On Feb. 28, 1973, Nixon and Dean again tagged Felt as the potential leaker. He was, Dean told Nixon, "the only person that knows" such details. But Nixon was skeptical. No one would risk his career to become an informant.
According to a tape recording from that day, Nixon said, "You know, suppose that Felt comes out and unwraps the whole thing? What does that do to him? . . . He's in a very dangerous situation. . . . The informer is not wanted in our society. Either way, that's the one thing people do sort of line up against. They . . . say, 'Well, that [expletive] informed. I don't want him around.' "
Gray was never confirmed as FBI director, and in 1973 William D. Ruckelshaus was nominated to replace him. Felt clashed repeatedly with his new boss and left the bureau later that year, well before Nixon was to leave office.
In 1978 he was indicted, along with Edward G. Miller, for nine illegal break-ins in New York and New Jersey carried out in 1972 and 1973. When he was arraigned, several hundred FBI agents showed up at the courthouse in a sign of solidarity. The two maintained they had operated within the law but were convicted in 1980. In April 1981, Reagan pardoned both men, saying they had served the country with "great distinction."
In his memoir, Felt acknowledged speaking once to Woodward, but in that book and whenever else he was asked, he denied being Deep Throat. In 1999, Felt denied it again to the Hartford Courant after there was another suggestion that he was Deep Throat.
"I would have done better," he told the paper. "I would have been more effective." That summer, Felt told Slate's Tim Noah it would have been contrary to his responsibilities at the FBI to leak information.
-- Washington Post - June 2005
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