[Deathwatch] W. Mark Felt, 'Deep Throat' of Watergate, 95

[Deathwatch Central]

W. Mark Felt, 'Deep Throat' of Watergate, dead at 95
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/12/19/mark.felt.obit/index.html

(CNN) -- W. Mark Felt, who leaked information to reporters under the
moniker, "Deep Throat," about the Watergate break-in, died Thursday at
the age of 95, sources told CNN.

 Rob Jones, Felt's grandson, said his grandfather died at his home in
Santa Rosa, California. According to published reports, Felt died of
congestive heart failure.

Felt admitted in a 2005 Vanity Fair article he was the Washington
Post's source for many of its 400 stories on the Watergate affair
during the early 1970s. The Watergate break-in eventually led to the
1974 resignation of President Richard Nixon.

"I'm proud of everything that Deep Throat did," Felt, 92, told CNN's
"Larry King Live" in 2006, his first public interview on the subject.

Felt's entanglement with history occurred in 1972 after the bungled
break-in at the Democratic National Party offices in the Watergate
hotel. Felt, an associate director at the FBI, said he was unhappy with
the way the administration meddled with the investigation into the
break-in, which led him to divulge information to the newspaper.

Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, then-rookie reporters with the
Washington Post, did stories about the break-in and subsequent
cover-up. Both men credited Felt for helping them, but Bernstein said
Felt was a tough interview.

"He didn't leak. He had to really be squeezed," Bernstein said in a
2006 interview. "He confirmed mostly what we had gotten elsewhere. He
didn't want to volunteer a lot of information, yet his role was
essential in giving us a solidity and a knowledge that what we were
reporting was right."

When King asked Felt whether he felt he had done anything wrong in
going outside approved channels to get information out, Felt was
unequivocal.

"I thought I was doing the right thing," he said.

Felt, who retired from the FBI in 1973, had his own legal problems. He
was convicted in 1980 on conspiracy charges for authorizing government
agents to break into homes without search warrants in a hunt for
bombing suspects in 1972 and 1973.

When the case went to trial, former President Nixon testified on Felt's
behalf. Felt was eventually pardoned in 1981 by President Ronald
Reagan.

When asked how he would like to be remembered, Felt said, "I'd like to
be remembered as a government employee who did his best to help
everybody."

Many thanks to TheLenGuy for posting this obituary