A 33-year mystery solved

We all knew this day would come. Some 33 years ago, men broke into the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate office complex, triggering a massive coverup orchestrated by the top officials in President Nixon's administration and even approved by the president himself.

We learned about much of this through Watergate reports of The Washington Post and two intrepid reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. They used a highly placed government source to confirm and guide their investigation. The source earned the nickname Deep Throat, which combined the term for such a source, deep background, with a notorious adult film of the day. Woodward and Bernstein promised not to reveal the source until he or she had died.

But today, the family of the source revealed that the man who had been Deep Throat is ailing and had let slip to family members that he was, despite decades of denial, the man behind the story. Turns out that the source had been W. Mark Felt, former deputy associate director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The revelation is part of an upcoming story in Vanity Fair magazine. Download a PDF of the story.

Slate magazine's Timothy Noah has a great piece on this whole saga, including pointing out that he had fingered Felt in 1999. Be sure to read the 1999 piece where he lays out the case for Felt as Deep Throat.

Although Woodward and Bernstein initially adhered to their strict no comment about the identity of Deep Throat, the pair announced late Tuesday that Felt was their source. The Washington Post put a four-page story up on its Web site and announced that a major package was in the works for Thursday's edition.

So rest easy all of you who though that Deep Throat was Al Haig, Fred Fielding, John Dean, Pat Buchanan, David Gergen, even Diane Sawyer. You were all wrong. And now we know.

-- Wenatchee, Wash.