I Felt It Was Felt *Breaking News Update*

My lifelong obsession (click here) with Richard Nixon has paid off. 
You heard it here first.  I thought I remembered reading the first mention of Mark Felt being Deep Throat in J. Anthony Lukas' 1976 book about Watergate, Nightmare

but I hadn't checked the reference until recently.  There it is, in the index:

Felt, W. Mark, Jr. as "Deep Throat," 273; and FBI investigation of break-in, 230-31; and Sullivan demotion, 285

Go to page 273 of this groundbreaking and essential book and you find:
Woodward had one supersource whom he called "Deep Throat" and met in drafty parking garages (and whom many believe to have been W. Mark Felt, Jr., then deputy associate director of the FBI).

So credit where credit is due -- all hail the late, great reporter and writer Tony Lukas!

Below is my post from earlier this month:

As Tim Noah writes in Slate, the news that former FBI official Mark Felt(and not Fred Fielding) was Watergate source Deep Throat comes as no great surprise. While it's a shame that this revelation will bring to a close all the wacky speculation about his identity, it's satisfying to join Nora Ephron in saying, "I told you so."

It was the flowerpot that tipped us off.  Woodward wrote in All the President's Men that when he wanted to meet with his "friend" he would move a flower pot on his apartment balcony.  So whoever Deep Throat was, he had to know surveillance tradecraft. 

Then there were the hints dropped by Ben Bradlee. In 1975, a college teacher of mine took our political science class to Washington, where we met Bradlee in his office at the Washington Post.  When we asked him about Deep Throat, he told us if you could put into a computer the schedules of everyone who was mentioned as possibly being DT, and cross indexed it with the dates of Woodward's meetings, the mystery would be solved.  So that meant it had to be an official whose schedule would be more or less part of the public record.

For those who, like me, are still wallowing in Watergate, links here, here, and here can keep you busy until Woodward's next book comes out.