|
Deep Throat ID surprises Bush
02/06/2005 11:44 - (SA)
|
|
|
 |
|
| A dated picture of Mark Felt, the former FBI official who claims he was "Deep Throat", the chief anonymous source who leaked secrets about President's Nixon's Watergate scandal. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Washington - Former FBI deputy director Mark Felt was hailed as a hero and denounced as a villain on Wednesday after confessing to being the Watergate scandal's "Deep Throat" — a disclosure that startled even United States President George W Bush.
Felt's family and The Washington Post, which spearheaded press coverage of the Watergate cover-up in the early 1970s, confirmed Felt was the celebrated anonymous source whose leaks helped bring down President Richard Nixon.
"All I can tell you is it was a revelation that caught me by surprise," President Bush said about the talk of the nation.
Bush said: "A lot of us have always wondered who Deep Throat might have been."
Rumsfield tight-lipped about Deep Throat
Defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who was appointed by Nixon as the US ambassador to North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), in the 1970s, gave a guarded response when asked if he thought Felt, now 91, had been right to leak confidential information.
"Well, I'm not in any judgmental mood," Rumsfeld told a Pentagon briefing.
Prepared in strict secrecy by the magazine, the Vanity Fair article flat-footed former Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein who, along with the newspaper's former editor Ben Bradlee, had kept Felt's identity secret for more than 30 years.
Leonard Downie jun, executive editor of The Washington Post said there was "a sense of relief that people now know the identity of Deep Throat".
A great American hero?
The Watergate scandal ultimately led to Nixon becoming the first US president to resign in August 1974.
Felt's grandson, Nick Jones, described his grandfather as "a great American hero".
But not everyone agrees — especially former Nixon aides.
Gordon Liddy, a Nixon operative who served four and a half years in prison for engineering the Watergate break-in, said Felt "violated the ethics of the law enforcement profession," while former Nixon speechwriter Pat Buchanan bluntly labelled him a "traitor."
Chuck Colson, the head of White House communications in 1972, said Felt could have helped America avoid a wrenching political crisis.
Colson said: ", Instead he goes out and basically undermines the administration."
However, leading US dailies hailed Deep Throat as a prime example of how anonymous sources can keep government abuse in check.
Hal Holbrook, the actor who played the Deep Throat character in the 1976 Watergate movie "All The President's Men" said he thought Felt had been driven by a "higher purpose."
"The important thing was not who it was, but why he did it," Holbrook said. "It's called morality. That is something that is not very popular today."
With the secret finally out, The New York Times said Watergate aficionados would mourn the end to a 30-year cottage industry of Deep Throat speculation.
"It's a little like discovering that Superman's secret identity was, well — Clark Kent," the newspaper said.
- AFP
|
