US: One of the most enduring mysteries in American politics appears to have been solved with a claim by a former senior FBI official that he is "Deep Throat", the long-anonymous source who leaked secrets about President Nixon's Watergate cover-up to the Washington Post.
W. Mark Felt (91), who was second-in-command at the FBI in the early 1970s, "outed" himself in Vanity Fair, the magazine announced yesterday in a press release.
"I'm the guy they used to call 'Deep Throat'," Mr Felt told lawyer John O'Connor, the author of an upcoming article in the magazine. The magazine said Mr Felt had kept the secret even from his family until 2002, when he confided that he had been the source for Post reporter Bob Woodward.
The identity of "Deep Throat" has been kept secret over three decades by Woodward and his colleague on Watergate stories, Carl Bernstein.
Woodward and Bernstein still refused yesterday to confirm Deep Throat's identity, because, Bernstein said, they had promised to keep the secret until he died.
Though Mr Felt's name may not be as familiar as other senior Nixon aides long suspected of revealing the secrets of the Watergate scandal, his name has been bandied about among investigative journalists for many years.
As far back as 1992 author James Mann said Mr Felt was the leading suspect. In the Nixon tapes, former aide HR Haldeman is heard saying that most of the leaks from the White House were coming from Mr Felt.
Six years ago a high school senior in New York claimed that Bernstein's son let the name Felt slip at a summer camp, causing a flurry of "Deep Throat" speculation.
In February this year Mr Felt's name came second in a poll conducted by Editor & Publisher magazine about the most likely suspect for the title. The winner was Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who worked for Nixon attorney general John Mitchell.
Mr Rehnquist got 13 per cent of the vote to 8 per cent for Mark Felt and 7 per cent for Nixon aides Fred Fielding and Henry Kissinger.
Mr Felt has to this day reservations about his role in the events that led to Nixon's resignation in 1974. "I don't think [being 'Deep Throat'] was anything to be proud of," he said, according to O'Connor. "You not leak information to anyone."
Mr Felt lives in Santa Rosa, California, with daughter Joan and son Mark, who felt he should receive tribute for his role in Watergate before he died. They urged him to go public after he revealed his secret to them, but Mr Felt argued against that, O'Connor writes, saying he didn't want the story "out there".
The name "Deep Throat" was taken from the title of a popular pornographic film of the early 1970s, and was first cited in Woodward and Bernstein's best-selling book, All the President's Men. In the film of the same title, "Deep Throat", played by Hal Holbrook, is depicted giving Woodward secrets and tips such as "Follow the money", in an underground parking garage.
In 1999 Mr Felt denied he was "Deep Throat" to the Hartford Courant newspaper, saying: "I would have done better. I would have been more effective. 'Deep Throat' didn't exactly bring the White House crashing down, did he?"
In 2003 Woodward and Bernstein agreed to lodge their Watergate papers at the University of Texas in Austin.