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Mark Felt, 'Deep Throat' in Watergate reporting, dies

Chicago Tribune ^ | December 19, 2008 | Laura Norton

Posted on by re_tail20

Mark Felt, the FBI official who as the anonymous journalistic source "Deep Throat" helped bring down President Richard M. Nixon, died on Thursday at his home in Santa Rosa, Calif. He was 95.

Felt suffered from congestive heart failure but the immediate cause of death was not known on Thursday night.

"He was an important person for the history of our nation, but also such a gem and such a treasure to our family," said his grandson Nick Jones, who confirmed the death. "He was a great man."

Jones said the family would issue a formal statement on Friday.

In 2005, more than 30 years after his whistle-blowing helped topple a presidency, Felt held a press conference on the front steps of his Santa Rosa home.

Felt, then 91, revealed that he was "Deep Throat," the anonymous source who in 1972 leaked information to the Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein about the Watergate scandal that eventually led to Nixon's resignation in 1974.



(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...

TOPICS:

Government

KEYWORDS:

deepthroat

felt

markfelt

nixon

obituary

watergate

woodward





To: re_tail20

No sorry for this back stabbing a-hole IMO. Here he was put in charge to look for the leaker and this jerk was the leaker. Good riddance.



To: re_tail20

Why is Mark Felt revered while Linda Tripp was dumped on? Oh, right, Nixon was a Republican and Clinton was a Democrat.



To: jrooney

He did rat out on a thoroughly corrupt president. We need more people in government like him.



To: KoRn

I am not defending Nixon. He was wrong. I am not defending Felt either.



To: re_tail20

No comment.



by 6 posted onby advance_copy (Stand for life or nothing at all)

To: LdSentinal

"Why is Mark Felt revered while Linda Tripp was dumped on? Oh, right, Nixon was a Republican and Clinton was a Democrat. Good question, good summary.



To: re_tail20

The little snitch must have thought he was a regular "Secret Agent Man"...



by 8 posted onby melt (Someday they'll wish their Jihad... Jihadn't.)

To: KoRn

Nixon never made a dime off his “corruption”



To: jrooney

If I recall, Felt actually was pretty senile and his lawyer did all the talking. Felt just sort of stood there and mumbled. I never did believe Deep Throat was one, real, person, and do not believe it today. I say DT was Woodward's way of getting a pastiche of anonymous tips and tantalizing insinuations into print. His subsequent career of fabricating stories, reading minds and making up quotations, and outright lying, backs me up. He knew that sooner or later he would have to close out the DT scam and get himself off the spot, so he used a demented Felt for that purpose. One of the great liberal lies of the 20th century.



To: hinckley buzzard

If you are right. My low regard for Woodward just got lower.



To: KoRn

Nixon didn’t do anything a lot of other presidents did. (Have you heard about some of the things LBJ did?) But Nixon was a Republican, so he had to be punished despite All the Good he did for the Nation. He was a Great President. It is too bad that Felt had to end his career by betraying his President and his Nation. I understand up till then he had an admirable career, but that betrayal destroyed all his previous good deeds.



To: LdSentinal

...thoroughly corrupt president.



Thoroughly corrupt president?!?!? Let me tell you something, get informed. Richard Nixon was set up like a bowling pin.



John Dean snookered John Mitchell into letting him do the Watergate. Then he let Howard Hunt and Jim McCord get in on the break-in. Now, if you were President, you'd fire the "smoking gun" too.



If you don't know why, go find out. The President was faced with two CIA operatives, both involved in very serious cold war black operations (Bay of Pigs, etc.), being arrested for petty crimes. He told Halderman to get in touch with the Director of the CIA (Richard Helms) and tell him to call off the dogs (FBI).



Any President would have done the same thing. The problem is that the whole daggone thing was a set-up from the get-go. And what we got was millions killed by communists in Southeast Asia, Vietnam syndrome, and the establishment of the leftist press (along with a lot of other leftist crap like President Jimmy Carter).



So carefully consider Richard Nixon, he didn't do anything that a true patriot would not do.



by 13 posted onby advance_copy (Stand for life or nothing at all)

To: Chet 99

Nixon was great; did a lot despite overwhelming numbers of dems in congress. SDS and radicals (William Ayers) were working to violently overthrow and destroy this country. Felt was a self-absorbed turncoat. His demise explains the unusual warm spell here; the gates of hades have opened to welcome him.



To: re_tail20

Oh the irony. http://flapsblog.com/2008/04/23/barack-obama-watch-why-wasnt-william-ayers-prosecuted/ Why Wasnt William Ayers Prosecuted? If everyone knows that William Ayers and his comrades in the Weather Underground were planning to set bombs to murder innocent people, why didnt they do time? Because the investigation against them was muffed thanks to the illegal activities of the Washington Posts favorite Watergate answer man himself, Mark Felt  aka Deep Throat. In 1972-73, FBI official Felt and his colleague Edward S. Miller authorized nine illegal break-ins at the homes of Weather Underground members. When the black bag jobs became public, the federal government decided it couldnt prosecute the alleged terrorists. Indicted during the Carter Administration, Felt and Miller were tried in 1980 in Washington. Ever the patriot, former President Nixon voluntarily testified on the defendants behalf, but they were convicted anyway and pardoned by President Reagan in March 1981.



To: advance_copy

And let me tell you something. I didn't make that comment. You replied to thr wrong poster.



To: FFranco

"He was a Great President." Everything I've heard about him with regard to domestic policy suggests he was a liberal.



To: Memphis Moe

It hard to describe Nixon as “great” as he is responsible for proposing and setting up the EPA and as a Cabinet position. Hard to think of an agency that has done more hard to America.



To: LdSentinal; KoRn

Oooops, LOL. Still, to heck with all the leftist bastards who put this country through the wringer so that the badly informed would call Nixon “corrupt”.



by 19 posted onby advance_copy (Stand for life or nothing at all)

To: re_tail20

hmm... hmmm... I really can’t say anything good.



by 20 posted onby Porterville ( I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and I'm all out of bubblegum)

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