Felt. 91, lives in Santa Rosa. According to the article, he is not proud of his role (though he should be):
“I don’t think (being Deep Throat) was anything to be proud of,” Felt indicated to his son, Mark Jr., at one point, according to the article. “You (should) not leak information to anyone.”
Things have just got very busy for this man - and for Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. no comment from them, yet. I think that will change - but maybe in the pages of the Washington Post first.
(Article brought to you not by a blogger but by Vanity Fair and the Associated Press)
MORE LATER ... I'm on deadline myself.
Article comments
1 - francisco68
Temple. Thanks for the post which I might easily not have gotten to now that we are back in Mexico. Deep Throat is not a symbolic word for what was wrong in our country in the Nixon reign down here. They have their own skeletons in the closet.
I, too, think he should be...something. Proud is not the word that comes to mind since he was assistant to an evil man and involved in the Nixon administration and many of the wrongs that preceded it.
Still, he passed on information that the world needed. He snitched, but he did it on the forces of evil and criminality.
The real question that, as you say, we will hear more about; is what caused him to "come clean" in those days? Goodness? Orders from J. Edgar? Guilt?
It is a fascinatingly tantalizing story to emerge.
2 - JR
Did anybody guess right?
3 - Temple Stark
Well I tried intensely to picture Patrick J. Buchanan in the role.
But i'd seen some of the stuff he'd written before - at the time - and though it would have been fun - in my heart I knew it wasn't true.
This is a big day. I thought it would be one of those mysteries that remains unsolved, just by sheer accidental circumstance - Woodward and Bernstein die in a car crash on the way to a news conference (Ben Bradlee already dead). That type of thing.
4 - wayne highsmith sr.
Mark Pelt is a traitor plain and simple. Because he was passed over for promotion to Hoover's FBI Director position he turns against one of our nations greatest presidents by tattle-telling to two extreme leftist anti-American goons named Woodward and Bernstein. Now the sickly creature needs money so he's crawled out of the woodwork like the pathetic insect he is. Benedict Arnold was a greater--a far greater--American than Pelt. May history judge him the traitor to America that he's proven to be.
5 - Temple Stark
Please explain HOW he was a traitor. Because he did something you don't like?
Because he tried to remove a cancer.
6 - Bennett
From what I heard on the radio yesterday, interviews with those involved, the consensus seemed to be that Pelt HAD to do something. He chose not to walk into the oval office and tell Nixon that the jig was up.
Given the nature and temper of Nixon, I wonder how many of us would risk a quiet knife in the back, versus getting the info out there in a way sure to bring down a criminal that happened to be president?
7 - wayne highsmith sr.
Much has been made of John Dean's "cancer on the presidency" speech to President Nixon. In partial response to Mr. Stark's comments it was Felt himself who constituted the bulk of the metastisizing "cancer" on Nixon's presidency. Every FBI agent swears an oath to protect the security of executive branch information. Felt violated that oath and became himself a criminal all because he didn't get Hoover's job.
In answer to "JR's" question....no I didn't guess it was Felt. Looking at it now he's an obvious candidate but that's 20/20 hindsight. I *did* feel all along that the informant was from the Justice Department simply because so many in the Nixon White House were brought over from Justice (Dean, Liddy, and etc. and because Nixon's closest friend was AG John Mitchell) But I never did lock in on Felt. Wish I could say I did.....but I didn't.