Deep Throat

W. Mark Felt, the former FBI official who ended one of the country's most intriguing political mysteries when he identified himself as "Deep Throat" -- the nickname for the anonymous source who helped guide the Washington Post's Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation into the Watergate scandal -- has died. He was 95.

"Deep Throat" has signed with Creative Artists Agency. The family of W. Mark Felt, the former No. 2 man at the FBI who admitted last week that he was the mysterious well-placed source for Washington Post coverage of President Nixon's Watergate cover-up, has signed for representation with an eye toward developing a movie or TV project, the Beverly Hills-based talent agency confirmed Tuesday.

I have little doubt that one of my former Nixon White House colleagues is history's best-known anonymous source -- Deep Throat. But I'll be damned if I can figure out exactly which one. We'll all know one day very soon, however. Bob Woodward, a reporter on the team that covered the Watergate story, has advised his executive editor at the Washington Post that Throat is ill.

Alexander M. Haig today denied as "totally untrue" a published report saying he would reveal in a future book that he was the "Deep Throat" source for many newspaper stories about Watergate. "My efforts then and now have been to preserve the presidency, not to tear it down," said Haig, who was Richard M. Nixon's chief of staff during his last 16 months in office. "The story regarding my being 'Deep Throat' is totally untrue," Haig said.

W. Mark Felt, who for nearly 33 years denied that he was "Deep Throat," also held a tragic secret from his family: It was suicide, not a heart attack, that felled his wife after years of strain from Felt's FBI career and ensuing legal troubles. In his new book, "A G-Man's Life: The FBI, 'Deep Throat' and the Struggle for Honor in Washington," Felt reveals that Audrey Robinson Felt shot herself in 1984 with his .38 service revolver after a long emotional and physical decline.

The Voyager motel, where Linda Lovelace's sexual antics were filmed for the 1972 movie "Deep Throat," is being converted to a senior citizens' home, complete with shuffleboard courts. In real life, the North Miami motel was a haven for pimps and hookers, police said. But in three weeks, when the last residents leave its $29-a-night rooms, construction workers will begin $600,000 in improvements to turn the building into Villa Biscaya retirement home.

The 30th anniversary of Watergate today brings another round of theories and guesses about the identity of "Deep Throat," but the two journalists who dealt with the confidential source renewed their three-decade vow of silence. "You're going to get a kind of deep silence from us," said Washington Post writer Bob Woodward. Former White House Counsel John Dean has a new book, "Unmasking Deep Throat," in which he narrows the list to a "thimbleful."

In a city where even the kinkiest details of a president's sex life can end up on the front pages, one big secret has remained secret. Who was "Deep Throat"? For more than a quarter-century, journalists, pundits, historians and politicians have tried to divine the identity of the Nixon White House insider who kept a pair of resourceful young Washington Post reporters steps ahead of the competition on the news story of their generation.

As readers of the letters to the editor in last Sunday's Los Angeles Times Business section may have noticed, the producers of a new documentary about the X-rated movie "Deep Throat" have thrown a tantrum over my recent column challenging their key contention about the movie's success. Their assertion is that "Deep Throat" has grossed $600 million, and therefore ranks as the most profitable movie in history. The technical term I employed was "baloney."

Gerard Damiano, 80, director of the pioneering pornographic film that lent its name to the Watergate whistle-blower known as "Deep Throat," died Saturday at a hospital in Fort Myers, Fla., his son, Gerard Damiano Jr., told the Associated Press. He had suffered a stroke in September. "He was a filmmaker and an artist and we thought of him as such," the younger Damiano said. "Even though we weren't allowed to see his movies, we knew he was a moviemaker, and we were proud of that." Damiano's "Deep Throat," starring Linda Lovelace and Harry Reems, was a mainstream box-office success and helped launch the modern, hard-core adult entertainment industry.