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When I decided to write something on Mark Felt who passed away this week at 95, an online friend, Narciso, wrote of the “incremental irony of Mark Felt.” When I asked him to elaborate he wrote back: He conducted illegal or at least dubious surveillance against the Weathermen, he then faults Nixon for the same tactics, he undermined his own agency and ultimately almost ended up in jail. Besides sage words about being wary of the motives of government employees bearing tales of corruption to the press, Narciso’s words constitute as complete an epitaph of Mark Felt as I can...

Mark Felt, the FBI official who as the anonymous journalistic source "Deep Throat" helped bring down President Richard M. Nixon, died on Thursday at his home in Santa Rosa, Calif. He was 95. Felt suffered from congestive heart failure but the immediate cause of death was not known on Thursday night. "He was an important person for the history of our nation, but also such a gem and such a treasure to our family," said his grandson Nick Jones, who confirmed the death. "He was a great man." Jones said the family would issue a formal statement on Friday. In...

WASHINGTON, March 24, 2008 – The U.S. military passed a sad milestone today: the 4,000th U.S. death in operations in Iraq. “Every single loss of a soldier, sailor, airman or Marine is keenly felt by us in the department, by military commanders, by families and friends both in theater and at home,” Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said during an informal news conference today. Whitman stressed that no casualty is more significant than another. “Each soldier, Marine, sailor or airmen is equally precious, and each loss of life is equally tragic,” he said. Whitman called attention to the sacrifices by coalition...

TWO teenagers who wanted to experience murder told police it "felt right" to strangle a friend and bury her body in a shallow grave beneath her West Australian home. The 17-year-old girls, who cannot be named due to their age, today faced a sentencing hearing in Perth Children's Court after pleading guilty to murdering Eliza Jane Davis in the small coal mining town of Collie on June 18, 2006.

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...

Hurricane Katrina's waves felt in California 11:00 24 September 2006 From New Scientist Print Edition. On 29 August 2005, as hurricane Katrina was rumbling towards New Orleans, a seismic hum more than 1000 times the strength of the average volcanic tremor was felt nearly 3000 kilometres away in southern California. Its source was the hurricane itself. Hurricanes create large ocean waves, which send energy pulsing through the Earth as they pound the shoreline. To determine the power of Katrina's seismic waves, Peter Gerstoft of the University of California, San Diego, and colleagues analysed the signals recorded by a network of...

FORT HUACHUCA — The red, white and blue American Airlines plane was about two hours from the East Coast. Flight 49, a Boeing 767, was heading from Paris to Dallas. But this day the aircraft would not make its final destination. Like many planes on Sept. 11, 2001, the flight was ordered to land — but not in the United States. Barbara Fast, then a brigadier general, was on the flight. She planned to make a connecting flight to Tucson and then drive to Fort Huachuca to attend a conference of senior Army intelligence officers. It turns out Fast, who...

'I thought only of escape. I felt like a poor chicken in a hen house' By Kate Connolly in Berlin (Filed: 07/09/2006) Natascha Kampusch, the Austrian teenager who was held in captivity beneath a garage for eight years, said yesterday she had thought "only of escape" during her imprisonment and dreamed of cutting off her kidnapper's head with an axe. Austrians watch the TV interview on a big screen in a café in Vienna Speaking to the media for the first time since her ordeal ended with her escape two weeks' ago, Miss Kampusch appeared self-confident, witty, articulate and strong-willed....

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...

Rome paid tribute to the barbarians clamoring at her gates. It didn't do any good. Paying ransom only postponed the inevitable sacking, burning, and looting of the empire's capital. The UK's Neville Chamberlain sought to pacify Hitler, only to see Brits hiding in basements from the blitzkrieg a few years later. Instead of remembering history's lessons, the Washington Post today indulges in feel-good, intellectual rationalization of Muslim intolerance and hatred. In a 5-page manifesto entitled, "Anatomy of the Cartoon Protest Movement," authors Anthony Shadid and Kevin Sullivan exercise unlimited poetic license, calling Islamist hooliganism "a rare moment of empowerment among...

It is the ultimate Washington story, told by the ultimate Washington chronicler. But in Washington and just about everywhere else, sales of "The Secret Man," Bob Woodward's story of the source known as Deep Throat, have been underwhelming. At Politics and Prose, a well-known independent bookstore in Washington, sales were "not very good, compared to expectations," said Mark LaFramboise, who ordered 400 copies of the book for the store. As of last week, Politics and Prose had sold "60-something," he said. "I expected it to be a blockbuster," he said. "I was wrong." At Prairie Lights Books in Iowa City,...

...Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), the No. 2 man on both the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees, revealed that an elite military-intelligence unit known as Able Danger identified Atta and three other hijackers as likely members of a terror cell in this country as early as 1999. The spies wanted to turn the info over to the FBI in 2000, Weldon said, "so they could bring that cell in and take out the terrorists." He claimed Pentagon lawyers rejected the recommendation because they mistakenly believed that since Atta and the others were in the country legally on visas, they...

Reported on TV

11 AM news on WRKO-AM radio Boston MA. L. Patrick Gray, former head of FBI, dead. Nothing yet on CNN or FOX.

Who knew that all those years we were watching men in gray felt hats on The FBI catching the bad guys, their agency was really a house divided between, as it turns out, Mr. Gray and Mr. Felt? Now we are being treated to the spectacle of a public joust between these two gentlemen. Mr. Gray is saying that he was never really a louse but that louse Felt was leaking to make him look like a louse. Mr. Felt says that he may have been a louse but only because that louse Gray was lousing things up and to...

Woodward's Debt to Deep Throat After the big stories, sometimes more than credit is due, sources say, by Sydney H. Schanberg June 21st, 2005 12:40 PM   The Watergate story 33 years ago can be fairly marked as the starting point of the age of journalists as celebrities. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein weren't celebrities when they cracked the story for The Washington Post, but they soon would be, and a wave of emulators quickly began applying to journalism schools. Woodward in particular has remained a celebrity and striver for attention. He has also been a diligent worker, turning out...

Sometimes a great nation changes its mind. Sometimes that's a good thing The most jarring thing I read last week was a headline. My guess is that the headline, in a British newspaper, may be the most jarring thing you read this week: Nixon Becomes Watergate Hero. Forget for a moment the argument, which is hard to summarize and even harder to support. The important thing is that the way we look at Watergate is changing even if only one fact about Watergate has changed. (That would be the identity of Deep Throat. He was former FBI official Mark Felt.)The...

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...

C-SPAN

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...

While many MSM'ers (sorry, most) are lionizing this guy as "a hero," someone who "did what he had to do," something big is being missed. Our side has pointed out that he authorized/engineered illegal breakins himself... And that he turned on the Whitehouse because he didn't get the top FBI job. Now think about that.... Felt became a snitch because he didn't get something he wanted! He was an opportunist, plain and simple (and it runs in the family, apparently, as they shamelessly say they urged the old man to do it so they could all get some money). Yeah,...

For the major media, Watergate was the "good war," in which purely heroic reporters brought down the thoroughly villainous Richard Nixon. So the belated revelation that W. Mark Felt was Deep Throat is being cheered by the press establishment - even if those cheers sound a bit like last gasps. Not surprisingly, The Washington Post ran seven self-back-patting articles yesterday, including two on the front page. But others in the Old Media joined in, too: Felt-is-"Throat" led all three nightly broadcast news shows and filled up countless other news holes. For the mostly liberal MSM - mainstream media - the...

With the most tantalizing mystery in recent political history solved, the cottage industry of amateur detectives devoted to uncloaking Deep Throat has turned to confront one of the last remaining questions: How did so many people guess so wildly wrong for such a long time? W. Mark Felt... who revealed himself on Tuesday as The Washington Post's secret source on the Watergate scandal, usually fell low on the list of suspects, if he was there at all, in scores of books and articles speculating on the subject.... Yet even now, some skeptics are unconvinced Mr. Felt is the Deep Throat...

WASHINGTON -- Mark Felt, finally revealed as the "Deep Throat" who divulged the Watergate scandal, is wearing the hero's laurel 32 years later. But that designation comes across as peculiar to those of us who lived through the turbulent times. Felt deserves praise for breaking the rules as FBI associate director, providing Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post the guidance to determine whether they were on the correct path in uncovering the machinations of President Nixon. However, Felt was considered by reformers at the FBI to be part of the problem rather than the solution. He was...

...[L]eaking is not unknown in Washington, and in our experience the motives of leakers are complicated and often self-interested. ...It's fascinating to consider what might have happened had Mr. Felt helped to crack the coverup before the election of 1972, when voters could have had a say rather than have to endure a painful impeachment two years later. We will certainly be interested in hearing Mr. Felt explain why he acted as he did. All the more so because the larger story of Watergate was about holding the Presidency accountable for the misuse of that office's vast power. One lesson...

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.

DEEP THROAT IRONY An interesting sidebar to the Mark Felt saga that hasn't received as much coverage as the revelation that Felt was Deep Throat. After Felt retired from the FBI in a huff because he was passed over as a potential successor to J. Edgar Hoover, he himself was indicted for his own break-ins. While at the FBI, Felt had authorized warrantless break-ins and searches of people associated with a radical group called the Weather Underground. This was a group of communists that advocated the overthrow of the US government and its capitalist system. At any rate, at Mark...

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- One of the greatest mysteries of our time is no longer a mystery, NBC 4's Colleen Marshall reported. After 31 years of silence, FBI veteran Mark Felt, 91, who sparked the Watergate scandal, revealed Tuesday he was Deep Throat. Felt secretly gave information to famed reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein about the break-in at the Democratic Headquarters in the Watergate Hotel. High-ranking officials in the Nixon Administration suspected Felt but apparently did not pursue it, fearing more damaging information might be revealed, Marshall reported. "He's always lived with honor. He's a great patriot," said Felt's daughter...

The Files Minutes after hearing about Hoover's death, Clyde Tolson was on the phone to Helen Gandy discussing the disposition of Hoover's very sensitive files. A bit later, Attorney General Richard Kleindienst called Assistant to the Director John Mohr and told him to secure Hoover's private office. Mohr did what he was told and changed the lock on the door. Mohr did not burden Kleindienst with the knowledge that none of Hoover's files were kept in his office. The controversial files were kept in Miss Gandy's office. She and others were organizing those files so that some would be destroyed...

Former Nixon aide Pat Buchanan said Wednesday that the same mainstream reporters who paint newly revealed "Deep Throat" source Mark Felt as a hero couldn't find a good word to say about Linda Tripp, whose secret tapes led to the impeachment of President Clinton. "The only reason Mark Felt is a hero now [is because he helped] destroy was Richard Milhous Nixon," Buchanan told WABC Radio's John Gambling. But when it came to President Clinton, he noted, reporters suddenly developed a distaste for whistleblowers. "I mean, did they make Linda Tripp a hero?" the former Nixon speechwriter asked plaintively. "At...

President Bush said on Wednesday the disclosure that the former No. 2 official at the FBI was Watergate's "Deep Throat" source caught him by surprise and he's anxious to learn more. "It's hard for me to judge" whether former deputy FBI Director Mark Felt provided a valuable public service or acted improperly, Bush told reporters. "A lot of us have always wondered who Deep Throat might have been. And the mystery was solved yesterday." Felt's revelation that he was the source for The Washington Post's reporting that helped to bring down the presidency of Richard Nixon in the early 1970s...

ABC News Poll: Was Mark Felt a Hero for What He did? CLICK HERE to Vote

Deep Throat, the mystery man who reigned as Washington's best-kept secret source for more than 30 years, was not just any shadowy, cigarette-smoking tipster in a raincoat. He was the No. 2 official of the F.B.I., W. Mark Felt, who helped The Washington Post unravel the Watergate scandal and the presidency of Richard M. Nixon, a feat that he lived to see disclosed on Tuesday, frail but smiling at 91. ...Vanity Fair magazine released an article from its July issue reporting that Mr. Felt, long a prime suspect to Nixon himself, had in recent years confided to his family and...