Former FBI deputy director Mark Felt is "Deep Throat," the legendary source who leaked Watergate scandal secrets to the Washington Postand helped bring down President Richard Nixon, the newspaper has confirmed.
Mark Felt on CBS 'Face The Nation' in 1976
Bob Woodward, one of two Postreporters whose stories on the Watergate scandal led to Nixon's August 1974 resignation, confirmed Mr Felt was the source after a Vanity Fairmagazine report said Felt had admitted his role, the Postsaid on its Web site.
The unmasking of the identity of "Deep Throat" solves one of the greatest political and journalistic mysteries of modern times.
The decision to reveal his identity came after Vanity Fairreported that Felt, the former FBI No. 2, had confirmed his role to his family and to the magazine.
"I'm the guy they used to call Deep Throat," Mr Felt, now a 91-year-old retiree living in Santa Rosa, California, told the author of the Vanity Fairstory, lawyer John O'Connor.
Mr Felt's grandson told reporters on yesterday that his grandfather was "an American hero" for his role in uncovering the Watergate scandal. It is the first time a major potential source had claimed to be "Deep Throat."
Woodward and his partner, Carl Bernstein, had refused for decades to reveal the name of their source, fueling an intense guessing game by historians and political observers that spawned multiple books, documentaries and investigations.
Only three people - Woodward, Bernstein and former Post editor Ben Bradlee - knew his identity, and they vowed not to name "Deep Throat" until after his death.
The Postquoted Bradlee as saying that knowing "Deep Throat" was a top FBI official gave him confidence about the newspaper's reporting on the Watergate scandal.
"The No. 2 guy at the FBI, that was a pretty good source," Bradlee told the Post on Tuesday.
Mr Felt had always been on the short list of potential Deep Throats. The source was instrumental to the Post's reporting on the Watergate scandal that led to Nixon's resignation in August 1974 - the only resignation of a US president in history.
He was forced to resign after it emerged that burglars working for the Republican Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP) had broken into the Democratic Party's National Committee offices in Washington's Watergate Hotel in 1972, months before Mr Nixon's re-election as president.
It then emerged that the break-in was part of a "dirty tricks" campaign run by the Republicans to discredit political enemies.
Mr Nixon resigned two years later after the House Judiciary Committee recommended impeachment in light of the revelations the followed the break-in.
The scandal acquired its name because the Democrats' offices were opposite the .