DEEP THROAT, the anonymous source who leaked secrets about President Nixon’s Watergate cover-up to The Washington Post, revealed himself yesterday after more than 30 years of silence, ending one of the greatest political mysteries of modern times. Last night The Washington Post confirmed his identity.

Mark Felt, now 91, the deputy director of the FBI in the early 1970s, said in a magazine interview that he was “the man known as Deep Throat”, a key Watergate source for Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Post reporting team whose coverage of the scandal led to President Nixon’s resignation in 1974.

The identity of Deep Throat, the Nixon White House insider quoted anonymously by Woodward and Bernstein in All The President’s Men, their account of Watergate, was perhaps the best-kept secret in American journalism. Only four people have known his identity: Woodward, Bernstein, Ben Bradlee, the former Post executive editor, and Deep Throat himself.

After Mr Felt emerged from the shadows, Mr Woodward and Mr Bernstein issued a statement last night: “W. Mark Felt was ‘Deep Throat’ and helped us immeasurably in our Watergate coverage,” they said.

“The thing that stuns me is that the goddamn secret has lasted this long,” Mr Bradlee said in a separate statement.

Mr Felt, who lives with his daughter, Joan, in Santa Rosa, California, kept the secret even from his own family until 2002, when he confided to a friend that he was the White House source who met Woodward late at night to help him to pursue the Watergate scandal. A film of the reporters’ book, starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, showed a meeting in an underground car park.

Mr Felt told Vanity Fair that he was initially adamant about remaining silent on the subject, thinking disclosures about his role as a White House mole would be dishonourable.

“I don’t think (it) was anything to be proud of,” Mr Felt said to his son, Mark Jr, at one point. “You should not leak information to anyone.” John O’Conner, the reporter who broke Deep Throat’s identity, said that Mr Felt now wanted public respect and to be known as a good man. He said: “He’s very proud of the bureau (FBI). He now knows he is a hero.”

Mr Felt’s son told the magazine: “Making the decision (to become Deep Throat) would have been difficult, painful, excruciating, and outside the bounds of his life’s work.

“He would not have done it if he didn’t feel it was the only way to get around the corruption in the White House and Justice Department.

There has been enormous speculation about the identity of Deep Throat, a nickname bestowed by the Post managing editor Howard Simons after the infamous pornographic film of the time.

Last night Bradlee spoke of his delight of watching people over the years “flounder around with odd choices”. He said: “I’ve never met Felt. I wouldn’t know him if I fell on him.”Mr Felt has previously emerged as a suspect. He was named in a 2002 book, The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI by Ronald Kessler, a Post reporter.

But in his 1979 book The FBI Pyramid: From the Inside, Mr Felt flatly denied that he was the source. “I would have done better,” he told the Hartford Courant in 1999. “I would have been more effective. Deep Throat didn’t exactly bring the White House crashing down, did he?”

The Watergate scandal, which led Richard Nixon to become the only US President to resign from office, began with a burglary at 2.30am on June 17, 1972, when five men were arrested trying to bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate hotel and apartments complex in Washington.

In the notebook of James McCord, one of the burglars, was the telephone number of E. Howard Hunt, a former Nixon employee and the first link to the White House.

Deep Throat advised Mr Woodward to “follow the money”. The reporter discovered that a $25,000 cashier’s cheque, earmarked for the Nixon re-election campaign, had wound up in the bank account of a Watergate burglar.

IN THE FRAME

Diane Sawyer, now ABC anchorwoman, then assistant to Ron Ziegler

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