'Deep Throat' Finally Revealed

Washington Post Acknowledges W. Mark Felt Is Watergate Source

(CBS/AP)  "I'm relieved that I'm no longer on this list of 'most wanted' for Deep Throat," David Gergen, a Nixon speechwriter, said.

The existence of Deep Throat, nicknamed for an X-rated movie of the early 1970s, was revealed in Woodward and Bernstein's best-selling book "All the President's Men."

CBS' Dan Rather says Felt had a huge hand in exposing the Watergate scandal and, hence, bringing down the Nixon White House.

A hit movie starring Robert Redford as Woodward, Dustin Hoffman as Bernstein and Hal Holbrook as Deep Throat was made in 1976. In the film, Holbrook's shadowy, cigarette-smoking character would meet Redford in dark parking garages and provide clues about the scandal.

The movie portrayed the cloak-and-dagger methods that Woodward and Deep Throat were said to have employed. When Woodward wanted a meeting, he would position an empty flowerpot containing a red flag on his apartment balcony. When Deep Throat wanted to meet, the hands of a clock would appear written inside Woodward's New York Times.

The identity of the source has sparked endless speculation over the last three decades. Nixon chief of staff Alexander Haig, White House press aide Diane Sawyer, White House counsel John Dean and speechwriter Pat Buchanan were among those mentioned as possibilities.

Felt himself was mentioned several times over the years as a candidate for Deep Throat, but he regularly denied that he was the source.

"I would have done better," Felt told The Hartford Courant in 1999. "I would have been more effective. Deep Throat didn't exactly bring the White House crashing down, did he?"

Woodward, who had visited with Felt as recently as 1999, refused to confirm or deny, even to the man's family, that Felt was his source, and wondered whether Felt was mentally competent to decide whether to go public after all these years, the magazine reported.

Woodward and Bernstein were the first reporters to link the Nixon White House to the June 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Headquarters in Washington's Watergate complex.

Nixon, facing almost-certain impeachment for helping to cover up the break-in, resigned in August 1974. Forty government officials and members of Nixon's re-election committee were convicted on felony charges.

One of them was White House counsel John Dean, who served a sentence of only four months after becoming the chief informant for Watergate investigators.

Dean says the claim that Felt was Deep Throat raises many questions, as he does not believe Felt had access to either the White House or the Committee to Re-elect the President. Dean also says he doubts that Felt, who was in charge of day-to-day operations at the FBI, could have all by himself come up with the information that wound up in Woodward and Bernstein's stories.

In 2003, Woodward and Bernstein reached an agreement to keep their Watergate papers at the University of Texas at Austin. At the time, the pair said documents naming Deep Throat would be kept secure at an undisclosed location in Washington until the source's death.

Felt was convicted in the 1980 of authorizing illegal break-ins at homes of people associated with the radical group The Weather Underground. He was pardoned by President Reagan in 1981.