“I’m the guy they called Deep Throat,” said the former FBI agent Mark Felt. With that admission he ended, after more than 30 years, the best-kept secret of American journalism.

The legendary mole who had guided the Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein through the shroud of political deceit to uncover the Watergate scandal which brought down President Richard Nixon, was by then a a very frail 91-year-old man. The revelation of his identity appeared in Vanity Fair magazine in June 2005.

Until then there had been endless speculation about the identity of the famous secret source behind the reporting of the cover-up by the Nixon White House of the bungled break-in of the Republican National Democratic Committee headquarters at the Watergate apartments in Washington on June 17, 1972. In the long guessing game about Deep Throat’s identity, other suggested candidates had included, at one time or another: Nixon’s chief of staff, Alexander Haig; the Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger; the CIA director William Colby; the glamorous White House press secretary Diane Sawyer; and even George Bush Sr, then the chairman of the Republican National Committee.

Only four people knew the secret — the reporters Woodward and Bernstein, the Post’s Editor, Ben Bradlee, and Deep Throat himself. The first three had pledged not to reveal it until after Deep Throat’s death, but they did confirm it after Felt’s confession.

Times Archive, 1974: Backroom boys of Watergate

Bernstein and Woodward identify their main source as 'Deep Throat', who prosecutors believe was Mark Felt Jr, a deputy associate director of the FBI

• Guessing the identity of 'Deep Throat', 1976

• Archive Topic: Watergate and the Fall of Nixon

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• Woodward - why I kept Deep Throat secret

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• ARCHIVE: Nixon and Watergate

Felt “helped us immeasurably in our coverage”, said the two reporters. “However, as the record shows, many other sources and officials assisted us.”

Felt was No 2 at the FBI at the time of Watergate and looked like the archetype of the G-man of those days. He was portrayed as a cigar-smoking, cloak-and-dagger character, and his dramatic pre-dawn meetings with Woodward in darkened underground car parks around Washington were re-enacted in the film All the President’s Men, starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as the Post reporters.

Using the tricks of the trade, Felt went to elaborate precautions to protect Deep Throat’s identity. To arrange a meeting, Woodward would place a flower pot with a red flag on his balcony. He would then find his copy of The New York Times delivered to his doorstep with the hands of a clock marked for the time of their rendezvous.

Without a chance encounter between Woodward and Felt at the White House, the unravelling of the Watergate scandal and Nixon’s downfall might never have happened. Woodward, then a young U.S. Navy lieutenant, found himself sitting next to Felt in a White House basement waiting room when he was delivering a document for an admiral. He kept up the acquaintance, later became a reporter and contacted Felt after suspecting a connection between the White House and the Watergate burglary.

Felt had been a protégé of the FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover died the month before the Watergate scandal broke, and Felt, as next in line, had confidently expected to take over as FBI chief. Nixon, however, had other plans. With the formidable Hoover out of the way, Nixon planned to gain political influence over the FBI by appointing his own man, the Assistant Attorney General, Patrick Gray (obituary, July 6, 2005).

Felt may have had mixed motives in deciding to become the whistle-blower in the Watergate cover-up. He detested Gray and was aggrieved at being passed over. But at the same time he felt deep loyalty towards the Bureau and saw at first hand how the White House was using the CIA and the new head of the FBI to obstruct the investigation into its links to the Watergate burglars.

“There was little doubt Felt thought the Nixon team were Nazis and despised how they operated,” said Woodward. “Clearly he was a man under pressure and the threat to the integrity and independence of the FBI was real and seemed uppermost in his mind.”

His help, said Woodward, was invaluable in understanding the “many-headed monster” of Watergate. “Because of his position virtually atop the chief investigative agency, his words and guidance had immense, at times even staggering, authority.”