Deep Throat

In 33 years, the best hint to Deep Throat's identity may have been the casting of a near look-alike, Hal Holbrook, in the 1976 blockbuster movie All the President's Men. Three decades. How many Washington secrets remain sealed for that long? This mystery is solved now only because the FBI's former second-in-command, W. Mark Felt, revealed his own role as the cloaked source who aided Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Using tips and confirmations from Felt as key guidance, the two newspapermen documented White House corruption during the Watergate scandal.

On this the 30th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, John Dean seems to have egg on his face, while Pat Buchanan has a new group of sleuths who think he was Deep Throat. Dean, ex-White House counsel for Richard Nixon, had promised to reveal the identity of Deep Throat in an e-book supposed to be published today by Salon.com, but because of denials, and threats of lawsuits, publication has been delayed. The identity of the government official who slipped information to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post has intrigued professional and amateur historians for three decades.

I have a request to make of William Rehnquist, Bob Dole, Henry Kissinger, Robert Bork, George Bush I, Al Haig, and a host of other Washington graybeards. Could you please prepare an affidavit - or, even better, sworn video testimony - to be released posthumously, clarifying whether you are Deep Throat? Let's back up a bit. As we all know, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein pretty much brought down the Nixon administration by exposing the Watergate cover-up. Their book All the President's Men was made into a near-hagiographic film of the same title, starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman.

I WAS ON vacation in Turkey when I saw the story in the International Herald Tribune: "Deep Throat" had been revealed as W. Mark Felt, ex-FBI official. Drat! For sure, the revelation would be all over the news back home, touching off a virtual reunion of Watergate junkies. At the crossroads of Europe and Asia, there was no chance to discuss it. It reminded me of when and where I heard that Watergate had climaxed in the resignation of Richard Nixon in August 1974 - and how much has changed.

John Dean said it was Alexander Haig. Haig says it was the FBI. Rabbi Baruch Korff said on his deathbed it was Diane Sawyer. Howard Phillips and Robert Mardian said it was Leonard Garment. "Not me," said Garment. "Honest. " Today is the 25th anniversary of the Watergate break-in. Isn't it time to come out, Deep Throat? Apparently not. Mr. Throat's identity remains a puzzle. Deep Throat, an appellation that came from a pornographic movie, was the tag that pace-setting Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein gave their chief source in reporting Watergate.

Few mysteries have been as delicious as the identity of Deep Throat, the anonymous informant who guided Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to the stories that brought down Richard Nixon. John Dean, former Nixon aide . . . plans to reveal to the world the identity of Deep Throat in a 35,000-word essay to be published on June 17 (the 30th anniversary of the 1972 Watergate break-in) in . . . Salon.com. At least, he says that's what he will do. . . . It's possible that we'll lose more than we gain by learning the identity of Deep Throat.

After years of national speculation, CBS is trumpeting its intent to reveal the identity of Deep Throat - or at least make an "educated guess. " The documentary Watergate: The Secret Story, which airs Wednesday, attempts to identify the mysterious figure who provided reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein with inside information about the Watergate break-in and its link to President Richard M. Nixon. "We know he is alive. We know it's a he. We know it's not a composite figure. We know he held a key position in the executive government," said Andrew Lack, executive producer for the special.

"Deep Throat," the secret source who helped bring the Watergate scandal to light and the most famous anonymous person in modern American history, was revealed yesterday to be W. Mark Felt, a former No. 2 official at the FBI. Felt, now 91, ended the three-decade-long mystery, telling his secret to Vanity Fair magazine at his family's urging. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who exposed Watergate as young reporters for the Washington Post, confirmed yesterday that Felt was the shadowy figure who fed them tips about corruption in Richard Nixon's White House.

Nixon, of course, was the one. He defined the political landscape as the baby boom came of age. Operatic, brooding, secretive and paranoid - with good reason - he was a man waiting for the fall. Deep Throat was there to help provide it. In a quest for truth undertaken by crusading journalists and congressional investigators, Deep Throat remained the secret for more than three decades, thousands of news cycles, an eternity coinciding with an increased climate of confession and forced disclosure when few confidences are kept.

FIRST IT WAS the report of the near-death of Penthouse's porn enterprises. Now, it's the death after an auto accident of Linda Boreman, 53, better know to most of us as Linda Lovelace, the star of "Deep Throat," the movie that forever changed our sexual horizons. So we're waiting for the next shoe to drop - after all, bad things, they say, come in threesomes.

LOS ANGELES - The film world is sufficiently enamored of Linda Lovelace to develop not one but two biopics about the porn pioneer. But can even one get off the ground? Lovelace is the "Deep Throat" actress who later became an anti-porn crusader; she's seen as a '70s icon, albeit a troubled one, who broke ground and then regretted it afterward. A year ago, Lindsay Lohan was to play the lead in "Inferno," before Lohan's troubles got her the boot. "Watchmen" star Malin Akerman is now on board to star, confirmed "Inferno" director Matthew Wilder, who added that, though there's no financing in place at the moment, the project hasn't lost steam.

"American Casino" covers the same Wall Street meltdown as "Capitalism: A Love Story," but has a completely different personality. It may be a little too Jack Webb for the masses, but there is value to its sober, just-the-facts approach. The old-school, reportorial style comes from journalist and author Andrew Cockburn, longtime national-affairs expert who has written about Saddam Hussein and Donald Rumsfeld and here probes the origins of the near-collapse of the economy. Cockburn (along with wife and filmmaker Leslie)

The death of W. Mark Felt, known to history as "Deep Throat," serves as a reminder of the importance of courageous whistleblowers and a robust media. To generations born after Watergate, Felt's story is worth repeating. He was a career FBI man who rose by 1972 to become the bureau's second-highest ranking official. In June 1972, burglars broke into the offices of the Democratic Party's national headquarters in the Watergate office complex in Washington. Six men were arrested.

IN THE late 1950s in Baltimore, I was sent by my school newspaper to interview a famous opera star, a graduate of our school. I had to take public transit to get to a point where her driver could meet me and take me to the singer's mansion. At the last stop, there was a huge sign that read in large print, "No Negroes, Jews, or Dogs. " This was the moment I determined to try to change the world. I had lots of company in the '60s ? but by 1968, our heroes, Jack and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. had been murdered.

As someone who wasn't born yesterday, I sometimes suspect that I'm the target of a vast, youth-culture conspiracy bent on relegating me to obsolescence. The feeling was perhaps most aptly described by my sister (who's a good deal younger than I) as one of having awakened from a long sleep to find there's a whole new crop of celebrities and having absolutely no idea who they are. But lately I find I've been able to deep-six the unsettling sensation of being adrift in an alien sea. In fact, I'm suddenly feeling very much back in vogue, as "in with the in crowd" as ever - all thanks to a couple of guys who, at least for a few moments, caught the media's attention.

I WAS ON vacation in Turkey when I saw the story in the International Herald Tribune: "Deep Throat" had been revealed as W. Mark Felt, ex-FBI official. Drat! For sure, the revelation would be all over the news back home, touching off a virtual reunion of Watergate junkies. At the crossroads of Europe and Asia, there was no chance to discuss it. It reminded me of when and where I heard that Watergate had climaxed in the resignation of Richard Nixon in August 1974 - and how much has changed.

Even before Mark Felt provoked a gale of accusation and retort by identifying himself as Watergate's secretive Deep Throat, the issue at the heart of his role had taken on a new and pressing prominence: Ethics. Today the question of ethics - who has them, who doesn't, and the ramifications for both - is generating news and disagreement from boardroom to bedroom to jury room. "It's become like a national pastime, commenting on it, and talking about it," says Buie Seawell, former Senate chief of staff to Gary Hart, a man who knows something about ethical puzzles.

Balance on campus Re: "No place for religious intolerance," editorial, May 9: The Inquirer applauds the Air Force Academy for ordering its faculty to stop proselytizing in the classroom and for making cadets and staff take a sensitivity class called Respecting the Spiritual Values of All People. It says that may not be enough, that the academy should continue to incorporate suggestions from advisers such as the Anti-Defamation League and the Josephson Institute of Ethics. "Intolerance at the academy must end," the editorial says.

I HAD TWO reactions to the recent report that after all these years, the identity of "Deep Throat," aka former FBI second banana W. Mark Felt, had been revealed. I was depressed when I realized that I lived in an era when, apparently, there are no more Deep Throats, especially when they're needed more than ever. After all the duplicity coming from the Bush administration regarding the false reasons we were rushed into attacking Iraq, wouldn't it be nice to have some brave soul leak the truth to the press?