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Report: Ex- FBI official says he was 'Deep Throat'
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| josh4 |
| quote: | Report: Ex- FBI official says he was 'Deep Throat'
NEW YORK (AP) -- A former FBI official says he was the source called "Deep Throat" who leaked secrets about President Nixon's Watergate coverup to The Washington Post, Vanity Fair reported Tuesday.
W. Mark Felt, 91, who was second-in-command at the FBI in the early 1970s, kept the secret even from his family until 2002, when he confided to a friend that he had been Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward's source, the magazine said.
"I'm the guy they used to call Deep Throat," he told lawyer John D. O'Connor, the author of the Vanity Fair article, the magazine said in a press release.
Felt was initially adamant about remaining silent on the subject, thinking disclosures about his past somehow dishonorable.
"I don't think (being Deep Throat) was anything to be proud of," Felt indicated to his son, Mark Jr., at one point, according to the article. "You (should) not leak information to anyone."
Felt is a retiree living in Santa Rosa, Calif., with his daughter, Joan, the magazine said. He could not immediately be reached for comment by The Associated Press.
The Washington Post had no immediate comment.
Felt is one of a number of people who have been named over the years as the source whose disclosures helped bring down the Nixon presidency. Others include Assistant Attorney General Henry Peterson, deputy White House counsel Fred Fielding, and even ABC newswoman Diane Sawyer, who then worked in the White House press office.
In 1999, Felt denied he was the man.
"I would have done better," Felt told The Hartford Courant. "I would have been more effective. Deep Throat didn't exactly bring the White House crashing down, did he?"
Find this article at:
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/POLITIC...t.ap/index.html |
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| wolverine16 |
| Interesting that there's essentially an effort to smear Felt in the media. It seems that only Nixon loyalists like Pat Buchanan and those who went to jail, like G. Gordon Liddy, have been asked for comment, who surprisingly ;) suggest that what Felt did was wrong. Where's John Dean? Regardless of whatever his motives may have been, what CREEP and Nixon were doing was illegal and deserved to come out. If he hadn't given information to the press, Nixon might have successfully covered up their actions. |
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| metalgearsolid |
| quote: | Originally posted by wolverine16
If he hadn't given information to the press, Nixon might have successfully covered up their actions. |
He shouldnt have come out Nixon wouldve done great things:rolleyes: |
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| wolverine16 |
| quote: | Originally posted by metalgearsolid
He shouldnt have come out Nixon wouldve done great things:rolleyes: |
I'll give you that he created the EPA, but I'm hoping you're being sarcastic. |
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| josh4 |
| at least he came out while hes still alive and able to defend himself |
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| metalgearsolid |
| quote: | Originally posted by josh4
at least he came out while hes still alive and able to defend himself |
yeah but I heard hes really "sick" so he wont prolly won't be able to defend himself it will mostly be his family |
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| xxxtasy |
'Deep Throat' should have cum forward some time ago.
He probably made some $$$ with Vanity magazine, which is alright. 91 years is very old. |
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| Shakka |
From what I've read, money played a large role in his coming out. His family basically convinced him that if he came out, there would be substantial money to be made which the family apparently needs pretty badly.
Edit: Oh the irony! Perhaps someone can shed a little light on this little jewel:
| quote: | An interesting sidebar to the Mark Felt saga that hasn't received as much coverage as the revelation that Felt was Deep Throat. After Felt retired from the FBI in a huff because he was passed over as a potential successor to J. Edgar Hoover, he himself was indicted for his own break-ins.
While at the FBI, Felt had authorized warrantless break-ins and searches of people associated with a radical group called the Weather Underground. This was a group of communists that advocated the overthrow of the US government and its capitalist system. At any rate, at Mark Felt's trial, Richard Nixon testified on his behalf. That's right....unbelievably, the former president was unknowingly assisting the man who was most responsible for the destruction of his presidency.
Further adding to the irony, once Felt was pardoned by Ronald Reagan in 1981, he received a congratulatory bottle of champagne from Richard Nixon along with a note that said "justice ultimately prevails." Nixon went to his grave not knowing who Deep Throat was.
Reports say the bidding has started at $1 million on a book by Mark Felt about his Deep Throat years. It remains to be seen whether his advanced age and faulty memory will allow him to deliver the goods. |
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| josh4 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Shakka
From what I've read, money played a large role in his coming out. His family basically convinced him that if he came out, there would be substantial money to be made which the family apparently needs pretty badly.
Edit: Oh the irony! Perhaps someone can shed a little light on this little jewel: |
oh pish posh. if people want to smear Felt's name fine but don't try to make Nixon look like a victim! |
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| Shakka |
| quote: | Originally posted by josh4
oh pish posh. if people want to smear Felt's name fine but don't try to make Nixon look like a victim! |
I wasn't trying to. Did I? Seriously, I was just commenting on motivation for coming out now when he openly admitted that his children encouraged him to do it for financial gain. Can I criticize Felt without defending Nixon? If anything, it just strikes me as humorously ironic that Nixon was so clueless.
This article is a little less forgiving;)
| quote: |
Deep Throat's Legacy
June 2, 2005; Page A12
Congratulations to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, for getting scooped this week on the story about their own Watergate source. Rather than betray the man who became known as Deep Throat, they managed to keep one of the great secrets in media history for 30 years, until the source first outed himself to another reporter. Their integrity is worth noting amid so many recent examples of lapsed media ethics.
About the legacy of Deep Throat himself, now 91-year-old Mark Felt, we are more ambivalent. Most of the press corps is hailing him as a hero because he was willing to risk his job as deputy director of the FBI by leaking the contents of confidential documents. His motives are said to have been "patriotic," and maybe they were. But leaking is not unknown in Washington, and, in our experience, the motives of leakers are complicated and often self-interested.
Perhaps Mr. Felt believed that going to the press was his only recourse. But as a senior government official, he had other alternatives -- confronting Richard Nixon himself, or resigning in protest and then taking his story to Capitol Hill. It's fascinating to consider what might have happened had Mr. Felt helped to crack the cover-up before the election of 1972, when voters could have had a say rather than have to endure a painful impeachment two years later. We will certainly be interested in hearing Mr. Felt explain why he acted as he did.
All the more so because the larger story of Watergate was about holding the Presidency accountable for the misuse of that office's vast power. One lesson we learned from the Nixon and Bill Clinton eras is that it is both difficult and painful to check a President, especially one abusing the Justice Department.
The press got Watergate right as a story about Nixon's cover-up. But even Messrs. Woodward and Bernstein, who covered the story virtually alone for months, didn't expose most of the abuses. Those became known only after the other institutions of government -- the courts and Congress -- began to do their work. Judge John Sirica's decision to give harsh sentences to the Watergate burglars proved to be the first break in unraveling the cover-up. Later Congressional hearings turned up word of the secret White House tapes, which ultimately proved to be Nixon's undoing.
To the extent that the Washington Post's reporting influenced Judge Sirica, it played a critical if not decisive role. The reporters' task is of course to report what they can find out, and it's notable that in their Watergate coverage Messrs. Woodward and Bernstein played the role of old-fashioned diggers, not cable-TV partisans. The rest of the press corps ultimately joined their digging, and Nixon came to have few media defenders.
That was all very different from the Clinton era, when many good reporters did similarly important digging. (Susan Schmidt at the Washington Post and Jeff Gerth of the New York Times come to mind). But far from being praised for their enterprise, they often became pariahs at their own newspapers and the targets of White House attacks. Much of the media took political sides, rather than stick to their higher obligation of ensuring that a President doesn't misuse his Constitutional authority. This was the motive for our own extended coverage of Whitewater and the other ethical corner-cutting of the Clinton years.
Messrs. Woodward and Bernstein earned their fame, but the consequences for journalism have not always been salutary. In their zeal to be the next Woodstein, many in the press have developed a "gotcha" model of reporting that always assumes the worst about public officials. We've pointed this out recently about reporting on Iraq and the military, and the defensive reaction from our peers confirms to us that many recognize (even if they won't publicly admit) that there is a problem. The unveiling of Deep Throat, and the rediscovery of Watergate's history, will do some good if it reminds us that the Fourth Estate's first duty is to report the facts. |
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| smokeape |
Deep Throat kinda violated his oath of office. What other classified secrets did he sell to third parties for monetary gain besides information pertaining to the Watergate break-in? Makes you wonder. Of course, he'll deny any other misgivings just like he did this one for years.
:wtf:
[[[smoke]]] |
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| metalgearsolid |
| quote: | Originally posted by smokeape
Deep Throat kinda violated his oath of office. What other classified secrets did he sell to third parties for monetary gain besides information pertaining to the Watergate break-in? Makes you wonder. Of course, he'll deny any other misgivings just like he did this one for years.
:wtf:
[[[smoke]]] |
well do u have any prove he sold any other "misgivings"? |
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