W. Mark Felt is Deep Throat

ABC News | 5/31/1955 | ABC News

[CaptainK]

Just in on ABC News. He and his family admit it through his lawyer. Will be in upcoming Vanity Fair.

[OESY]

...Woodward has always decried the attempts to unmask Deep Throat. 'I don't think reporters trying to identify other reporters' sources is the noblest form of journalism,'' he once said. But most sleuths from both sides don't care because they believe Deep Throat's cult status was ultimately bad for journalism. They argue that it led to a generation of overambitious reporters who relied way too much on anonymous sources.

''Watergate and Deep Throat attracted an entire generation of young people who wanted to get a big pelt and hang it on their walls,'' says Sabato, ``who were looking for scandal and corruption where it didn't exist, who dreamed of Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman playing them going down into underground parking garages.''

Whatever the motivation, every year as the June 17 anniversary of the Watergate break-in arrives, Deep Throat is sighted more often than Elvis, and usually about as reliably....

Former Nixon speechwriter David Gergen cried the first time a reporter suggested he was Deep Throat, and his more recent strategy of threatening to sue has been only marginally more effective. Mark Felt, the former No. 2 man at the FBI, has been named Deep Throat so often (by Nixon himself, among others) that the daughter he lives with put a greeting on their answering machine inviting callers to leave messages for ``Joan, Rob, Nick or Deep Throat.''...

Just in case you're keeping score, hints dropped by his associates indicate that Dean this time around has been leaning toward someone who worked in the office of John Ehrlichman, one of Nixon's top aides. His previous guesses: Gergen, Watergate prosecutor Earl Silbert, Nixon's chief of staff Alexander Haig, and nobody at all -- Deep Throat didn't really exist, and was just a literary device Woodward and fellow reporter Carl Bernstein used to jazz up their book All The President's Men, their story of how they reported Watergate.

The idea that Deep Throat is a fake -- or, at least, a composite constructed from several different sources -- is probably the single most widely held theory. Even Woodward's former literary agent, David Obst, has said the shadowy supersource was invented for the sake of showbiz: ''Without Deep Throat in All The President's Men, there's no book or movie,'' he wrote in his memoirs, adding that Deep Throat showed up in the manuscript only after the publisher rejected the first draft as too dull.

Woodward and Bernstein have always insisted Deep Throat is real, not a composite or an invention. But it's also true they were not above fudging a bit to tell a good story. Other books on Watergate have pinpointed a number of literary embellishments -- metaphorically convenient rainstorms on days when the Washington weather was actually clear, for instance -- in All The President's Men that exaggerate, distort or outright falsify the truth....

More: Miami Herald, June 16, 2002, http://www.miami.com/mld/miami/news/3482617.htm

[kabar]

Good analysis and well said.

[kcvl]

GLIMPSES INTO THE LIVES OF WOODWARD AND BERNSTEIN FROM THE PEOPLE WHO KNOW THEM WELL

snip


Scott Armstrong, high-school friend of Woodward’s and researcher on The Final Days, sequel to All the President’s Men:

Woodward’s a complicated person, and Carl kind of pushed the limit—he disappeared for a very long time. He had a lot of other things going on in his life.

But Bob always saw the utility of what they had done and had affection and loyalty to Carl. Bob recognized that Carl had a certain destructive streak in him. At one point Bob said: “I’m just going to try to keep my business a bit more separate.”

In 1976 Bernstein married New York-based writer Nora Ephron, and in 1977 he left the Post. She filed for divorce in 1980 after his affair with Margaret Jay, wife of former British ambassador Peter Jay.


Bob Woodward:

I thought Carl made a mistake by leaving the Post and going to New York. We both needed the Post. The kind of opportunity I’ve had there to do what I wanted and still work for the paper was available to him, but he thought in terms of a more literary career. I think it was Nora’s influence.

Scott Armstrong:

I think what Bob’s really saying is he had to make a choice between the two sides of Carl. If Carl wanted to be in New York at parties and slip his hand down somebody’s pants behind the couch, that was Carl’s business, but Bob didn’t want to be involved.

Carl Bernstein:

Bob and I had this rough period, some of it during The Final Days. Then when Bob’s marriage [to second wife Francie Barnard] broke up [in 1978], I called him and said, “Are you all right?” We hadn’t talked in a while. I think he was glad to hear from me. We then became extraordinarily close and have been since. I don’t know how he characterizes it.
Liz Smith, gossip columnist, in her memoir, Natural Blonde:

The stories about Carl’s involvement with a married woman . . . were epidemic, but I discounted them. . . .

One day Nora rang me up and said in her characteristic determined kind of way: “Liz, I have a story for you. Carl and I are going to divorce! Please write it.” . . . I did write on December 19, 1979. . . .

One night at a party I ran into Carl and he forced me up against a wall, started weeping, and told me I had ruined his life.


http://tinyurl.com/7mjbt

[OESY]

STUDENTS ASK THE G-MAN: Watergate Interview with G. Gordon Liddy, March 2005

[snip]

8. What is your opinion of the use of anonymous sources, such as “Deep Throat?”

Response: I don’t think there was a “Deep Throat.” I think it was a literary device. There were many sources and maybe one gave more info than others. They say they will release the name when somebody dies. Unless they have the guy on tape saying he was “Deep Throat, they could say anyone was “Deep Throat.” The Pope could die tomorrow and they could say he was “Deep Throat.”

9. If there was a “Deep Throat,” would you venture a guess about who it might be?

Response: I no that he doesn’t exist.

-- http://www.liddyshow.us/school3.php

[kcvl]

Woodward, 60, whose parents divorced when he was 12, is the son of a Midwestern Republican judge, graduated from Yale in 1965, and joined the Navy. He’s a quiet, punctilious, conservative, poker-playing workaholic who has written ten bestsellers since All the President’s Men. He’s never left the Post, establishing himself as a journalistic elder statesman whose phone calls inspire fear.

Bernstein, 59, grew up in Silver Spring, a “red diaper” baby born to Communist activists who remained married for 63 years. He became a Washington Star copyboy at 16, a pool shark, a teen leader in B’nai Brith, and a University of Maryland dropout. He’s now more famous as a celebrity than as a journalist, with his name appearing in gossip-column items about the women he’s dated and the people he owes money.

Bernstein’s 1980 split with his second wife, writer Nora Ephron, was excruciatingly public, and she wrote a roman à clef, Heartburn, about it. Since leaving the Post in 1977, he’s worked at ABC, Time, and Vanity Fair and has published two books, though he’s never earned the fame and money that follow Woodward.

[xJones]

For the record, I believe that Deep Throat never existed.

With respect, I diagree because W & B knew too much. They weren't pulling their leads out of their own imaginations - for probably the only time in their careers.

They were getting tips that at least strongly hinted at an FBI source.

[GraniteStateConservative]

Here's the quote: The man's position in the Executive Branch was extremely sensitive. It doesn't say he was working day to day in the White House or whatever. It's meant to convey that he had serious connections when it came to what was going on in the White House, that he was very much in the loop. Felt had White House liaison responsibility after the retirement of Deke DeLoach. That's a very sensitive position to be in within the Executive Branch.

Just google "mark felt" and "deep throat" you'll see all kinds of support for his being DT.

James Mann had private conversations with Woodward back then and was able to figure out he was positively an FBI guy (regardless of whether it was Felt or someone else).

Jack Limpert, who wrote the story back then that I excerpted for you, revealed later on that the source for the pieces was Frank Waldrop, who was "absolutely wired to the FBI," according to Limpert and, he was the former editor of the Washington Times-Herald, which was folded into the Washington Post in 1954-- which gives him a very good reason to piss on the Post's golden goose by telling Limpert way back then that he thought Felt was the man.

[Southack]

"Justice Department -- FBI. LOL"

As I said, you'd have to stretch to connect Felt to the Executive Branch. Keep in mind that Woodward and Bernstein were told about the gap on the White House tape *before* the FBI knew about the existence of those tapes.

Felt was FBI. Felt wasn't Deep Throat.

Deep Throat was friends with the inner-most White House power-players.

[kcvl]

Deep Throat was not 'an administration insider', he was a career FBI official. Deep Throat's identity was not protected to shield him from political retaliation, but to shield him from possible criminal prosecution.

Exactly! We have been lied to by "reporters" who have built an entire career on the LIES.

[Southack]

"Here's the quote: The man's position in the Executive Branch was extremely sensitive. It doesn't say he was working day to day in the White House or whatever. It's meant to convey that he had serious connections when it came to what was going on in the White House, that he was very much in the loop."

An FBI liasson to the Executive Branch would hardly be in a position to even know about Nixon's secret White House recording system, much less know about the gap on the tapes.

[cyncooper]

I'll color you ignoring what's being presented. There is more than you say, and even "just" hearsay is evidence.

But there's more. You choose to ignore it.

This is not saying I'm convinced. But neither am I dismissing it out of hand.

[AFPhys]

Nice to see how the Investigative Journalism classes at UofI can really get to the bottom of things...

From another of their web sites: http://deepthroatuncovered.com/
How students solved one of America's top mysteries

After a four-year investigation, students at the University of Illinois have determined the identity of Deep Throat, the most elusive, anonymous news source in history: Fred Fielding, deputy counsel to former President Richard Nixon

Updated 11/21/2003: Fielding's denial story segment; "The chain of command" clue; class contributions

Wrong yet again...
Amazing.


---
More amazing is the supreme confidence these academics have in their results.

These are the type of people who are writing "history books" now - "investigating" such things as Jefferson's sex life, etc. ,as well as seeking out stories for Newsweak, CBS 60min, and the NYSlimes.

It is important for us to to recognize their enormous fallibility.

I've decided to archive that page before it the evidence of their incompetence gets "lost"

[1Old Pro]

Felt was also embittered at having been passed over for the Director General position and the FBI in general was hostile to the Nixon administration

Kinda reminds me of that CIA couple who Novak outed.

[Southack]

"Jack Limpert, who wrote the story back then that I excerpted for you, revealed later on that the source for the pieces was Frank Waldrop, who was "absolutely wired to the FBI,"

You might pause to consider that Justice Department prosecutors (who happened to serve as top tier Republican fundraisers) were likewise wired to the FBI.

[GraniteStateConservative]

I just replied to this, so you can take a look at that.

Regarding CRP, James Mann noted that "FBI officials, in their investigations of Watergate, were collecting information about CRP and the White House. At the same time, they were working with prosecutors at the Justice Department and were trying to deal with, and fend off, efforts by Nixon and his aides to restrict the Watergate investigation."

[Southack]

"I'll color you ignoring what's being presented. There is more than you say, and even "just" hearsay is evidence. But there's more. You choose to ignore it."

If there is "more," then post it.

[Tatze]

Here are a few archived threads on the subject. Except the last one, they seem to implicate Felt, but I'm not convinced.

FBI MAN WAS DEEP THROAT
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/678775/posts

Deep Throat Mystery Deepens-Woodward Articles Lifted Verbatim from FBI Reports
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/677138/posts

PAGE SIX: Deep Throat Mystery Deepens
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/677258/posts

(Illinois) Students try to solve tricky mystery of 'Deep Throat'
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/689863/posts

[bootless]

I'm deep throat, too!

Are you having a Spartacus/Buckhead moment? :-)

[Jedidah]

He didn't leak files, nothing tangible at all, just words. He actually gave Woodward very little primary information, serving instead to confirm or deny information that Woodward brought to him. He is portrayed as a career government man frightened and very troubled by what he knows of the corruption, yet unable to do more than give Woodward cryptic clues about what was going on.

[Tatze]

Thats wierd. The site I checked for a University of Illinois investigation said they chose Pat Buchanan as DT. Were there more than one student invesigation at the Univ. of Ill.??