Felt Appearing on CBS's Face The Nation in 1976.
"Mark Felt, the man who helped bring down President Richard Nixon as the infamous 'Deep Throat' for investigative reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, died at his Santa Rosa home Thursday afternoon surrounded by family," the Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported.
Felt, 95, suffered from congestive heart failure but the immediate cause of death was not known Thursday night.
"He was an important person for the history of our nation, but also such a gem and such a treasure to our family," said his grandson, Nick Jones, who confirmed the death. "He was a great man." [...]
In 2005, more than 30 years after his whistle-blowing helped topple a presidency, Mark Felt, once a top FBI official, held a press conference on the front steps of his Santa Rosa home.
Felt, then 91, revealed that he was "Deep Throat," the anonymous source who leaked information to Washington Post reporters about the Watergate scandal that eventually led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1972.
Felt's role, but not his identity, was depicted in a 1974 book titled "All the President's Men" by Washington Post reporters Woodward and Bernstein, and in a subsequent movie of the same name released in 1976. [...]
Felt, who lived in Alexandria, Va, after his 1973 resignation from the FBI, moved to Santa Rosa in 1991, and lived there with his daughter, Joan Felt, until his death.
Felt greeting reporters with his daughter Joan Felt on May 31, 2005 in Santa Rosa, California soon after an article in Vanity Fair magazine concluded that he was "Deep Throat
As the bureau's second- and third-ranking official during a period when the FBI was battling for its independence against the administration of President Richard M. Nixon, Felt had the means and the motive to help uncover the web of internal spies, secret surveillance, dirty tricks and coverups that led to Nixon's unprecedented resignation on Aug. 9, 1974, and to prison sentences for some of Nixon's highest-ranking aides.
Felt's identity as Washington's most celebrated secret source had been an object of speculation for more than 30 years until yesterday, when his role was revealed by his family in a Vanity Fair magazine article. Even Nixon was caught on tape speculating that Felt was "an informer" as early as February 1973, at a time when Deep Throat was supplying confirmation and context for some of The Post's most explosive Watergate stories.
But Felt's repeated denials, and the stalwart silence of the reporters he aided -- Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein -- kept the cloak of mystery drawn up around Deep Throat. In place of a name and a face, the source acquired a magic and a mystique. [...]
"Mark Felt at that time was a dashing gray-haired figure," Woodward recalled, and his experience as an anti-Nazi spy hunter early in his career at the FBI had endowed him with a whole bag of counterintelligence tricks. Felt dreamed up the signal by which Woodward would summon him to a meeting (a flowerpot innocuously displayed on the reporter's balcony) and also hatched the countersign by which Felt could contact Woodward (a clock face inked on Page 20 of Woodward's daily New York Times).
"He knew he was taking a monumental risk," said Woodward, now an assistant managing editor of The Post whose catalogue of prizewinning and best-selling work has been built on the sort of confidential relationships he maintained with Deep Throat.
Felt also knew, by firsthand experience, that Nixon's administration was willing to use wiretaps and break-ins to hunt down leakers, so no amount of caution was too great in his mind. Woodward rode multiple taxis, sometimes in the wrong direction, and often walked long distances to reach the middle-of-the-night meetings.
'DEEP THROAT' MARK FELT DIES (VIDEO)(SLIDESHOW)
