"I'm the Guy They Called Deep Throat": W. Mark Felt, 91 years old and formerly second-in-command at the F.B.I., says that he is the confidential Watergate source who assisted Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein?and helped bring down President Richard Nixon
In the Prelude to Publication, Intrigue Worthy of Deep Throat: On Wednesday, word came that the family of Mr. Felt, the ailing, 91-year-old former No. 2 official of the F.B.I., had sought payment in vain for his story after failing to reach a collaborative agreement with Mr. Woodward - not only from Vanity Fair, but also from People magazine and HarperCollins Books. They are apparently still determined to claim their share of the story that helped make Mr. Woodward a famous millionaire.
Deep Background: The Best-Kept Secret in Washington Nearly Stayed That Way
Vanity Fair's big scoop almost didn't happen. It started with a cold call two years ago from John D. O'Connor, a prominent lawyer in the San Francisco Bay area, to the magazine's editor, Graydon Carter. O'Connor, according to David Friend, an editor at the magazine, said he had a client "who is Deep Throat, and he wants to come out in the pages of Vanity Fair." [...]
The problem for Vanity Fair, Friend said, was that O'Connor wanted the magazine to pay Felt and Felt's family for the story -- a condition the magazine would not agree to.
O'Connor -- who had become acquainted with the Felt family through Felt's grandson, a Stanford classmate of O'Connor's daughter -- decided instead to publish Felt's account as a book. But after a year of trying to find a publisher, Friend said, O'Connor was back at Vanity Fair's doorstep.
Therein began a long and secretive process to render Felt's story into print. Although O'Connor was the lead writer, the magazine supplemented his work with research and fact-checking. It corroborated Felt's account by getting his daughter, his son, his daughter-in-law and a former companion to confirm that he had previously revealed his identity as Deep Throat.
About 15 Vanity Fair editors and staff people were eventually assigned to the story, which was code-named WIG (a corruption of "Watergate"). All of those involved signed confidentiality agreements that bound them not to reveal Felt's identity if the piece didn't meet publication standards.
Why Did Bob Woodward Lunch With Mark Felt in 1999?
Was it to ask if he could unmask Deep Throat? [2002]
Deep Throat: An Institutional Analysis: I cannot reveal who Deep Throat was, because I do not know. I do know, however, the part of the government in which Deep Throat worked, and I can speculate with some conviction about what Deep Throat's institutional motivations may have been. [...]
There has been considerable speculation that Deep Throat never existed, that he must have been either a complete fiction or a composite of several people. My memory of those early months of Watergate is otherwise: that there was a specific individual, from the FBI, and Woodward had special access to him. [1992]
Deep Throat (Watergate) & W. Mark Felt from Wikipedia
"Deep Throat" Uncovered [o engano]
