Mark Felt - Deep Throat Revealed

Deep Throat Revealed

Vanity Fair magazine revealed Felt was Deep Throat on May 31, 2005 when it published an article (eventually appearing in the July issue of the magazine) on its website by John D. O'Connor, an attorney acting on Felt's behalf, in which Felt said, "I'm the guy they used to call Deep Throat." After the Vanity Fair story broke, Benjamin C. Bradlee, the Editor of the Washington Post during Watergate, confirmed that Felt was Deep Throat. According to the Vanity Fair article, Felt was persuaded to come out by his family, who wanted to capitalize on the book deals and other lucrative opportunities that Felt would inevitably be offered in order, at least in part, to pay off his grandchildren's education.

Public response varied widely. Felt's family called him an "American hero", suggesting that he leaked information for moral or patriotic reasons. G. Gordon Liddy, who was convicted of burglary in the Watergate scandal, said Felt should have gone to the grand jury rather than leak. Some have contrasted Felt's media treatment with that of other whistleblowers. Some critics doubted Felt's story on the grounds that his mental state was foggy since the stroke he had had several years earlier. Soon afterwards, however, Woodward and Bernstein both confirmed that Felt was in fact Deep Throat.

Nixon's Chief Counsel Charles Colson, who served prison time for his actions in the Nixon White House, said Felt had violated "his oath to keep this nation's secrets", but a Los Angeles Times editorial argued that this argument was specious, "as if there's no difference between nuclear strategy and rounding up hush money to silence your hired burglars." Ralph de Toledano, who co-wrote Felt's 1979 memoir, said Mark Felt Jr. had approached him in 2004 to buy Toledano's half of the copyright. Toledano agreed to sell but was never paid and attempted to rescind the deal, threatening legal action. A few days before the Vanity Fair article was released, Toledano finally received a check. He later said:

I had been gloriously and illegally deceived, and Deep Throat was, in characteristic style, back in business — which given his history of betrayal, was par for the course.

Speculation about Felt's motives at the time of the scandal has varied widely as well. Some suggested it was revenge for Nixon choosing Gray over Felt to replace Hoover as FBI Director. Others suggest Felt acted out of institutional loyalty to the FBI. Political scientist George Friedman argued that: "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."

Publishers were interested in signing Felt to a book deal after the revelation. Weeks after the Vanity Fair article was released, PublicAffairs Books, whose CEO was a Washington Post reporter and editor during the Watergate era, announced that it signed a deal with Felt. The new book was to include material from his 1979 memoir with an update. The new volume was scheduled for publication in the spring of 2006. Felt sold the movie rights to his story to Universal Pictures for development by Tom Hanks's production company, Playtone. The book and movie deals were valued at US $1 million.

In the summer of 2005, Woodward published his account of his contacts with Felt, The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate's Deep Throat (ISBN 0-7432-8715-0). The book received mixed reviews.