Book : Leak: Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat - Author Video

[Rodney Rivers]

Thanks to CSpan - click link for video below

http://www.c-span.org/Events/Max-Holland-on-the-Motivations-of-Deep-Throat/10737431969-2/

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Kansas City, Missouri

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Author & journalist Max Holland discusses his book, "Leak: Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat." Mark Felt was the FBI assistant director who in 1972 leaked Watergate investigation information to several reporters, including Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Holland argues that contrary to popular notions, Felt selfishly used journalists to discredit FBI director L. Patrick Gray in the hope that he would be appointed to the top spot; and that Nixon’s resignation was an unintended consequence. The Kansas City Public Library hosted this event.

[Douglas Caddy]

Excerpted from the review by Russell Baker titled “The Master of Hate” of the book, Enemies: A History of the FBI, by Tim Weiner published in the August 16, 2012 issue of The New York Review of Books:

Is everyone aware, for example, that Mark Felt – Hoover’s chief lieutenant and the mysterious ‘Deep Throat” whose leaks Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein about the Watergate burglary helped bring down President Nixon – was working with a group of top FBI agents to engineer Nixon’s fall? And that, though the public did not learn “Deep Throat’s” identity for thirty-three years, it was known to Nixon within ten days after Felt’s first leak appeared in The Washington Post?

While Felt was leaking to the press about the president’s Watergate involvement, someone else, perhaps another FBI agent, was leaking to the White House about Felt’s leaking to the press. Such was life in the world of top secrecy. According to their oral histories, a group of senior FBI agents decided to get involved partly because, when Hoover died, Nixon chose L. Patrick Gray instead of Mark Felt to succeed him. They saw Gray as a clueless political stooge whose appointment meaned the bureau.

“It hurt all of us deeply,” one of the mutinous agents recalled in an oral history. “Felt was the one that would have been the Director’s first pick. But the Director died. And Mark Felt should have moved up right there and then. And that’s what got him into the act. He was going to find out what was going on in there. And, boy, he really did.”

[Len Colby]

Doug,

Some people don't believe Felt really was Deep Throat, what is your take?