Family: Salute Watergate's 'Deep Throat'

The family of the former top FBI official who claims he was the notorious Deep Throat source in the Watergate scandal tonight praised him as a hero and urged the United States to respect and honour his actions.

The Watergate affair eventually led to the impeachment of President Richard Nixon.

W. Mark Felt, 91, has told Vanity Fair magazine: “I’m the guy they used to call Deep Throat.”

As politicians and analysts reeled over the sudden revelation, Felt’s family praised his bravery in a statement read by grandson, Nick Jones.

“The family believes my grandfather, Mark Felt Sr, is a great American hero who went well above and beyond the call of duty at much risk to himself to save his country from a horrible injustice,” Jones said.

“We all sincerely hope the country will see him this way as well.”

He said Felt was pleased he was being honoured for his role as Deep Throat, alongside Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward.

“As he recently told my mother: ’I guess people used to think Deep Throat was a criminal, but now they think he was a hero,'" he added.

“On behalf of the Felt family we hope you see him as worthy of honour and respect as we do.”

If true, the revelation solves a mystery that has captivated Washington for more than three decades.

Deep Throat became the most famous political source in history after leaking secrets about Nixon’s Watergate cover-up in the early 1970s, when Felt was second-in-command at the FBI.

Lawyer, John O’Connor, said he decided to write the Vanity Fair article after witnessing the decline of Felt’s health and mental acuity and having got permission from both him and his daughter, Joan.

Felt’s family had no idea about his secret identity until 2002 when his close friend Yvette La Garde told Joan he had confided to her that he had been Woodward’s source, the magazine reports.

Felt initially denied it when confronted by his daughter but when she explained La Garde’s disclosure, he reportedly replied: “Since that’s the case, well, yes I am.”

In statements both Woodward and his Washington Post colleague Carl Bernstein refused to corroborate or deny the claims.

“As in the past we are not going to say anything about this,” Bernstein said.

“We have said all along that when that person dies we will reveal his identity.”

Felt said he was “only doing his duty” and had not intended to bring Nixon down over the scandal concerning the cover-up of a 1972 break in at Democratic party offices in Washington, according to the magazine.

He had initially been adamant about keeping silent on the issue, thinking disclosures about his past somehow dishonourable.

“I don’t think (being Deep Throat) was anything to be proud of,” Felt reportedly told his son, Mark.

“You (should) not leak information to anyone.”

Having learnt their father’s secret, Joan and her brother urged him to go public, explaining that they wanted his legacy to be heroic and permanent, not anonymous, and that perhaps he could profit from his revelations.

Eventually, Felt reportedly caved, and agreed to cooperate, but only with the assistance of Woodward, now assistant managing editor at The Washington Post.

Both Joan and O’Connor spoke to Woodward by phone several times over a period of months about whether to make a joint revelation, according to Vanity Fair.

But O’Connor claims Woodward was concerned that this was something being forced on Felt and was not sure whether he was in a clear mental state.

The pair met once for lunch after which Felt’s daughter claims she told Woodward how unusual it was for her father to remember someone so clearly, to which he responded: “He has good reason to remember me.”

Joan said the journalist later scheduled and then cancelled two further meetings with her father.

Felt’s son, Mark, said the decision to go to the press would have been painful and excruciating but his father would not have done it “if he didn’t feel it was the only way to get around the corruption in the White House and Justice Department”.

In the family statement, Jones added that his grandfather believed “the men and women of the FBI who have put their lives at risk for more than 50 years to keep this country safe deserve recognition more than he”.

In 1999, Felt denied he was the notorious source.

“I would have done better,” he told Connecticut newspaper The Hartford Courant. “I would have been more effective. Deep Throat didn’t exactly bring the White House crashing down, did he?”

Woodward and Bernstein reached an agreement in 2003 to keep their Watergate papers at the University of Texas at Austin.

At the time, the pair said documents naming Deep Throat would be kept secure at an undisclosed location in Washington until Deep Throat’s death.

Felt is one of a number of people who have been named as the possible Deep Throat source in recent years, including former deputy White House counsel Fred Fielding, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and even former president George Bush Sr.

Recent reports have suggested the source is close to death.

Vanity Fair said the Felt family had co-operated fully for the story, providing old photographs and agreeing to sit for portraits.

The July edition of the magazine goes on sale in New York on June 8 and nationally in the US on June 14.