The Face Of 'Deep Throat'

Watergate whistleblower Deep Throat played a central role in one of the biggest White House scandals ever, helping bring down a president and inspire a political mystery so famous his nickname earned an entry in Webster's. Thirty years later, the source is secret no more.

At age 91, after decades of hiding his role as The Washington Post's tipster from politicians, the public and even his family, former FBI official W. Mark Felt told his secret to a lawyer his family had consulted on whether Felt should come forward.

The attorney, John O'Connor, wrote a Vanity Fair magazine article revealing Felt's disclosure, and within hours of the story's release Tuesday, Felt's family and the Post confirmed it.

"I'm the guy they used to call Deep Throat," Vanity Fair quoted Felt, the former No. 2 man at the FBI, as saying.

On CBS News' The Early Show, O'Connor said that Felt told the Washington Post's Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein reporters because he was sworn to uphold the law and that those around him were obstructing the investigation he was trying to do.

"He knew that everyone else was obstructing this investigation, and he had to go around the power structure that was doing the obstruction," he told Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith.

"It's the last secret" of the story, said Ben Bradlee, the paper's top editor at the time the riveting political drama played out three decades ago.

Felt lives in Santa Rosa, Calif., and is said to be in poor mental and physical health because of a stroke. His family did not immediately make him available for comment, asking the news media horde gathered outside his home to respect his privacy "in view of his age and health."

Felt's immediate family who had to convince him to go public while he was still alive, reports CBS News Correspondent Wyatt Andrews. In the past, he had reservations about whether his actions were appropriate for an FBI agent.

However, O'Connor said Felt now thinks he did the right thing.

"Over the last I'd say six to nine months he's come to accept himself as a hero," O'Connor said.

"The family believes that my grandfather, Mark Felt Sr., is a great American hero who went well above and beyond the call of duty at much risk to himself to save his country from a horrible injustice," Felt's grandson, Nick Jones, said, reading a family statement. "We all sincerely hope the country will see him this way as well."

Watergate reporters Woodward and Bernstein said in a statement: "W. Mark Felt was 'Deep Throat' and helped us immeasurably in our Watergate coverage. However, as the record shows, many other sources and officials assisted us and other reporters for the hundreds of stories that were written in The Washington Post about Watergate."

For many, Felt's admission answers one of the biggest questions in American politics and journalism: Who was the source so fearful he'd be found out by the Nixon White House that he insisted on secret signals rather than phone calls to arrange meetings with the Post reporters, a man portrayed as a cigarette-smoking bundle of nerves by Hal Holbrook in the 1970s movie "All the President's Men"?

"A good secret deserves a decent burial and this one is going to get a state funeral," Leonard Garment, acting special counsel to President Nixon after the Watergate story broke and author of the book "In Search of Deep Throat."

For some, it raises new questions.

"I never thought he was in the loop to have the information," John Dean, counsel in Nixon's White House and the government's top informant in the Watergate investigation, told The Associated Press. "How in the world could Felt have done it alone?"

The scandal that brought Nixon's resignation began with a burglary and attempted tapping of phones in Democratic Party offices at the Watergate office building in Washington during Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign. It went on to include disclosures of covert Nixon administration spying on and retaliating against a host of perceived enemies. But the most devastating disclosure was the president's own role in trying to cover-up his administration's involvement.

Among other things, Deep Throat urged Woodward and Bernstein to follow the money trail — from the financing of burglars who broke into the Democratic National Committee offices to the financing of Nixon's re-election campaign.

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

Woodward, Bernstein and Bradlee had kept the identity of Deep Throat secret at his request, saying his name would be revealed upon his death. But then Felt revealed it himself, a move that startled Woodward and the Post, the newspaper reported.

Even the existence of Deep Throat, nicknamed for an X-rated movie of the early 1970s, was kept secret for a time. Woodward and Bernstein revealed their reporting had been aided by a Nixon administration source in their best-selling book "All the President's Men." Felt's name doesn't appear there.

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

As the decades-old secret was released, CBS News Correspondent Jim Axelrod

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

Felt also had been mentioned, but he regularly denied it. His motive for tipping off Woodward and Bernstein remains unknown, but the Post suggested in a story Tuesday night that anger over Nixon's decision to pass him over for FBI director after the death of J. Edgar Hoover could have been a factor.

Felt was convicted in 1980 for authorizing illegal break-ins in the 1970s at homes of people associated with the radical Weather Underground. He was pardoned by President Reagan in 1981.