When W. Mark Felt led the FBI's Salt Lake City office back in 1958, the Deseret News featured a story about how he could draw faster than Old West gunslingers — able to draw from the hip and bury six shots into the center of a target within three seconds.
Maybe such dead-eye shooting was in the back of minds at the Washington Post. The newspaper had never, before Tuesday, revealed him as its secret "Deep Throat" source in the Watergate scandal that toppled Richard Nixon. But Felt, now 91, who was the No. 2 man at the FBI during Watergate, and his family finally acknowledged Tuesday that he is Deep Throat.
"I'm the guy they used to call Deep Throat," Felt told John D. O'Connor, an attorney who wrote a story in Vanity Fair revealing the long-kept secret. O'Connor said Felt and his family had released him from client-attorney privilege to write the story.
In a statement issued later, Watergate reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein confirmed that Felt was Deep Throat "and helped us immeasurably in our Watergate coverage. However, as the record shows, many other sources and officials assisted us and other reporters for the hundreds of stories that were written in The Washington Post about Watergate."
Ben Bradlee, the Washington Post editor who oversaw their work, was the only other person to whom they had revealed his identity. "The number two guy at the FBI, that was a pretty good source. . . . I knew the paper was on the right track," Bradlee said Tuesday, as reported by the Post.
Later Tuesday, outside Felt's home in Santa Rosa, Calif., Felt's grandson, Nick Jones, read a family statement saying, "My grandfather is pleased he is being honored for his role as 'Deep Throat' with his friend Bob Woodward. As he recently told my mother, 'I guess people used to think Deep Throat was a criminal, but now they think he was a hero.' "
Jones added, "The family believes my grandfather, Mark Felt Sr., is a great American hero who went well above and beyond the call of duty at much risk to himself to save his country from a horrible injustice. . . . We all sincerely hope the country will see him this way as well."
Deseret Morning News archives contain many stories depicting Felt as a Western straight-shooter — literally and figuratively — who attacked corruption. He once was considered the heir apparent of longtime FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.
However, he also became the highest-ranking FBI official ever convicted of a crime — for ordering break-ins in the 1970s of people possibly connected to the Weather Underground, a group claiming responsibility for many bombings (including at the U.S. Capitol and Pentagon). Felt said the break-ins were essential for national security and Ronald Reagan later pardoned him.
Nixon chief counsel Charles "Chuck" Colson worked closely with Felt in the Nixon administration and expressed surprise at the disclosure.
"Mark first served this country with honor, and I can't imagine how Mark Felt was sneaking in dark alleys leaving messages under flower pots and violating his oath to keep this nation's secrets. I cannot compute that with the Mark Felt that I know," Colson told the AP. Colson pleaded no contest to an obstruction of justice charge in the Watergate scandal and served time in prison.
Another Nixon associate who wound up behind bars, G. Gordon Liddy, said he didn't consider Felt a hero for going to the Post reporters.
"If he were interested in performing his duty, he would have gone to the grand jury with his information," Liddy, who was finance counsel at Nixon's re-election committee and helped direct the break-in, said in an interview on CNN.
The FBI declined to comment Tuesday on Felt's admission.
Felt — who was born and raised in Twin Falls, Idaho, and had worked for two Democratic U.S. senators from Idaho before joining the FBI — headed the FBI's Salt Lake City office from 1956 to 1958.
"In less than three seconds, Agent Felt drew his pistol and emptied all six bullets into the dead center of the close-range target," said a 1958 Deseret News feature about him and about how tests at the time showed "the average agent today can out-draw and out-shoot any gunslinger of the old West."
Another old story told how he went to unusual lengths to arrest a bank robber in Utah. Felt was tipped off that the man was working a highway construction job near Blanding.
"To get to this remote part of the state, he used a chartered plane, which landed on the road the bank robber was helping to build," the story said.
Felt was transferred from Salt Lake City to Missouri, where he helped curb mobsters in the Kansas City mob as that city's special agent in charge. In 1962, he became head of the inspection division of the FBI. And in 1971, he became the No. 2 person at the FBI behind Hoover.
The Vanity Fair article says Felt aided Woodward and Bernstein because he felt it was the only way to fight corruption in the White House and the Justice Department, but that he was conflicted about it.
The magazine quoted his son, Mark Jr., as saying, "His attitude was: I don't think (being Deep Throat) was anything to be proud of. You should not leak information to anyone."
His son added, "Making the decision (to go to the press) would have been difficult, painful and excruciating, and outside the bounds of his life's work. He would not have done it if he didn't feel it was the only way to get around the corruption at the White House and Justice Department."
While Felt did not disclose his role until now, many had long suspected him of it — including, apparently, Richard Nixon himself.
Vanity Fair notes tapes showed that in October 1972, Nixon insisted he would "fire the whole goddamn bureau" and singled out Felt, whom he thought to be part of a plot to undermine him through frequent press leaks.
Also, Nixon's former presidential counsel, John W. Dean, once testified that former Attorney General Richard Kleindienst told former acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray to fire Felt because he was the source of Watergate leaks. Gray never attempted to fire him, however.
The Hartford Courant in 1999 also ran a story saying Bernstein's son had told others that Felt was Deep Throat — but Bernstein said his son was apparently reporting speculation by his ex-wife, and that he had never disclosed Deep Throat's identity.
Felt finished fourth in an informal 2002 online poll by CNN about whom people believe Deep Throat was. In that poll, 13 percent said Felt was; 20 percent said Gray was; 14 percent said former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was; and 29 percent said "someone else" was. Other names that have been guessed at include Alexander Haig, Patrick Buchanan, David Gergen and, more recently, George H.W. Bush.
About Felt's condition now, Vanity Fair says he "watches TV sitting beneath a large oil painting of his late wife, Audrey, and goes for rides with a new caregiver. Felt is 91, and his memory for details seems to wax and wane."
Contributing: Sharon Theimer, Associated Press; Nina J. Easton, Boston Globe; and other wire service reports
E-mail: lee@desnews.com