No more gagging on Deep Throat

Ethan Switch - Wednesday, 1 June, 2005 - 17:40:05 - print it raw

Usurping the moniker from pornographic film star, Linda Lovelace, former FBI official, W. Mark Felt, admitted in an interview with Vanity Fair that he was and is the infamously shadowy figure known as Deep Throat.

During his time in underground car parks, Felt fed information to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein that help break the Watergate scandal through the pages of the Washington Post, instrumental in the toppling of President Richard Nixon from his office.

As the longest held mystery in all of journalism, known up until now by only four people, the identity fuelled endless speculation and accusation in the years that followed from the resignation of Nixon. And now, thirty years out, the secret is spilled.

Choosing to break the silence himself, Felt also tripped up plans by Woodward, Bernstein and Benjamin C. Bradlee, the then executive editor of the Post, to wallow in their knowledge following his eventual death.

At 91 and enfeebled by a shot to the heart by a stroke, Felt will be able to gauge reaction of his deeds and actions in the scandal. A personal task still debatably inconceivable were death the harbinger of the stunning revelations.

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