Free Republic

Many find it shocking the Department of Justice (DOJ) could be capable of ginning up false allegations against a former president in a previous election and would again do the same prior to the 2024 election. This shock, however, is a mark of just how drastically conservatives have failed to recognize the long decline of the DOJ and its ultimate transformation into a political subsidiary of a radicalized Democratic Party. Conservatives would do well to observe seminal moments that have led the country’s top law enforcement entity to its present dire state. In that review, all roads ultimately lead back...

Attorneys for the whistleblower who triggered impeachment proceedings against President Trump see the three-decade "Deep Throat" mystery as a model for keeping his identity secret. The secret of "Deep Throat" was kept from the early '70s until 2005, when former FBI associate director Mark Felt came forward at 91 years old. He died two years later. Whistleblower attorney Mark Zaid, an aficionado of Watergate history, said leaving his client's identity unresolved indefinitely would encourage future whistleblowers. “Our ideal ending is that the identity of the whistleblower is never known and the individual continues on with their personal and professional life...

America has undergone enormous change during the nearly eight decades of my life. Today, America is a bitterly divided, poorly educated and morally fragile society with so-called mainstream politicians pushing cynical identity politics, socialism and open borders. The president of the United States is threatened with impeachment because the other side doesn’t like him. The once reasonably unbiased American media has evolved into a hysterical left-wing mob. How could the stable and reasonably cohesive America of the 1950s have reached this point in just one lifetime? Who are the main culprits? Here’s my list of the 10 most destructive Americans...

Bob Woodward, a CIA mouthpiece, foisted off an absurd fiction on a gullible public, called “Deep Throat.” When his fraud was exposed, he and the CIA trotted out someone they claimed to be the “real real” Deep Throat, a stroke victim named Mark Felt who had been highly placed in the FBI during Watergate, and who “admitted” in a befogged state that he had been the informant to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. It was fiction to “prove” fiction.

Mark Felt’s family ends 30 years of speculation, identifying Felt, the former FBI assistant director, as “Deep Throat,” the secret source who helped unravel the Watergate scandal. The Felt family’s admission, made in an article in Vanity Fair magazine, took legendary reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who had promised to keep their source’s identity a secret until his death, by surprise. Tapes show that Nixon himself had speculated that Felt was the secret informant as early as 1973. The question “Who was Deep Throat?” had been investigated relentlessly in the ensuing years since Watergate in movies, books, televisions shows,...

As the 40th anniversary of Watergate impends, we are to be bathed again in the great myth and morality play about the finest hour in all of American journalism. The myth? That two heroic young reporters at The Washington Post, guided by a secret source, a man of conscience they dubbed "Deep Throat," cracked the case and broke the scandal wide open, where the FBI, U.S. prosecutors and more experienced journalists floundered and failed. Through their tireless investigative reporting, they compelled the agencies of government to treat Watergate as the unprecedented constitutional crisis it was. No Pulitzer Prize was ever...

The Post & Email has received tonight a decclassified FBI report admitted in evidence in the case brought against W. Mark Felt and Edward S. Miller by President Jimmy Carter’s U.S. Attorney General, Mr. Griffin B. Bell. This document was obtained by an American citizen, who wished to remain anonymous, via a FOIA request. Mr. W. Mark  Felt is none other than the informant who spoke with reporters from the Washington Post, exposing the Watergate Scandal:  who went by the name “Deep Throat” a fact that points to his political neutrality in American politics.What is not know about Mr. Felt...

"De mortuis nil nisi bonum." Of the dead, nothing but good. So said Dean Acheson of Sen. Joe McCarthy on his death in 1957. "Tailgunner Joe" had bedeviled the secretary of state for his lassitude toward communist penetration of State in President Truman's time. But the passing of Mark Felt, associate director of the FBI in the later Nixon years, lately exposed as "Deep Throat," the source for the Woodward-Bernstein stories, calls forth some rebuttal to the tributes lavished upon Felt as the honest lawman who saved our republic. When the Watergate break-in was traced to the Committee to Reelect...

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...

Watergate 'Deep Throat' W. Mark Felt Dies at 95 SAN FRANCISCO — W. Mark Felt, the former FBI second-in-command who revealed himself as "Deep Throat" 30 years after he tipped off reporters to the Watergate scandal that toppled a president, has died. He was 95. Felt died Thursday in Santa Rosa after suffering from congestive heart failure for several months, said family friend John D. O'Connor, who wrote the 2005 Vanity Fair article uncovering Felt's secret. The shadowy central figure in one of the most gripping political dramas of the 20th century, Felt insisted his alter ego be kept secret...

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...

A D.C. author who co-wrote W. Mark Felts' 1979 memoir, in which the former top FBI official denied being the legendary Watergate source "Deep Throat," says in a lawsuit that he was tricked into signing away his rights to the work. Ralph de Toledano, in a lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court here, states that Mr. Felt, his son and an attorney concealed their intention to disclose that Mr. Felt was indeed Deep Throat -- first in Vanity Fair magazine, then in a revised book. -snip- Mr. de Toledano says in his suit that California attorney John D. O'Connor...

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...

'Deep Throat' On Larry King Show on Tuesday, Pushing New Book By E&P Staff Published: April 24, 2006 3:05 PM ET NEW YORK W. Mark Felt, unmasked as fabled Watergate source "Deep Throat" last year, is scheduled to appear on Larry King's CNN interview show on Tuesday. He has a new book to promote, but at 92, and suffering from dementia, the high-profile interview is a bit of a surprise. CNN is promoting the appearance this way: "His secrets brought down a president. The man known as 'Deep Throat' gives an interview 30 years in the making. Tune in at...

W. Mark Felt, who for nearly 33 years denied he was Deep Throat, also held a tragic secret from most of his family: It was suicide, not a heart attack, that felled his wife after years of strain from Felt's FBI career and ensuing legal troubles. In his new book, "A G-Man's Life: The FBI, Being 'Deep Throat' and the Struggle for Honor in Washington," Felt reveals for the first time that Audrey Robinson Felt, his wife of 46 years, shot herself in 1984 with his .38-caliber service revolver. The book, co-authored with John O'Connor, the lawyer whose Vanity Fair...

Woodwardgate: Deep Throat or Shallow Reporting?By Fedora One, Woodward wrote about how Deep Throat, he had a long friendship with Deep Throat. There's no evidence that he ever had any kind of friendship with Mark Felt. Secondly, why would the number two man at the FBI choose to confide in a young metro reporter for 'The Washington Post' who had only been there for nine months? Three, Deep Throat is given credit by Woodward with the story of the destruction of the tape. How would Mark Felt have known about that? On the other side of the coin, Mark Felt...

FULLERTON, Calif. - Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter who was jailed for protecting a confidential source, presented an award Saturday to perhaps the most famous confidential source — the man known as "Deep Throat." The award presented by the California First Amendment Coalition was accepted by the grandson of former FBI Associate Director W. Mark Felt because the 92-year-old could not make the trip. Miller lauded Felt as a courageous man who helped Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncover the secrets of the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of President Nixon. "Without Mark...

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,...

Santiago, Chile - W. Mark Felt managed to remain in history’s shadows for more than 30 years. It would seem that his energetic daughter Joan, the person most influential in persuading her father to make public his role as “Deep Throat,” also had a past in her past. Daughter Joan played a prominent role not only in “outing” her now-invalid 91-year-old father, but also in engineering book and movie deals. Long-estranged, father and daughter reconciled after he was widowed in the 1980s, and he has lived with her since. Following his Deep Throat revelation in June, Felt has been praised...

Noted journalist Bob Woodward offered his insights on topics ranging from Nixon to Bush, current political issues and the role of journalism during a speech to an overflow crowd at Paepcke Auditorium on Tuesday night. Not once did he mention Mark Felt, the former FBI assistant director nicknamed "Deep Throat" who was Woodward's key anonymous source in uncovering the Watergate scandal. Woodward's latest book chronicles the story of "Deep Throat," but the audience members clearly had more current issues on their minds. Using numerous anecdotes from his 35-year journalism career, Woodward didn't make definitive conclusions about issues but let facts...