Watergate: Deep Throat

A secret source in a time of great corruption. This was Deep Throat or as he was later known by his real name W. Mark Felt. Throughout the Watergate scandal, Felt provided important information to the Washington Post that helped surface the corruption taking place during the Nixon presidency. He was a key component of exposing the fraudulent executive branch of our government.

Felt was a top-ranking FBI agent during the Nixon era. He was in consideration to replace J. Edgar Hoover when he stepped down as Director of The FBI. But felt was not selected for the position because Nixon's administration did not trust Felt to run things in the moral gray area that Nixon came to represent. As a top-ranking agent, Felt had many contacts in the white house and in the government. He knew Nixon was using wire-taps and breaking the law in order to keep his public appearance intact. Felt decided he had to do something to expose what was going on. This is where the press came into play, because Felt was known at the time for tipping off reporters about critical upcoming news. So Woodward and Bernstein at the time were low level reporters looking for their big scoop. When the opportunity to break the Watergate scandal come to them they knew this was a world-altering news story.

When leaking information to the press, Felt would meet with Woodward and Bernstein of The Post in a parking garage very early in the morning. At the time, Felt was worried his phones were being tapped so he developed a system of coded-signals to stay hidden.

The risks being taken by Felt were insane. He was not only defying the president, but the entire government. But Felt knew the importance of what he knew about the Nixon administration and his willingness towards illegal activity. "He knew was taking a monumental risk," said Woodward, now an assistant managing editor of The Post. Felt took a chance that no was willing to take for the sake of the morally righteous government.

The importance of Felt's efforts to up hold the truth during a time of corruption cannot be understated. Without his leaks to the press, the public may have never known the truth about the Watergate break-ins. Without that information getting to the public, Nixon may have never stepped down and our government would have become a symbol of ethics of the morally questionable.















Sources:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/fbis-no-2-was-deep-throat-mark-felt-ends-30-year-mystery-of-the-posts-watergate-source/2012/06/04/gJQAwseRIV_story.html

http://www.history.com/topics/Watergate

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/power-players-abc-news/why-did-deep-throat-leak--revisiting-the-watergate-leaks-and-the-garage-where-it-all-began-213911831.html