View Full Version : Deep Throat
Roguish Lawyer
06-02-2005, 17:46
Anyone want to talk about this? Interesting article in the Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/01/AR2005060102124.html
Obviously he was pissed at Nixon for not promoting him.
Jack Moroney (RIP)
06-02-2005, 19:15
The SOB should be put in a geriatrics jail cell. Not only did he violate his oath of office and broke the damn law, he is a moral coward. He should have either taken it to the Attorney General and if that failed then he should have resigned from the FBI and then gone to the papers.
Jack Moroney-wondering if this guy and Hoover played dress up together
rubberneck
06-02-2005, 20:00
Jack Moroney-wondering if this guy and Hoover played dress up together
That is one of the funniest things I have had the fortune to read in a long time. The visual it evokes makes it even funnier.
That is one of the funniest things I have had the fortune to read in a long time. The visual it evokes makes it even funnier.i'm sorry, but rubberneck responding to the Deep Throat thread has me hurting... :D
Basenshukai
06-02-2005, 20:25
And I thought this thread was about a movie.
:rolleyes:
:D
The SOB should be put in a geriatrics jail cell. Not only did he violate his oath of office and broke the damn law, he is a moral coward. He should have either taken it to the Attorney General and if that failed then he should have resigned from the FBI and then gone to the papers.
Jack Moroney-wondering if this guy and Hoover played dress up together
How did he violate anything? He didn't actually give them any info, just confirmed whatever they had found.
When the leader of a nation (any nation, I'm not refeering specificly to USA here) breaks the law(s), it needs to be exposed.
And I thought this thread was about a movie.
:D
Article (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/31/AR2005053100655_pf.html)
When the book and then the movie were released, Woodward said, Felt was shocked to have his place in history tagged with such a tawdry title.
When the leader of a nation (any nation, I'm not refeering specificly to USA here) breaks the law(s), it needs to be exposed.
Correct Huey, and when a Law Enforcement Officer (especially one in his position) has knowledge - however slight - of such illegal activity, it is his sworn duty to uphold his oath and conduct forthwith an investigation into said activity.
Not sneak around in a dark garage like a little f..... maryjane, leaking information to the press to further your own agenda, and payback for perceived slights.
I'm with the Col. on this one. Mr X-FBI dude has long ago lost the right stand on his porch and smile like he's really done something. Have the courage of your convictions up front not decades later when the "media - all clear" is sounded.
I remember seeing a reason why he didn't go public with the info...let me see if I can find it.
aricbcool
06-02-2005, 21:50
I'm with the Col. on this one.
Me too. There's channels for that sort of thing. Telling the press isn't, and shouldn't, be one of them.
Besides, I doubt he was in it for the moral good of the country, what with the whole resenting Nixon for not making him head FBI honcho...
--Aric
Trip_Wire (RIP)
06-03-2005, 00:01
The SOB should be put in a geriatrics jail cell. Not only did he violate his oath of office and broke the damn law, he is a moral coward. He should have either taken it to the Attorney General and if that failed then he should have resigned from the FBI and then gone to the papers.
Jack Moroney-wondering if this guy and Hoover played dress up together
I agree with this statement 100% What a wimp! :rolleyes:
I remember seeing a reason why he didn't go public with the info...let me see if I can find it.
:munchin
Sinister
06-03-2005, 08:34
Geeze, how about the fact that both the Attorney General and the White House Chief of Staff were helping Nixon break the law?
You do know that Reagan also pardoned Felt as well, don't you?
rubberneck
06-03-2005, 08:46
You do know that Reagan also pardoned Felt as well, don't you?
Felt's pardon only granted clemency to his authorizing the break in's and wire tappings of anti-war organizers offices without warrants. Any other illegal activity not covered by that pardon is fair game.
I've read that Felt and Woodward knew each other on a personal level before Watergate and that Felt was an "anonymous source" more than a couple times before and after Watergate.
Roguish Lawyer
06-03-2005, 16:17
I've read that Felt and Woodward knew each other on a personal level before Watergate and that Felt was an "anonymous source" more than a couple times before and after Watergate.
The Post article linked above discusses this in detail.
Right, skimmed that, I'd read some other articles similar.
Alright, I can't find the thing. I remember it insinuating something about his family beign at risk or some such. Since I can't find it, I'll defer.
Deep Throat is a proper name for this turd dressed in a human suit.
G. Gordon Liddy might have been as wrong as a turd in a punchbowel in some people's views, but he had class.
Class is a rare comodity.
Doc
G. Gordon Liddy might have been as wrong as a turd in a punchbowel in some people's views, but he had class.
Class is a rare comodity.
Doc
Was that punch bowl spelling on purpose or a Freudian slip? I agree with your assessment of Liddy. He's a compelling guy. Something about him always makes me stop to listen to what he's saying and he makes me laugh with the way he says it even when I disagree with him.
Was that punch bowl spelling on purpose or a Freudian slip? I agree with your assessment of Liddy. He's a compelling guy. Something about him always makes me stop to listen to what he's saying and he makes me laugh with the way he says it even when I disagree with him.
I think it was a spelling error. :eek: Thanks for letting me know. :D
Then again I'm still taking medical certification courses in the work I do and maybe the medical words are over-riding my subconsciousness. :D
I liked William Conrad's movie where he played the part of G. Gordon Liddy.
Doc
AngelsSix
12-19-2008, 07:05
Watergate 'Deep Throat' W. Mark Felt Dies at 95
Friday , December 19, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO —
W. Mark Felt, the former FBI second-in-command who revealed himself as "Deep Throat" 30 years after he tipped off reporters to the Watergate scandal that toppled a president, has died. He was 95.
Felt died Thursday in Santa Rosa after suffering from congestive heart failure for several months, said family friend John D. O'Connor, who wrote the 2005 Vanity Fair article uncovering Felt's secret.
The shadowy central figure in one of the most gripping political dramas of the 20th century, Felt insisted his alter ego be kept secret when he leaked damaging information about President Richard Nixon and his aides to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward.
While some — including Nixon and his aides — speculated that Felt was the source who connected the White House to the June 1972 break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, he steadfastly denied the accusations until finally coming forward in May 2005.
"I'm the guy they used to call Deep Throat," Felt told O'Connor for the Vanity Fair article, creating a whirlwind of media attention. The man who had kept his secret for decades, weakened by a stroke, did not do much talking — he merely waved to the media from the front door of his daughter's Santa Rosa home.
Critics, including those who went to prison for the Watergate scandal, called him a traitor for betraying the commander in chief. Supporters hailed him as a hero for blowing the whistle on a corrupt administration trying to cover up attempts to sabotage opponents.
Felt grappled with his place in history, arguing with his children over whether to reveal his identity or to take his secret to the grave, O'Connor said. He agonized about what revealing his identity would do to his reputation. Would he be seen as a turncoat or a man of honor?
"People will debate for a long time whether I did the right thing by helping Woodward," Felt wrote in his 2006 memoir, "A G-Man's Life: The FBI, `Deep Throat' and the Struggle for Honor in Washington." "The bottom line is that we did get the whole truth out, and isn't that what the FBI is supposed to do?"
Ultimately, his daughter Joan persuaded him to go public; after all, Woodward was sure to profit by revealing the secret after Felt died. "We could make at least enough money to pay some bills, like the debt I've run up for the kids' education," she told her father, according to the Vanity Fair article. "Let's do it for the family."
The revelation capped a Washington whodunnit that spanned more than three decades and seven presidents. It was the final mystery of Watergate, the subject of the best-selling book and hit movie "All the President's Men," which inspired a generation of college students to pursue journalism.
It was by chance that Felt came to play a pivotal role in the drama.
Back in 1970, Woodward struck up a conversation with Felt while both were waiting in a White House hallway. Felt apparently took a liking to the young Woodward, then a Navy courier, and Woodward kept the relationship going, treating Felt as a mentor as he tried to figure out the ways of Washington.
Later, while Woodward and partner Carl Bernstein relied on various unnamed sources in reporting on Watergate, the man their editor dubbed "Deep Throat" helped to keep them on track and confirm vital information. The Post won a Pulitzer Prize for its Watergate coverage.
Within days of the burglary at Watergate that launched the Post's investigative series, Woodward phoned Felt.
"He reminded me how he disliked phone calls at the office but said that the Watergate burglary case was going to `heat up' for reasons he could not explain," Woodward wrote after Felt was named. "He then hung up abruptly."
Felt helped Woodward link former CIA man Howard Hunt to the break-in. He said the reporter could accurately write that Hunt, whose name was found in the address book of one of the burglars, was a suspect. But Felt told him off the record, insisting that their relationship and Felt's identity remain secret.
Worried that phones were being tapped, Felt arranged clandestine meetings worthy of a spy novel. Woodward would move a flower pot with a red flag on his balcony if he needed to meet Felt. The G-man would scrawl a time to meet on page 20 of Woodward's copy of The New York Times and they would rendezvous in a suburban Virginia parking garage in the dead of night.
In the movie, the enduring image of Deep Throat — a name borrowed from a 1972 porn movie — is of a testy, chain-smoking Hal Holbrook telling Woodward, played by Robert Redford, to "follow the money."
In a memoir published in April 2006, Felt said he saw himself as a "Lone Ranger" who could help derail a White House cover-up.
Felt wrote that he was upset by the slow pace of the FBI investigation into the Watergate break-in and believed the press could pressure the administration to cooperate.
"From the start, it was clear that senior administration officials were up to their necks in this mess, and that they would stop at nothing to sabotage our investigation," Felt wrote in his memoir.
Some critics said Felt, a J. Edgar Hoover loyalist, was bitter at being passed over when Nixon appointed an FBI outsider and confidante, L. Patrick Gray, to lead the FBI after Hoover's death. Gray was later implicated in Watergate abuses.
"We had no idea of his motivations, and even now some of his motivations are unclear," Bernstein said.
Felt wrote that he wasn't motivated by anger. "It is true that I would have welcomed an appointment as FBI director when Hoover died. It is not true that I was jealous of Gray," he wrote.
For his part, Holbrook responded to the news of Felt's identity by commenting: "He was doing it because there was a higher purpose involved. ... The important thing was not who it was, but why he did it. It's called morality. That is something that is not very popular today."
Felt was born in Twin Falls, Idaho, and worked for an Idaho senator during graduate school. After law school at George Washington University he spent a year at the Federal Trade Commission. Felt joined the FBI in 1942 and worked as a Nazi hunter during World War II.
Ironically, while providing crucial information to the Post, Felt also was assigned to ferret out the newspaper's source. The investigation never went anywhere, but plenty of people, including those in the White House at the time, guessed that Felt, who was leading the investigation into Watergate, may have been acting as a double agent.
The Watergate tapes captured White House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman telling Nixon that Felt was the source, but they were afraid to stop him.
Nixon asks: "Somebody in the FBI?"
Haldeman: "Yes, sir. Mark Felt ... If we move on him, he'll go out and unload everything. He knows everything that's to be known in the FBI."
Felt left the FBI in 1973 for the lecture circuit. Five years later he was indicted on charges of authorizing FBI break-ins at homes associated with suspected bombers from the 1960s radical group the Weather Underground. President Ronald Reagan pardoned Felt in 1981 while the case was on appeal — a move applauded by Nixon.
Woodward and Bernstein said they wouldn't reveal the source's identity until he or she died, and finally confirmed Felt's role only after he came forward.
O'Connor said Thursday that his friend appeared to be at peace since the revelation.
"What I saw was a person that went from a divided personality that carried around this heavy secret to a completely integrated and glowing personality over these past few years once he let the secret out," he said.
Felt is survived by two children, Joan Felt and Mark Felt Jr., and four grandchildren. His wife, Audrey Felt, died in 1984.
A guy named 'Deep Throat' dying and having his obituary posted in a San Francisco newspaper? Who says God has no sense of humor? :p
Richard's $.02 :munchin
Red Flag 1
12-19-2008, 08:05
A guy named 'Deep Throat' dying and having his obituary posted in a San Francisco newspaper? Who says God has no sense of humor? :p
Richard's $.02 :munchin
Surrounded by a host of friends, no doubt.
RF 1
Jack Moroney-wondering if this guy and Hoover played dress up together
It's stuff like this that makes me miss COL Jack all the more.
greenberetTFS
12-19-2008, 12:16
It's stuff like this that makes me miss COL Jack all the more.
RTK is right on. COL Jack was also right on and is sorely missed on this forum.....:(
GB TFS :munchin
I always thought Henry kissinger was deep throat.:munchin
Blitzzz (RIP)
12-20-2008, 18:12
I'll just give him a big G R. Blitz
(good riddance enjoy your time on a spit )
Dozer523
12-20-2008, 21:39
Ultimately, his daughter Joan persuaded him to go public; after all, Woodward was sure to profit by revealing the secret after Felt died. (Who's line of thinking is this?) "We could make at least enough money to pay some bills, like the debt I've (the daughter)run up for the kids' education," she told her father, according to the Vanity Fair article. "Let's do it for the family." or did she really mean "Let's do it for me ."
It always comes down to money, doesn't it? For someone. Felt probably really did it because it wass important to him that he truth came out. I think the country is better off that Nixon was found out and punished. In the long run the accountability forced upon the office, strengthed the Presidency. Remember, Felt took the risk and didn't make a dime -- his daughter did (sans risk.) Guess she didn't learn the lesson her Dad was trying to teach. Did she?
The possibilities for double entendre grow.
Watergate was not the only reason why, by 1976, most Americans had little faith in the political parties, most elected officials, or any branch of the federal government, or the American president.* But that scandal certainly contributed to the dynamic and helped to set the stage for the election of an outsider untarnished by the discord within Washington, D.C.
IMHO, Felt's decision to leak his information to the fourth estate instead of going through channels deprived the executive branch of an opportunity to expose President Nixon and rehabilitate some of the government's embattled image.
____________________________________________
* Documentation from polling data available on request.
The Death of Deep Throat and the Crisis of Journalism
December 22, 2008
By George Friedman
Mark Felt died last week at the age of 95. For those who don’t recognize that name, Felt was the “Deep Throat” of Watergate fame. [...] In reality, the revelation of who Felt was raised serious questions about the accomplishments of Woodward and Bernstein, the actual price we all pay for journalistic ethics, and how for many years we did not know a critical dimension of the Watergate crisis. At a time when newspapers are in financial crisis and journalism is facing serious existential issues, Watergate always has been held up as a symbol of what journalism means for a democracy, revealing truths that others were unwilling to uncover and grapple with. There is truth to this vision of journalism, but there is also a deep ambiguity, all built around Felt’s role. This is therefore not an excursion into ancient history, but a consideration of two things. The first is how journalists become tools of various factions in political disputes. The second is the relationship between security and intelligence organizations and governments in a Democratic society.
[...]
Deep Throat Reconsidered
Mark Felt was deputy associate director of the FBI (No. 3 in bureau hierarchy) in May 1972, when longtime FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover died. Upon Hoover’s death, Felt was second to Clyde Tolson, the longtime deputy and close friend to Hoover who by then was in failing health himself. Days after Hoover’s death, Tolson left the bureau.
Felt expected to be named Hoover’s successor, but Nixon passed him over, appointing L. Patrick Gray instead. In selecting Gray, Nixon was reaching outside the FBI for the first time in the 48 years since Hoover had taken over. But while Gray was formally acting director, the Senate never confirmed him, and as an outsider, he never really took effective control of the FBI. In a practical sense, Felt was in operational control of the FBI from the break-in at the Watergate in August 1972 until June 1973.
[...]
Felt saw Gray’s selection as an unwelcome politicization of the FBI (by placing it under direct presidential control), an assault on the traditions created by Hoover and an insult to his memory, and a massive personal disappointment. Felt was thus a disgruntled employee at the highest level. He was also a senior official in an organization that traditionally had protected its interests in predictable ways. (By then formally the No. 2 figure in FBI, Felt effectively controlled the agency given Gray’s inexperience and outsider status.) The FBI identified its enemies, then used its vast knowledge of its enemies’ wrongdoings in press leaks designed to be as devastating as possible. While carefully hiding the source of the information, it then watched the victim — who was usually guilty as sin — crumble. Felt, who himself was later convicted and pardoned for illegal wiretaps and break-ins, was not nearly as appalled by Nixon’s crimes as by Nixon’s decision to pass him over as head of the FBI. He merely set Hoover’s playbook in motion.
Woodward and Bernstein were on the city desk of The Washington Post at the time. They were young (29 and 28), inexperienced and hungry. [...]
Systematic Spying on the President
And now we come to the major point. For Felt to have been able to guide and control the young reporters’ investigation, he needed to know a great deal of what the White House had done, going back quite far. He could not possibly have known all this simply through his personal investigations. His knowledge covered too many people, too many operations, and too much money in too many places simply to have been the product of one of his side hobbies. The only way Felt could have the knowledge he did was if the FBI had been systematically spying on the White House, on the Committee to Re-elect the President and on all of the other elements involved in Watergate. Felt was not simply feeding information to Woodward and Bernstein; he was using the intelligence product emanating from a section of the FBI to shape The Washington Post’s coverage.
Instead of passing what he knew to professional prosecutors at the Justice Department — or if he did not trust them, to the House Judiciary Committee charged with investigating presidential wrongdoing — Felt chose to leak the information to The Washington Post. [...]
In our view, Nixon was as guilty as sin of more things than were ever proven. Nevertheless, there is another side to this story. The FBI was carrying out espionage against the president of the United States, not for any later prosecution of Nixon for a specific crime (the spying had to have been going on well before the break-in), but to increase the FBI’s control over Nixon. Woodward, Bernstein and above all, Bradlee, knew what was going on. Woodward and Bernstein might have been young and naive, but Bradlee was an old Washington hand who knew exactly who Felt was, knew the FBI playbook and understood that Felt could not have played the role he did without a focused FBI operation against the president. Bradlee knew perfectly well that Woodward and Bernstein were not breaking the story, but were having it spoon-fed to them by a master. He knew that the president of the United States, guilty or not, was being destroyed by Hoover’s jilted heir.
This was enormously important news. The Washington Post decided not to report it. The story of Deep Throat was well-known, but what lurked behind the identity of Deep Throat was not. This was not a lone whistle-blower being protected by a courageous news organization; rather, it was a news organization being used by the FBI against the president, and a news organization that knew perfectly well that it was being used against the president. [...]
Again, Nixon’s guilt is not in question. And the argument can be made that given John Mitchell’s control of the Justice Department, Felt thought that going through channels was impossible (although the FBI was more intimidating to Mitchell than the other way around). But the fact remains that Deep Throat was the heir apparent to Hoover — a man not averse to breaking the law in covert operations — and Deep Throat clearly was drawing on broader resources in the FBI, resources that had to have been in place before Hoover’s death and continued operating afterward.
Burying a Story to Get a Story
[...] The Washington Post created a morality play about an out-of-control government brought to heel by two young, enterprising journalists and a courageous newspaper. That simply wasn’t what happened. Instead, it was about the FBI using The Washington Post to leak information to destroy the president, and The Washington Post willingly serving as the conduit for that information while withholding an essential dimension of the story by concealing Deep Throat’s identity.
Journalists have celebrated the Post’s role in bringing down the president for a generation. Even after the revelation of Deep Throat’s identity in 2005, there was no serious soul-searching on the omission from the historical record. [...] Woodward, Bernstein and Bradlee were willingly used by Felt to destroy Nixon. The three acknowledged a secret source, but they did not reveal that the secret source was in operational control of the FBI. They did not reveal that the FBI was passing on the fruits of surveillance of the White House. They did not reveal the genesis of the fall of Nixon. They accepted the accolades while withholding an extraordinarily important fact, elevating their own role in the episode while distorting the actual dynamic of Nixon’s fall.
Absent any widespread reconsideration of the Post’s actions during Watergate in the three years since Felt’s identity became known, the press in Washington continues to serve as a conduit for leaks of secret information. They publish this information while protecting the leakers, and therefore the leakers’ motives. Rather than being a venue for the neutral reporting of events, journalism thus becomes the arena in which political power plays are executed. What appears to be enterprising journalism is in fact a symbiotic relationship between journalists and government factions. It may be the best path journalists have for acquiring secrets, but it creates a very partial record of events — especially since the origin of a leak frequently is much more important to the public than the leak itself.
The Felt experience is part of an ongoing story in which journalists’ guarantees of anonymity to sources allow leakers to control the news process. Protecting Deep Throat’s identity kept us from understanding the full dynamic of Watergate. We did not know that Deep Throat was running the FBI, we did not know the FBI was conducting surveillance on the White House, and we did not know that the Watergate scandal emerged not by dint of enterprising journalism, but because Felt had selected Woodward and Bernstein as his vehicle to bring Nixon down. And we did not know that the editor of The Washington Post allowed this to happen.
[...]
Whatever crimes Nixon committed, the FBI had spied on the president and leaked what it knew to The Washington Post in order to destroy him. The editor of The Washington Post knew that, as did Woodward and Bernstein. We do not begrudge them their prizes and accolades, but it would have been useful to know who handed them the story. In many ways, that story is as interesting as the one about all the president’s men.
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