![]() Working as the family’s attorney, O’Connor was finally able to convince Vanity Fair that their story was credible and that Felt was ready to come forward. "He knew that this culture that he was in charge of - he was in charge of the culture for many years - that it was a very strict, strict, no-nonsense culture, that those guys may not understand.” "He always felt that some of the power of the FBI was its reputation, was of the conduct of its agents,” O’Connor said. Although O’Connor said Felt knew he did the right thing, he was afraid of the repercussions it would have for the Bureau. It took three years for O’Connor to persuade him - and a publication - that it was time to bring “Deep Throat” out of the shadows. … His name’s Mark Felt,’” O’Connor remembered. “I was just telling some funny stories when the young fellow across the table from me said, ‘Well, maybe your father knew my grandfather. O’Connor was telling stories of his own father’s days with the FBI when one of his daughter’s friends spoke up. O’Connor said he had known since the 1970s that Felt was the man behind "Deep Throat" - “that was a real obsession of mine,” he said - but he didn’t get the chance to confirm it until he met Felt’s grandson by happenstance at a dinner party O’Connor and his wife threw for their daughter and some friends in 2002. "He would’ve gone to the grave with that." no one ever would’ve known that he leaked," O'Connor said. "Had Woodward not featured this character in the book. The reporters - and the Post - swore to protect his identity, and O'Connor thinks Felt would have been happy never to have revealed his secret. Hal Holbrook portrayed "Deep Throat" in the 1976 film.įor years, theories circulated about who the informant could have been. They described the informant as a source with an "extremely sensitive" position within the executive branch with whom Woodward conducted secret meetings in the middle of the night. Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein introduced readers to "Deep Throat" in the 1974 narrative "All the President's Men,” which details their investigation from the day of the break-in through January 1974, months before Nixon’s resignation. “Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House” is set to hit Indianapolis-area theaters Friday and stars Liam Neeson in the title role.įelt "knew, deep down inside, that what he did was right,” O’Connor told IndyStar. Now, Felt's biography has become a major motion picture. O'Connor, a 70-year-old native of Indianapolis' north side, outed Felt to the world as Watergate's "Deep Throat" in a July 2005 article for Vanity Fair. The cover-up of a host of legally questionable activities would eventually result in Nixon’s ouster in August 1974.ĭuring that time, Felt “wrote the book” on leaking, San Francisco-based attorney John O’Connor said. Mark Felt was the second in command at the FBI at the time it was investigating President Richard Nixon and his men in the months following a June 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate business complex in Washington, D.C. Watch Video: Don't mess with Liam Neeson or 'Deep Throat' Mark Feltĭecades before Donald Trump fired off tweets about FBI leaks, a senior intelligence official huddled with a Washington Post reporter in a dark, damp parking garage and fed him breadcrumbs along a trail that would end in a president’s resignation.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |