’t think of asking that question about any of the male contenders for president. Wanting to hold the highest elective office in the land is a given for them, but...

Mark Felt’s admission in the July edition of Vanity Fair that he was "Deep Throat", one of those who supplied inside information to The Washington Post to discredit, disable, and destroy Richard Nixon, should be properly understood. Mark Felt, then the Associate Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), was not a hero. He was a traitor. He betrayed his responsibilities to the President, and to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, from whose secret, confidential files he excerpted information for transmission to Left-wing "journalists" who sought to undo the results of the 1972 Presidential election in which Richard Nixon...

Too many public servants are afraid to blow the whistle when they spot terrible waste or wrongdoing in government. Other public employees, such as Linda Tripp, seek to expose government for self- promotion or partisanship. W. Mark Felt falls into an entirely different and dignified category. Felt, revealed this week as Deep Throat from the Watergate scandal, showed through his actions more than 30 years ago and by his silence until now concern for his country and an urge to do what is right. As the No. 2 man at the FBI, Felt had so much to lose and took...

Article Published: Friday, June 03, 2005 - 5:47:29 PM PST Attorney general not interested in prosecuting 'Deep Throat' NEW YORK (AP) The former FBI man unmasked as "Deep Throat' probably won't be prosecuted for sharing information with reporters during the Watergate scandal, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales indicated Friday. "It happened a long time ago,' Gonzales said of W. Mark Felt's conduct 30 years ago, when he was the No. 2 man at the FBI. "The department has a lot of other priorities.' Gonzales declined to characterize Felt as either hero or villain. "I will leave it to history to make...

-snip- Clinton said he is committed to the humanitarian projects he directs, including assessing the needs of the tsunami-ravaged region of southern Asia for the United Nations. He just returned from Indonesia's Aceh province, Sri Lanka and India. The Democrat explained the nature of his relationship with the elder Bush, whom he defeated in 1992. The former GOP president appeared Tuesday on "Larry King Live." (Full story) "I've always liked him. I've always admired him. I mean, he gave his life to public service. He comes from a family who did. His father was a distinguished senator from Connecticut," Clinton...

"Deep Throat" has at last come forward. Arguably the most notorious informant in recent history is former FBI official W. Mark Felt, and it's been confirmed by The Washington Post. Mr. Felt was second-in-command at the FBI during Watergate, and is now 91 years of age. In stepping forward, he not only destroys his reputation, but he takes a chunk out of the reputation of the agency that supported him and his family in a comfortable lifestyle for so many years. Had Mr. Felt used the lawful route to voice his concerns about the Nixon administration he might be remembered...

February 28, 2005 Maybe We'll Find Out the Identity of Deep Throat Several posts over at National Review discussing the identity of Watergate's "Deep Throat" . Supposedly only Woodward and Bernstein along with former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee know the identity of the inside the Nixon White House source who spilled the beans on Watergate and lead to Nixon's resignation in 1974. Thay have all sworn to secrecy with the understanding that as soon as Deep Throat is dead they will reveal his identity. Well, Woodward and Bernstein are saying that "Deep Throat" is gravely ill, and Bradlee says...