When clumsy burglars linked to Richard Nixon’s campaign organisation broke into Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate complex 50 years ago Friday, they were apprehended.

The chapter-by-chapter disclosure of his cover-up and efforts to pervert the course of justice forced him from office nearly two years later, when he resigned then instead of facing impeachment trial conviction. Three Republican congressional leaders went to the White House and helped persuade him that he was condemned.

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Deep Throat is the alias given to the confidential source who provided information to Bob Woodward in 1972, who then relayed it to Carl Bernstein. Woodward and Bernstein were Washington Post reporters, and Deep Throat revealed vital details regarding Nixon’s administration’s role in the Watergate crisis.

A family attorney asserted in 2005, 31 years after Nixon’s resignation and 11 years after Nixon’s death, that former FBI Associate Director Mark Felt was Deep Throat. Felt had dementia at the time and had initially denied being Deep Throat, but Woodward and Bernstein later validated the attorney’s assertion.

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Vanity Fair stated on May 31, 2005, that Mark Felt, then 91, purported to be the man originally known as “Deep Throat.” Later that day, Woodward, Bernstein, and Bradlee confirmed the same in a statement to The Washington Post. On June 2, 2005, The Washington Post published a lengthy front-page piece by Woodward detailing his acquaintance with Felt prior to Watergate. Woodward stated that he met Felt by coincidence in 1970, when he was a Navy lieutenant in his mid-twenties.

Woodward was assigned to deliver a box to the West Wing of the White House. Felt arrived shortly after for a separate meeting and sat in the waiting area next to Woodward. Woodward struck up a chat with Felt and soon learnt of his position in the FBI’s upper echelons. Woodward, who was ready to leave the Navy and was concerned about his future, became resolved to use Felt as a mentor and career counsel. As a result, he requested Felt’s phone number and maintained contact with him.

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William Mark Felt Sr. (August 17, 1913 – December 18, 2008) was an American federal prosecutor who served in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 1942 to 1973 and is best known for his involvement in the Watergate incident. Felt began his career as an FBI special agent and advanced to the level of Associate Director, the Bureau’s second-highest ranking position. Prior to being promoted to the FBI’s headquarters, Felt served in various field offices.

In 1980, he was convicted of violating the civil rights of people suspected of being involved with Weather Underground members by ordering FBI agents to break into their homes and investigate the premises in an attempt to avert explosions. He was sentenced to pay a fine, but President Ronald Reagan pardoned him during his trial.

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Felt was born on August 17, 1913, in Twin Falls, Idaho, to Rose R. Dygert and Mark Earl Felt, a carpenter and construction builder. His paternal grandfather was a minister of the Free Will Baptist Church. His paternal grandparents were born in Canada and Scotland, respectively. Felt was derived from Revolutionary War General Nicholas Herkimer of New York through his maternal grandparents.

Felt attended the University of Idaho in Moscow after graduating from Twin Falls High School in 1931. He was a fellow and president of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity’s Gamma Gamma chapter, and he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1935.

Felt then relocated to Washington, D.C., to serve in the office of Democratic United States Senator James P. Pope. Felt married Audrey Robinson of Gooding, Idaho, whom he had met while both were students at the University of Idaho, in 1938. She had gone to Washington to work for the Internal Revenue Service. Rev. Sheara Montgomery, the chaplain of the United States House of Representatives, officiated at their wedding. Audrey committed suicide on July 20, 1984, leaving behind two children, Joan and Mark.

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Felt remained in the Senate with Pope’s successor, David Worth Clark. He took night classes at George Washington University Law School, getting his J.D. in 1940 and was called to the District of Columbia Bar in 1941.

After graduating, Felt went to work for the Federal Trade Commission, but he disliked his job. His job was minimal, and he was tasked with investigating if a toilet paper brand called “Red Cross” misled consumers into believing it was endorsed by the American Red Cross. In his memoir, Felt wrote:

“My research, which required days of travel and hundreds of interviews, produced two definite conclusions:

1. Most people did use toilet tissue.

2. Most people did not appreciate being asked about it.

That was when I started looking for other employment.”

In November 1941, he applied for and was hired by the FBI. On January 26, 1942, he started at the Bureau.

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Felt, as Associate Director, saw everything that had been collected on Watergate before it was presented to L. Patrick Gray. Charles Nuzum, the Agent in Charge, forwarded his discoveries to Investigative Division Head Robert Gebhardt, who forwarded the material to Felt. Felt was the primary control centre for FBI intelligence from the day of the break-in, June 17, 1972, until the FBI investigation was generally completed in June 1973.

He was among the first to be briefed of the probe, on the morning of June 17. According to former Bureau agents interviewed by Ronald Kessler, they “were amazed to see material in Woodward and Bernstein’s stories lifted almost verbatim from their reports of interviews a few days or weeks earlier.”

When Felt acknowledged his role in 2005, it was noted that “My Friend” and “Mark Felt” have the same introductory letters. Woodward’s interview notes with Felt were marked “M.F.,” which Woodward describes as “not very good tradecraft.”

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In 1979, Felt released his memoir The FBI Pyramid: From the Inside. It was written in collaboration with former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover’s biographer Ralph de Toledano, whose name appears only in the copyright notice.

In 2005, Toledano stated that the book was “largely written by me since his original manuscript read like The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table.” Toledano stated, “Felt swore to me that he was not Deep Throat, and that he had never leaked information to the Woodward-Bernstein team or anyone else. The book was published and bombed.”

In his memoir, Felt backed Hoover and his stint as Director, and he attacked the Church Committee’s and civil libertarians’ attacks of the Bureau in the 1970s. He also criticised the Bureau’s portrayal of agents as criminals, claiming that the 1974 Freedom of Information Act and Privacy Act merely hampered government operations and aided criminals. (He begins the book with the phrase “The Bill of Rights is not a suicide pact,” as stated by Justice Robert H. Jackson in his dissent in Terminiello v. City of Chicago, 337 U.S. 1 (1949)).