DEEP THROAT

The Watergate kind, that is. Get your mind out of the gutter.

One of the great mysteries of the Watergate scandal may have, at long last, been revealed. According to a Reuters report today,

Mark Felt, a former FBI deputy director, claims to be "Deep Throat," the legendary source who leaked Watergate scandal secrets to the Washington Post and helped bring down President Richard Nixon, Vanity Fair magazine said on Tuesday.

Felt is now 91 years old, and it may be that after all these years, his family has convinced him that he will be seen by most people as a hero for his role in the scandal that brought the presidency of Richard Nixon crashing down in 1974. That, plus he can maybe generate some coin and fatten up said family’s inheritance...or am I being cynical?

Well, never mind. I think Deep Throat, whoever it may be, performed a tremendous service for this country. Politics aside, I could not stand Richard Nixon. My biggest concern during his administration was that he seemed to consider himself above the law, as evidenced by his disgraceful conduct during the “Saturday Night Massacre” when he fired Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. Just the kind of thing that happens when the guy checking out the henhouse reports to the fox. It took the revelation of an extraordinary pattern of improper conduct to put Nixon in a position where he had to resign, and Deep Throat provided those revelations.

As for the reportorial side of the whole affair, Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, and Benjamin Bradlee of the WaPo continue to uphold their vow to keep silent on the matter of Deep Throat’s identity until after his death. So all we have right now is Felt, who was in a high enough position in the FBI to have known what was going on.

This “Extremely Late-Breaking News” reminds me of the story of a couple, both well along in years, who show up in a courtroom one day. The presiding judge asks the husband what his business is with the Court, and gets this response: “We want a divorce.”

The judge thought this a bit unusual - such an elderly couple! – and so he asked the husband how long the two of them had been married.

The old man answers, “Next September, it will be seventy-six years.”

So the judge says, “Seventy-six years! You don’t say! Tell, me, sir, why is it that, after having been married for such a long time, you’re asking for a divorce now? Why now?”

“We wanted to wait until all the children were dead.”

[Update: Bob Woodward has confirmed that Mark Felt is, indeed, Deep Throat. Thus endeth one of the Last Great Mysteries of the Twentieth Century.]