DEEP THROAT

Wha? You mean Deep Throat's been outed?

Cool.

Have any links?

Why Did Bob Woodward Lunch With Mark Felt in 1999?
Why Did Bob Woodward Lunch With Mark Felt in 1999?
Was it to ask if he could unmask Deep Throat?
By Timothy Noah
Posted Thursday, May 2, 2002, at 7:29 PM PT

As Chatterbox noted yesterday, the best guess going about the identity of Deep Throat, Bob Woodward's crucial but anonymous Watergate informer, has long been W. Mark Felt, assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In his haste to write yesterday's item, Chatterbox failed to chase down a tip he'd received (apparently first published in the Globe tabloid) that Woodward actually had lunch with Felt within the last few years.

Today's Washington Times explains (in its "Inside the Beltway" column) that this information comes from a new book by Ronald Kessler, The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI, due to be published next week. Like James Mann, who published the definitive Deep Throat piece 10 years ago in the Atlantic, Kessler worked at the Post during Watergate (he left in 1985), though Chatterbox doesn't know whether Kessler, like Mann, will speak out of school about what Woodward told colleagues at the time. Here, according to the Washington Times, is how Kessler relates the story of the Woodward-Felt lunch:

In the summer of 1999, [Bob] Woodward showed up unexpectedly at the home of Felt's daughter, Joan, in Santa Rosa, California, north of San Francisco, and took him to lunch, Joan Felt, who was taking care of him at her home, told me.

She recalled that Woodward made his appearance just after a mini-controversy broke in the press late July 1999 about whether Bernstein had told his then-wife, Nora Ephron, that Felt was Deep Throat. Woodward had been interviewing former FBI officials for a book he was writing on Watergate.

However, now confused because of the effects of a stroke, Felt was in no shape to provide credible information. Joan said her father greeted Woodward like an old friend, and their mysterious meeting appeared to be more of a celebration than an interview, lending support to the notion that Felt was, in fact, Deep Throat.

"Woodward just showed up at the door and said he was in the area," Joan Felt said. "He came in a white limousine, which parked at a schoolyard about 10 blocks away. He walked to the house. He asked if it was OK to have a martini with my father at lunch, and I said it would be fine."

A few caveats are in order. Chatterbox interviewed Felt in the summer of 1999, too, and found him fairly lucid, if annoyed to be asked once again if he was Deep Throat. (Maybe he had his good days and his bad days.) If Woodward was interviewing former FBI officials for a new book about Watergate, that would of course provide ample justification for Woodward to seek out Felt, even if Felt wasn't Deep Throat. (Felt was, after all, the No. 3 guy at the FBI during Watergate.) In 1999, Felt denied to Chatterbox that he was Deep Throat, just as Felt denied it, more recently, to Kessler (with the difference being that by the time Kessler asked him, Felt apparently had difficulty remembering exactly who Bob Woodward was).

Still, the timing is intriguing. When Woodward came calling, Felt had just been the subject of a flurry of stories about Chase Culeman-Beckman, a 19-year-old from Port Chester, N.Y., who'd revealed to the Hartford Courant that Bernstein's son, Jacob, 11 years earlier had blurted out at summer camp that Deep Throat was W. Mark Felt. (Click here for the full story.) Carl Bernstein and his ex-wife, Nora Ephron, quickly stepped in to explain that Bernstein had never told his wife or son Deep Throat's identity and that Ephron had just always guessed it to be Felt. But Ephron's intuition on this matter has to carry some weight, and it seems logical that in the aftermath of this awkward episode, Woodward would have felt the need to explore with Felt whether it was time to reveal their secret. Based on what the Washington Times passed on from Kessler's book, though, Kessler's evidence is not dispositive.
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Timothy Noah writes "Chatterbox" for Slate.

Here we go:

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8047258/

Wow!

Looking forward to finding out more about him.

Good that you got it. I didn't have one, as got it off NBC at the conclusion of their coverage of Bush's press conference.

Glad that it happened while he is still alive. Hope he is well enough to hear our cheers of thanks. We owe him a huge, huge, unrepayable debt of gratitude.

Excerpt:

Washington Post Confirms Felt as 'Deep Throat'

By William Branigin and David Von Drehle
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, May 31, 2005

The Washington Post today confirmed that W. Mark Felt, a former number-two official at the FBI, was "Deep Throat," the secretive source who provided information that helped unravel the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s and contributed to the resignation of president Richard M. Nixon.

Woodward said Felt helped The Post at a time of tense relations between the White House and much of the FBI hierarchy. He said the Watergate break-in came shortly after the death of legendary FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, Felt's mentor, and that Felt and other bureau officials wanted to see an FBI veteran promoted to succeed Hoover.

Source

DAMMIT! I thought this may be a thread on where to get it.

it was pretty funny... on msnbc "connected", they were interviewing g.gordan liddy, who insisted that deep throat was a composite of people and another guy, named kalodney, that was hawking his book, who insisted that woodward had credibility issues.

and then, voila. cut in by flash news "bob woodward confirms that felt is deep throat source".

talk about pulling the rug out from under the slime brigade.

He's 91, McG. Give the guy a break.

what ? like "get anna nicole smith on the line, stat !" ??

While I agree that Felt's inside information was an undoubted and unqualified asset in helping Bernstein & Woodward unravel the Watergate puzzle, let's not forget that his motivation was not necessarily Simon-pure. I doubt that he was quite as concerned about the truth coming out as he was about axing Nixon. With his old mentor, J. Edgar, gone on to well-desreved rewards, the FBI no longer had the blackmail stranglehold it had once had on the Oval Office. And Nixon was likely to play hard-ball in naming a replacement. Whatever else one might say about Tricky Dick, he could be a dangerous adversary.

have been switching channels like crazy to pick up pieces here and there. i think it's a fascinating story. i still have an old cartoon style photograph showing henry kissinger walking through an airport and someone shouting at him : "good bye, deepthroat !" .
the filmclip on CNN showed deepthroat leaning on a cane but smiling ! good for him ! hbg

Here's the Vanity Fair article -- absolutely fascinating:

http://www.vanityfair.com/pdf/pressroom/advance1.pdf

I think he did it now to send a message to someone within the Bush administration, FBI, or CIA. He's going to be heralded as a hero -- as he should be -- and I think he wants to goose someone into action. Not necessarily anyone specific, but as a concept.

Well I dunno, I wrote that on page 6 or so, just finished the whole thing. Sounds like it might be spurred by more mundane circumstances. Also sounds like there might still be some doubt, if slight.

Fascinating, though.

Soz,

I wondered about the timing of coming out now too. Is he trying to set an example for others that might want to reveal facts? Certainly he is going to make a lot of reporters start looking for another "deep throat."

Unless you need to pay off a mortgage....or a car....or tuition....or whatever you think you need to pay off:



Some real, unshakeable integrity being displayed there

still a good story IMO. hbg

Wow, I am stunned. While I thought it was possible, I really thought it was as likely to be Pat Buchannan...

Parados, as to his motivation in coming out now, I think he's older, in failing health, and truth is its own reward... While it would be nice for another to step forward and reveal a scandal going back to the oval office, or the neocon machine which propelled shrub into his esteemed seat, I don't see that as having any sort of bearing whatsoever...

for truth, honor or money doesn't really matter at this point, really.

felt's involvement in exposing watergate is portrayed as being a reaction to "corruption in government", but that seems strange coupled with his conviction for illegal activities in connection with the fbi's surveillance of anti-war groups during vietnam.

Pat Buchanan and Charles Colson were on The Today Show reprimanding Felt for helping to destroy their boss. What asses.