Watergate Mystery Solved. Woodward and Bernstein confirm, former FBI deputy director W. Mark Felt was "Deep Throat." What was Felt's motivation?

Woodward said Felt helped The Post at a time of tense relations between the White House and much of the FBI hierarchy. He said the Watergate break-in came shortly after the death of legendary FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, Felt's mentor, and that Felt and other bureau officials wanted to see an FBI veteran promoted to succeed Hoover.

Felt himself had hopes that he would be the next FBI director, but Nixon instead appointed an administration insider, assistant attorney general L. Patrick Gray, to the post.

Bradlee, in an interview this afternoon, said that knowing that "Deep Throat" was a high-ranking FBI official helped him feel confident about the information that the paper was publishing about Watergate. He said that he knew the "positional identity" of "Deep Throat" as the Post was breaking its Watergate stories and that he learned his name within a couple of weeks after Nixon's resignation.

"The number-two guy at the FBI, that was a pretty good source," he said...

The Vanity Fair article, by California attorney John D. O'Connor, described Felt as conflicted over his role in the Watergate revelations and over whether he should publicly reveal that he was the anonymous source whose identity has been a closely guarded secret for more than three decades...

The article concluded, "Felt, having long harbored the ambivalent emotions of pride and self-reproach, has lived for more than 30 years in a prison of his own making, a prison built upon his strong moral principles and his unwavering loyalty to country and cause. But now, buoyed by his family's revelations and support, he need feel imprisoned no longer."

Extraordinary. May these new revelations re-inspire conviction that the forces of political malfeasance, corruption and lying to the public are ultimately vulnerable to the forces of truth -- and the decent people willing to sacrifice something for helping get it out there.

Update: And former Woodward WaPo colleague James Mann sure looks good from his 1992 Atlantic Monthly article, in which he analyzed why Deep Throat was probably from the FBI:

...With the benefit of hindsight, it becomes abundantly clear why someone at the FBI would have an interest in leaking information about Watergate to The Washington Post. In the very first week after the Watergate arrests, FBI investigators found that the White House was putting obstacles in the way of its investigation of the case. White House counsel John Dean insisted on sitting in on the FBI's interviews. The Bureau's efforts to interview witnesses and to obtain various records were being stalled or blocked. L. Patrick Gray, who was working closely with Dean, ordered FBI agents to call off a proposed interview with Miguel Ogarrio, a lawyer whose checks totalling $89,000 had been deposited in the bank account of one of the arrested men; Gray said the interview might jeopardize existing CIA operations in Mexico...

And these White House efforts seemed to validate their worst fear: that the Nixon White House intended to use the FBI for political purposes.

FBI officials were furious. According to Mark Felt, on July 5 three top FBI officials asked for a meeting with Gray to protest White House obstruction of the Watergate investigation...

Invoking Hoover's name, Felt made clear that he and his colleagues believed that the FBI's traditions and its future were at stake...For a senior FBI official like Deep Throat, talking to Woodward and the Post about Watergate was a way to fend off White House interference with the investigation.

Update II: National Review's The Corner asks, was Felt the head of a right-wing anti-Nixon conspiracy? More here.

Update III: Tim Noah knew it was Felt, too:

Why did Felt maintain his silence for so long? Part of the reason, I imagine, is that Felt knew his prosaic, bureaucratic-infighting motive was at least as strong as any moralistic desire to expose the truth about the crooks in the White House. That tarnishes Deep Throat's luster a little. Also, Felt's previous brush with national publicity involved his criminal conviction for bypassing warrants in his investigation of the Weather Underground. Ronald Reagan pardoned him, but it was a deeply painful experience, and Felt thinks the stress contributed to his wife's early death. It would only be logical that he'd avoid the spotlight after that. Possibly, too, he could imagine that the press would note that Deep Throat shared with Nixon an enthusiasm for illegal break-ins.

But the main reason, I think, was that Felt saw his leaks as a betrayal of the FBI...

Noah also worries about some deliberate misdirection about Deep Throat's identity over the years by Woodward.

Posted by Laura at May 31, 2005 06:31 PM