W. Mark Felt: The mysterious Deep Throat
Few associate directors of the FBI will ever be as well known as W. Mark Felt.
Thing is, he wasn’t well-known at all, outside of the Washington Beltway, until five years ago today, when Vanity Fair scooped the Washington Post on its own guaranteed scoop.
The revelation wasn’t completely out of left field, as some had correctly presumed the identity of Deep Throat, the anonymous source who led Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in the right direction (directly toward Nixon) in unraveling the Watergate conspiracy.
In fact, Felt denied it was him many times, perhaps most notably to the Hartford Courant, after a camp friend of Carl Bernstein’s son claimed the boy had told him it was Felt.
There was even a glitterati media event in 2002 called “Deep Throat Revealed,” in which the person who was Deep Throat was described, but never revealed - an example of the dinner theater the identity guessing game had become in media and political circles over the years.
Dozens of articles were written between the revelation in 2005 and Felt’s death.
Some argued whether or not he was a patriot; one might suppose that history will decide after more time has passed.
