Sen. Bob Bennett said Tuesday's revelation that a former FBI official was Deep Throat should finally end any suspicion that he was the source behind newspaper stories that helped bring down President Nixon in the Watergate scandal.
"If this turns out to be in fact true, why this will close the chapter on speculation about me," Bennett told the Deseret Morning News from Istanbul, where he and other members of Congress are attending a conference on Islam.
The Utah Republican said he didn't know W. Mark Felt, identified in a Vanity Fair magazine article written by his lawyer as the source used by The Washington Post in its coverage of Watergate.
"I have no idea whether Mark Felt really is or isn't Deep Throat. All I know is I am not and never have been," Bennett said. "Mark Felt sounds as good as any possibility to me. . . . This will open up a whole area for examination and historical re-examination."
The Washington Post confirmed Felt was Deep Throat after Bennett was interviewed.
Bennett knows firsthand what it's like to be known as Deep Throat. His name has surfaced repeatedly over the years as a likely candidate, including in a Rolling Stone article that was widely circulated.
Also, Nixon's former chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, wrote that Nixon himself believed Bennett was Deep Throat and cited a CIA memo that stated Bennett was "feeding information" to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward.
The memo, according to Haldeman's book, "The Ends of Power," went on to say that Woodward was "suitably grateful" for Bennett's help, which seemed to point "almost overwhelmingly to Bennett as Deep Throat."
Bennett, of course, has long denied he was Deep Throat.
But Bennett — who had left a job with the Nixon administration before the Watergate scandal and bought a Washington, D.C.-based public relations firm that had ties to the CIA — said he was a sometimes anonymous source for Woodward.
"He'd always call me" to check information before a story ran, Bennett said. "He always struck me, therefore, as a very professional guy."
Bennett said it wasn't a secret that he talked with Woodward.
Bennett was quoted by name in "All the President's Men," the Watergate book written by Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
"I was one of Woodward's sources. But my name was in the book. There was no attempt to hide it," he said.
When Bennett returned to Washington after being elected to the U.S. Senate in 1992, he said he called Woodward.
"I said, 'This is a voice out of your past. Let's get together and chat.' And we did."
Woodward told Bennett then he was "surprised the name had not come out yet" since some people at the paper had guessed who Deep Throat was.
Bennett responded that he'd assumed Deep Throat was somebody on the White House staff.
"Woodward corrected me," Bennett recalled, "and said, on the White House staff or close enough to the White House that he would know what was going on."
Although interest in the three-decade-old story has waned, Bennett said he's still asked occasionally about whether he was the secret source.
"It's very clear that the people who are asking me have a very romantic vision of who Deep Throat was," he said.
But they don't understand the source very well, Bennett said.
"He was very conflicted. He felt there were things going on that were not only improper, but were illegal. At the same time, he was a member of the administration who felt an obligation of loyalty," Bennett said.
"Deep Throat," the senator added, "was not leaking state secrets. This was not a great spy story where classified information was being leaked to the newspaper. It was just that there was something sleazy going on."
Bennett said he believed Deep Throat was a career government employee "who was worried about losing his job if it ever got out. I'm not sure Mark FeIt was worried because he was No. 2 (in the FBI)."
But, Bennett said, "It would have been tremendously embarrassing to Mark Felt if the Nixon administration found out."
Even though they were in Washington at the same time, Bennett said he'd never met Felt.
"I'm not a lawyer. I've never been involved in law enforcement. When I was in the Nixon administration, I was in the Department of Transportation," he said. "There would have never been the occasion for me to meet him."
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