Felt in charge of ID'ing 'Deep Throat'-(the ultimate CYA assignment;Nixon appoints Felt as sleuth!)

WORLD NET DAILY.COM ^ | JUNE 14, 2005 | Staff Writer

[CHARLITE]

The Nixon administration put the FBI's Mark Felt – who recently admitted to being "Deep Throat," the Watergate source of the Washington Post – in charge of finding out the informant's identity, reported The Nation.

The publication says it has obtained once confidential FBI documents that reveal Felt was asked to find out who in the administration was leaking damaging information to the Post's Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the reporters who published a series of stories credited with bringing Nixon down.

An article by The Nation Washington editor David Corn and independent TV producer Jeff Goldberg states Felt, who at the time was responsible for overseeing the FBI's Watergate probe, "was able to watch his own back and protect his ability to guide the two reporters whose exposes would help topple the president whom he served."

According to a statement from the magazine, Corn and Goldberg in their piece explain how the Nixon White House believed someone in the FBI was leaking information, why the White House thought that person was Felt but asked him to uncover and plug the media leaks, and how Felt used his leaks investigation to direct suspicion away from himself.

Wrote Corn and Goldberg: "Felt at different points became an FBI plumber – in the parlance of the Nixon White House, a 'plumber' was an operative who took care of leaks – even though he was the No. 1 leaker. He was in the perfect spot to deflect any accusations that might implicate him and to misdirect suspicion. And when President Nixon and his top aides became convinced that Felt was a key source for the Washington Post – they still couldn't touch him because of what he knew about their skulduggery."

In some of the memos, Felt took the opportunity to steer other officials away from the FBI as the source of the leaks.

One such memo cast suspicion on the county prosecutor in Miami, Richard Gerstein, who was investigating how a $25,000 check from Nixon's campaign had ended up in the account of a Watergate burglar. No FBI leakers were ever found via the Miami inquiry Felt orchestrated.

The article quotes one memo Felt wrote to his subordinate about the leaks:

"As you know, Woodward and Bernstein have written numerous articles about Watergate. While their stories have contained much fiction and half truths, they have frequently set forth information which they attribute to federal investigators, Department of Justice sources, and FBI sources. We know that they were playing games with the case agent in the Washington Field Office trying to trick him into giving them bits of information. On balance and despite the fiction, there is no question that they have access to sources either in the FBI or in the Department of Justice."

Wrote Corn and Goldberg of Felt: "He was not just a high-level leaker or undercover whistleblower. He was a master manipulator."