As a longtime wallower in Watergate, I've waited a long time to read something like this…
The Washington Post today confirmed that W. Mark Felt, a former number-two official at the FBI, was "Deep Throat," the secretive source who provided information that helped unravel the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s and contributed to the resignation of president Richard M. Nixon.
When I get some time (ha!), I'm going to haul out the several dozen books I have in which wise, educated men explained their expert deductions that D.T. couldn't have been Felt or anyone in the FBI, or even that there was no such informant. It's amazing how you can go so far down the wrong trail.
And I guess we'll hear people fuming that an FBI agent leaked to reporters, or even doubting the revelation. The funny thing is that if my reading of the various Watergate tomes is correct, Deep Throat wasn't that big a factor in the bringdown of Richard Nixon. He got a lot of things wrong and often served as a "second source," back when reporters used to care about such things. He did have a lot to do with keeping Woodward and Bernstein on the case, and with bolstering the Post's confidence in sticking with the story…but I think Nixon would have fallen even without those secret meetings in parking garages.
I assume this all means that Bernstein and Woodward are free to talk at length about all the parts of the story that they previously had to stonewall. I'll be interested in reading and hearing what they have to say.