![]() O’Connor considered his father’s law partner, William Ruckelshaus, a mentor. He was already within the orbit of Watergate and some of its central players. In 1976, O’Connor was a Justice Department prosecutor in his 20s. “We wanted to make sure we could tell the story the right way,” he said. O’Connor said he hopes he told Felt’s story “the way Mark would want it to be told.” It was through the narratives by O’Connor and Woodward that his role as Deep Throat was revealed and explained. In Felt’s own book, “The FBI Pyramid” in 1979, he denied he was Deep Throat. It’s the first time that I really took it seriously.” “We didn’t think it was true that dad was Deep Throat because he had denied it so insistently and emphatically,” said Joan Felt, 78, of Santa Rosa. “Mark’s a very truthful guy, but he’s also very clever,” O’Connor said. He would acknowledge that he was “the guy that they called ‘Deep Throat.’” When O’Connor first met Felt, he said, Felt would not admit to being Deep Throat. Above all things, he sought justice, O’Connor said, but he was torn by the possibility of tarnishing what he saw as the agency’s sterling reputation in order to achieve it. “Felt did it because he wanted the public to keep engaged in it,” O’Connor said.īut Felt was a nuanced agent and his role as the leaker conflicted him. O’Connor said Felt had conducted nearly 1,500 interviews by the time he met secretly with Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward for the first time on Oct. One of the chief investigators of the break-in and the cover-up was Felt, then the associate director, or second-in-command, at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The scandal ultimately led to Nixon’s resignation in 1974 and the conviction of several top officials. The subsequent media coverage, judicial investigations and congressional committee scrutiny revealed the administration of President Richard Nixon had attempted to cover up its role in the break-in. Watergate refers to the political scandal stemming from the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters on June 17, 1972, at the Watergate Office Building in Washington, D.C. What was a big surprise was when we found out that he actually was.” “It wasn’t a big shock for John to say that. “The idea that it could be him was out there,” said Jones, 40, of Los Angeles. O’Connor, already a Watergate buff, told Jones his grandfather was Deep Throat. It all started at a lively dinner in Marin in 2005 for his daughter, a student at Stanford. O’Connor’s connection with Felt resulted in a seminal 2005 article in Vanity Fair where Felt, then 91, revealed his identity as Deep Throat. Perhaps most importantly to O’Connor, it is a chance to herald Felt’s reputation and legacy to the Watergate fetishists, history buffs and journalists who are still rabid for information years later. On the eve of the 50th anniversary of the crime that upended a presidential administration, O’Connor, a former federal prosecutor and a San Francisco attorney, discussed his unique role in revealing Felt’s most protected secret. O’Connor, a Kentfield resident, acted as Felt’s lawyer and adviser in the three years before Felt’s death in 2008. Mark Felt, he said, the former FBI agent known as Deep Throat who fed information to the Washington Post during the Watergate scandal. John O’Connor doesn’t believe this story is about him.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |