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Watergate "Deep Throat" Mark Felt Dead At 95
Hugh Pickens writes "W. Mark Felt Sr., 95, associate director of the FBI during the Watergate scandal, better known as 'Deep Throat,' the most famous anonymous source in American history, died at his home in Santa Rosa, California. Felt secretly guided Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to pursue the story of the 1972 break-in of the Democratic National Committee's headquarters at the Watergate office buildings, and later of the Nixon administration's campaign of spying and sabotage against its perceived political enemies. 'It's impossible to exaggerate how high the stakes were in Watergate,' wrote Felt in his 2006 book A G-Man's Life. 'We faced no simple burglary, but an assault on government institutions, an attack on the FBI's integrity, and unrelenting pressure to unravel one of the greatest political scandals in our nation's history.' No one knows exactly what prompted Felt to leak the information from the Watergate probe to the press. He was passed over for the post of FBI director after Hoover's death in 1972, a crushing career disappointment. 'People will debate for a long time whether I did the right thing by helping Woodward. The bottom line is that we did get the whole truth out, and isn't that what the FBI is supposed to do?'"
Yet Felt was not strictly against "black bag jobs" like the Watergate break-in:
While Watergate was seething, Mr. Felt authorized nine illegal break-ins at the homes of friends and relatives of members of the Weather Underground, a violent left-wing splinter group. The people he chose as targets had committed no crimes. The F.B.I. had no search warrants. He later said he ordered the break-ins because national security required it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/washington/19felt.html?scp=1&sq=mark%20felt&st=cse
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
If you don't know much about Watergate, I suggest hitting up Watergate on Wikipedia, then considering acquiring a copy of Woodward and Bernstein's All the President's Men. Those two reporters were the ones two interacted with Deep Throat, named for a 70s porn.
The 1976 Redford/Hoffman movie version of the book All the President's Men is the definitive story in video format.
Emery's Watergate is another arguably excellent book on the matter.
Avoid the new "Frost/Nixon" film--it's history ambiguous and largely inaccurate; it's a Hollywood version of the story with excellent acting. Instead, watch the original interviews.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
Obviously you thought you knew all about the Watergate scandal. But if you are just now hearing about "Deep Throat" I don't think you knew much at all.
You want to read about Watergate, read G. Gordon Liddy's biography, since he planned and executed Watergate. Then Read Stephen Ambrose's Nixon biography (the third one). Ambrose is the only one who gives a reason why Nixon would want to wiretap Larry O'Brien, not that I am convinced Nixon knew in advance (none of the principles involved have ever claimed this). Silent Coup is an incredibly detailed chronicle of Watergate, but I disagree with its conclusions, other than John Dean was a little rat (Dean was the president's lawyer while working as an FBI informant). Never trust a word that comes out of Dean's mouth.
You'd also want to read Bob Haldeman's and John Erlichman's biographies.
ATPM gets a lot wrong. The bottom line is Nixon wasn't brought down by Woodward and Bernstein, they just kept up the heat.
Nixon was brought down by a guy named Alexander Butterfield announcing to the Senate Watergate Committee that Nixon taped his conversations, which led to the smoking gun tape about Nixon telling the FBI that Watergate was a CIA operation, back-off. Nixon scuttled that idea the next day, but that tape is what brought him down, not W&B. Once Nixon finally released the tapes, that particular tape is what turned Barry Goldwater to support impeachment, and Nixon's goose was cooked. After Nixon heard he lost Goldwater, he turned to his SecState Al Haig and said, "Well, there goes the presidency, Al."
BTW, when Haig dies, I'm betting he was a Woodward source too. Haig, when NSA for Nixon, was given his military briefings by a young Naval Intelligence officer named Bob Woodward. To this day, Woodward will not talk about those briefings.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
There is no evidence that Nixon conspired with the South Vietnamese to sink the peace talks in order to win the election. Fixed that for you. If you have contrary information, citation need.
That's no different from the multiple scandals that plagued the Clinton administration, the difference between that the media actively covered it up back then.
Hell, the only reason we know about Monica Lewinsky is that Matt Drudge broke the story after Newsweek was going to quietly shelve it. And look how Obama's campaign got away with breaking its campaign financing promise and thus was able to accept record-breaking amounts of donations with no government oversight, often using untraceable prepaid cards. It's business as usual in Washington.
I'm not glad he's dead, either. I wish he had spilled more, about other Nixon cronies (like Rumsfeld and Cheney), and he might have done so once the Bush era was finally safely over, and those other criminals were as "retired" as he was. But evidently there wasn't enough personal gain in that kind of disclosure, so Felt never gave it. And now he never will.
I heard Woodward interviewed on Fresh Air on NPR the other day (I think it was a rerun) and according to him, the last time he visited Mark Felt at Felt's home in California, Felt was in poor health. Specifically, he suffered from some form of dementia. According to Woodward, at that time he could barely remember why Nixon had to leave office. He knew who Woodward was, and he told Woodward that he and Bernstein "had done the right thing," but specific details of their past dealings were already lost to him. So as far as spilling any more beans, that door was closed.
Breakfast served all day!