Saturday, December 20, 2008
The former FBI official revealed his identity in 2005.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — W. Mark Felt, the former FBI second-in-command who revealed himself as “Deep Throat” 30 years after he helped The Washington Post unravel the Watergate scandal, has died. He was 95.
Felt died Thursday at his home in Santa Rosa under hospice care after suffering from congestive heart failure for several months, said family friend John D. O’Connor, who wrote a Vanity Fair article disclosing Felt’s secret in 2005.
The shadowy central figure in one of the most gripping political dramas of the 20th century, Felt insisted his alter ego be kept secret when he leaked damaging information to Post reporter Bob Woodward.
The scandal led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974, two years after the break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate office building in Washington.
Though some — including Nixon and his aides — speculated that Felt was Deep Throat, he steadfastly denied the accusations until finally coming forward in May 2005.
“I’m the guy they used to call Deep Throat,” Felt told O’Connor for the Vanity Fair article, creating a whirlwind of attention. Weakened by a stroke, he wasn’t doing much talking — he merely waved to the media from the front door of his daughter’s Santa Rosa home.
Critics, including those who went to prison for the Watergate scandal, called him a traitor for betraying the commander in chief. Supporters hailed him as a hero for blowing the whistle on a corrupt administration trying to cover up attempts to sabotage opponents.
In a phone interview Friday, Woodward said despite the criticism and Felt’s own ambivalence, it is clear that Felt should be remembered as a man who did the right thing.
“This is a man who did his duty to the Constitution,” Woodward told The Associated Press.
Just last month, Woodward and onetime partner Carl Bernstein visited Felt in his home. It was the first time Bernstein had met him. Woodward said Felt had flashes of lucidity and still cut the appearance of an FBI agent, sitting straight and stiff and dressed in a red blazer.
Felt had argued with his children over whether to reveal his identity or to take his secret to the grave, O’Connor said. He agonized about what revealing his identity would do to his reputation. Would he be seen as a turncoat or a man of honor?
“People will debate for a long time whether I did the right thing by helping Woodward,” Felt wrote in his 2006 memoir, “A G-Man’s Life: The FBI, ‘Deep Throat’ and the Struggle for Honor in Washington.” “The bottom line is that we did get the whole truth out, and isn’t that what the FBI is supposed to do?”
Ultimately, his daughter, Joan, persuaded him to go public; after all, Woodward was sure to profit by revealing the secret after Felt died. “We could make at least enough money to pay some bills, like the debt I’ve run up for the kids’ education,” she told her father, according to the Vanity Fair article. “Let’s do it for the family.”
2008, The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.