Friday, December 19, 2008

Deep Throat dies

Mark Felt, ‘Deep Throat’ During Watergate, Dies at 95

Dec. 19 (Bloomberg) -- W. Mark Felt, who remained anonymous for more than three decades as the source known as “Deep Throat” in the 1972 Watergate scandal that toppled Richard Nixon’s presidency, has died. He was 95.

Felt died suddenly in his sleep yesterday at a hospice near his home in Santa Rosa, California, the Washington Post reported, citing his daughter, Joan.

Felt provided tips and information that guided Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein as they wrote stories stemming from the bungled burglary of the Democratic Party National Committee headquarters in 1972. Nixon ultimately resigned as a consequence of the White House role in the scandal and in the cover-up that followed.

The identity of Felt, a former associate director at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, remained a secret until May 2005, when Woodward and Bernstein confirmed revelations published in an article in Vanity Fair.

“Because of his position virtually atop the chief investigative agency, his words and guidance had immense, at times even staggering, authority,” Woodward said in an article in the Washington Post on June 2, 2005.

----

Would we have even know about Nixon's immense corruption without this man? Staggering to think what Nixon might have gotten away with without this information...