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Tom Hanks' production company has bought the film rights to the life story of Mark Felt, the former FBI official recently revealed to have been Deep Throat, it was reported today. Universal Pictures is understood to have secured the rights for development by Playtone, the company co-owned by Hanks and Gary Goetzman, the New York Times reported today. The rights, along with those for a book to be published by respected non-fiction house PublicAffairs, are believed to have been sold for almost $1 million (£550,000). Peter Osnos, the chief executive of PublicAffairs, said the book is expected to be published...

Deep Throat has a book deal and a movie deal, and he could end up being played by Tom Hanks. The family of 91-year-old W. Mark Felt, who revealed his role as The Washington Post's key Watergate source two weeks ago, has chosen PublicAffairs Books to publish a combination of autobiography and biography, publisher and CEO Peter Osnos said last night. Osnos said that Universal Pictures has optioned Felt's life story and the book for a movie to be developed by Hanks's production company, Playtone. He said the book will blend Felt's own writing about his life, including his out-of-print...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Mark Felt, the former FBI official who unmasked himself as the legendary "Deep Throat" source who leaked Watergate secrets, twice led FBI probes into finding Deep Throat, The Nation magazine said on Tuesday. Combing through originally confidential FBI files now available to the public, co-writers David Corn and Jeff Goldberg found documents that showed Felt in charge of finding the source of Bob Woodward's and Carl Bernstein's Washington Post scoops that helped bring down President Richard Nixon. "How Deep Throat Fooled the FBI," which shows how Felt cunningly threw the federal agency off his trail, will...

Nixon, Felt were mirror images in many ways as careers met and crossed over the decades - The striking thing, in retrospect, is how much the two antagonists had in common. Both men were fiercely ambitious Westerners from middle class Depression- era families who, after working their way through law school, interviewed to become FBI special agents. Both were proud, straight Arrow-shirt men. Law-and- order types. Angered by the liberal counter-culture. Awed by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. And both showed zeal for black bag jobs. By 1972, both had reached the pinnacle of their careers. Within two years, though,...

WASHINGTON (AP) - In a phone call between President Nixon and the man who would become "Deep Throat," the president instructed FBI official Mark Felt to aggressively pursue the case against the gunman who shot George Wallace. There must be no public suspicion of a cover-up, Nixon said, in the wounding of the Alabama governor who was then running for president. The May 15, 1972, phone call is believed to be the only tape-recorded conversation between Nixon and Felt, the No. 2 FBI official. Nixon expressed satisfaction when Felt told him the suspect had some cuts and bruises. "I hope...

Tape Captures Nixon-Felt Conversation About Wallace Assassination AttemptBy Pete Yost Associated Press Writer Published: Jun 9, 2005 WASHINGTON (AP) - In a phone call between President Nixon and the man who would become "Deep Throat," the president instructed FBI official Mark Felt to aggressively pursue the case against the gunman who shot George Wallace. There must be no public suspicion of a cover-up, Nixon said, in the wounding of the Alabama governor who was then running for president. The May 15, 1972, phone call is believed to be the only tape-recorded conversation between Nixon and Felt, the No. 2 FBI...

With so much attention rightfully being paid to the unmasking of W. Mark Felt as "Deep Throat," the source of Watergate fame, it was time for a cultural experiment. So I typed "W. Mark Felt" into the news bar in Google and pressed the "enter" key. (snip) But cultural experiments must be fair. Otherwise, angry Nixonians could accuse me of liberal elitism, or is that elite mainstream mediaism? To add balance, I typed in "Linda Tripp" next to Felt's name and pressed the enter key. Guess what happened? Not much. (snip) So Felt is the hero. And last I heard,...

Mark Felt was the topic du jour in an honors philosophy class at Catonsville High School last week, reported the Baltimore Sun, which noted that "most of the 12 juniors in the class said it was unethical for Felt to talk to Woodward." Felt's job, said one student, was "to go to his superiors." Another student said, "if it was truly to benefit society, he wouldn't have kept his name secret." A student named YinYin Yu, 16, opined daringly that Felt's info was beside the point since all politicians behave badly at some point: "They don't have ethics. They have...

 

Deep Throat: Liberal Icon a Criminal. What a Surprise. By N. Beaujon June 1, 2005 Well, well, the man who brought down Richard Nixon has finally come forward to solve the decades-long mystery of “who was ‘Deep Throat’”? The mole who tipped off Washington Post columnists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to the burglary and subsequent cover-up at the Watergate Hotel was W. Richard Felt, former deputy director under J. Edgar Hoover and second in command at the FBI. It turns out Felt's moral compass kicked in just about the time Richard Nixon passed him over for his entitled position...

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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,...

I hope Mark Felt and his family get the big payoff they want, but they've already hurt their chances by ignoring his famous advice as Deep Throat. They didn't follow the money. They didn't appreciate how seriously we journalists take our ethical standards. We are bound by the sacred vow we make to our sources: if the information you give us turns out to be profitable, we will keep the money. Mr. Felt's family tried profiting from his revelation, but the news cartel held firm. People and Vanity Fair both rejected the family's overtures and held to their policy of...

History professor Joan Hoff of Montana State University, an expert on the Watergate scandal, finds it interesting that Bob Woodward is claiming that he had a close relationship with former FBI official Mark Felt, now identified as Deep Throat, when Felt suffers from serious health problems, including dementia, and can't deny it. "It's just like when he said he interviewed [former CIA director Bill] Casey when Casey was comatose," she says. Len Colodny, co-author of Silent Coup, about the "removal" of President Nixon, finds the identification of Mark Felt as Deep Throat to be rather remarkable: "A Deep Throat who...

Former FBI second-in-command Mark Felt, who recently stepped forward as Watergate's "Deep Throat," was a foe of both presidential corruption and domestic terrorism. It’s difficult to know if radio ranter Michael Savage seriously believes that 91-year-old former FBI second-in-command Mark Felt, freshly revealed as the Watergate whistleblower known as "Deep Throat," should be thrown in prison, along with his daughter Joan. During his June 1 program, Savage reasoned (if the word can be tortured into applying here) that since Joan Felt had long known her father’s secret, she had the duty to turn him in to the authorities for prosecution....

It seems only civilized that every expiring political secret should get a decent burial.... ...So why did many Deep Throat researchers -- especially insiders -- reject the idea of Mr. Felt? Because much information that Deep Throat provided was a matter less of specific facts about the Watergate investigation than about the nature of the Nixon White House. Deep Throat talked about the clockwork craziness the White House had become, about the sound of Nixon angry and the character of individuals involved in the cover-up. These insights were presented with the certainty of personal experience. But they were not within...

The news that W. Mark Felt was the secret informant, Deep Throat, who helped Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein expose the Watergate scandal couldn’t have come at a better time for the mainstream media. Many journalists have effectively said, “Let’s not talk about the media’s recent failures. Let’s focus on journalist’s role in uncovering Watergate.” Point well taken. Watergate is a good example of the press performing its watchdog function. But that was over 30 years ago. Is that the most recent example they can give? Even a broken clock is right twice a day. But once every 30 years?...

In response to my recent post, some question were raised (Idon't know why) about the religious persuasion of Mark Felt. It appears that he may be from a Jewish background, although, I thought J. Edgar was supposed to dislike Jews and, if that be true, it seems unlikely that Felt would have reached FBI #2 with Hoover biased against him.But, the comments raise another area were a rat/snitch.informer may have placed his distorted political reasoning above the oaths he took and the loyalty he owed his country.I suggested that Felt may have given/sold information/disinformation to commies, mafioso, Whitey Bulger and...

Just a few more thoughts on the events of the day: Now, we read that Mark Felt's family and Mark Felt put out their story solely to make money off it. So, this makes the family's karma even more unnerving. The father, patriarch, Mark, took out his anger and frustration for being passed over at the FBI, by ruining the career of the peacemaker, Richard Nixon. So, he condemned a whole subcontinent to genocide and slavery and poverty to please his own wounded vanity. (Maybe his nickname should be "sour grapes" and not "deep throat" because he has as much...

Mark Felt's emergence as Deep Throat has occasioned a prolonged Old Timer's Day of the American left, allowing various aging fakers to take one last, long victory lap. With relish they have renewed their intense moralizing about Richard Nixon even though their own ethics evaporated a long time ago. We overthrew a corrupt order, they in effect say by puffing themselves up -- an arrogance that would be more comprehensible if they hadn't proceeded to create a new corrupt order. The champions of Deep Throat built atop the ruins of Richard Nixon not a better culture but a base culture...