‘Deep Throat’ steps out of the shadows

last updated 8 January 2015

What happened

Washington's longest-lasting mystery was laid to rest this week when a former deputy director of the FBI was unmasked as 'œDeep Throat,' the legendary informer whose leaks to The Washington Post helped bring down President Nixon three decades ago. W. Mark Felt, now 91, admitted his identity in an article in Vanity Fair magazine that quoted him as saying, 'œI'm the guy they used to call Deep Throat.'

Former Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward confirmed that Felt was the anonymous source who in 1972 hinted that a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate building might be traced back to the highest levels of the Nixon administration. Guessing at Deep Throat's identity has been a Washington parlor game since the movie All the President's Men portrayed him as a shadowy, chain-smoking idealist who gave Woodward tips in darkened parking garages. But Washington cognoscenti had long placed Felt high on the list of likely candidates. 'œThe thing that stuns me,' said Ben Bradlee, former editor of the Post, 'œis that this goddamn secret has lasted this long.'

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Nice timing indeed, said USA Today. Deep Throat unmasked himself 'œat a time of intense conflict' between politicians and the press about the use of anonymous sources, and there's a lesson to be learned by both sides. If journalists can't protect their sources, as Woodward and Bernstein did with Felt, 'œgovernment officials may be able to hide a lot more.' But Watergate also showed that the use of such sources needs to be 'œbacked up by plenty of aggressive reporting, supporting documents, and judicious editing.'

So why did Felt stay silent for so long? asked Timothy Noah in Slate.com. His family now wants him to be thought of as a patriot, whose leaks were motivated by his disgust at Nixon's cover-up and use of the FBI for political ends. But the truth is that Felt's leaks to the Post were also motivated by his resentment at Nixon's failure to appoint him FBI chief when J. Edgar Hoover died in 1972. In an interview six years ago, Felt denied point-blank that he was Deep Throat and insisted that 'œit would be contrary to my responsibility as a loyal employee of the FBI to leak information.'

Felt was right to be ashamed, said David Frum in National Review Online. The liberal media only celebrate Deep Throat because the Watergate scandal was their finest hour, when 'œfor one shining, shimmering moment, they decided who were cultural heroes and who were villains.' The truth is that Nixon did nothing that hadn't been done—albeit on a smaller scale—by previous presidents, and that 'œthe techniques of cover-up used by Nixon were borrowed later by Bill Clinton.' But don't expect to hear much about those similarities as 'œbig media descends into another spasm of Watergate delight.'

Luckily for the country, Mark Felt didn't share that cynicism, said Richard Cohen in The Washington Post. Unlike the public, which no longer expects much from either the government or the media, Felt was a man who 'œtook seriously all that stuff about duty and loyalty and—permit me, please—the American Way.' He risked his career 'œto do what he thought was right,' and took no credit until the very end of his life.

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