Mark Felt, the former FBI official who unmasked himself as the legendary "Deep Throat" source who leaked Watergate secrets, twice led FBI probes into finding Deep Throat, The Nation magazine said Tuesday.
Combing through originally confidential FBI files now available to the public, co-writers David Corn and Jeff Goldberg found documents that showed Felt in charge of finding the source of Bob Woodward's and Carl Bernstein's Washington Post scoops that helped bring down President Richard Nixon.
"How Deep Throat Fooled the FBI," which shows how Felt threw the federal agency off his trail, will hit newsstands on June 23 and was posted on the magazine's Web site Monday night.
"He was much more than a secret sharer. He was an operator," says the story, adding he "was able to watch his own back and protect his ability to guide the two reporters."
Felt, filling in for FBI Acting Director L. Patrick Gray in June 1972 yet already talking secretly with Woodward, cleverly ordered an investigation of whether any FBI official had leaked information to the Washington Daily News. Not surprisingly, that inquiry produced nothing, the story said.
In a memo dated Sept. 11, 1972, Felt wrote to Assistant Director Charles Bates suggesting Woodward and Bernstein might have been receiving secret FBI information from someone outside the FBI, prompting an investigation of the county prosecutor in Miami, who was following the Watergate money trail.
An official meeting
At one point, Felt officially met with Woodward in what appears to have been a move to cover himself, the story said.
Felt, responding to a request from Woodward for an interview, agreed to see the reporter in the presence of his assistant, Wason Campbell, a 25-year FBI veteran. Felt refused to confirm any details presented to him by Woodward.
"That was obviously a staged event," Corn told Reuters on Tuesday. "Felt needed cover."
Even after suspicion grew in the White House that Felt might be the source of leaks, he was again put on the case, the story said.
In February 1973, Attorney General Richard Kleindienst asked Gray to order another investigation into the Washington Post's sources. Felt was assigned the job.
Felt's memorandum said "there is no question that they have access to sources either in the FBI or in the Department of Justice."
Felt later received a report saying there were alternative sources, besides FBI personnel, for everything reported. He forwarded the analysis to Gray, who suggested to Kleindienst that possible sources for the leak were the U.S. attorney's office in Washington and a White House official, according to the story.