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.

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.

In 1972, a newlywed named Linda Boreman spent six days in Florida making a low-budget porn film about a woman who can't orgasm. The director was a salon owner who decided to make blue movies after hearing his female customers complain about their husbands' bedroom techniques. The male lead had been part of the lighting crew until the producers realized they couldn't find anyone else.

Last week came word that a musical was being developed based on the slash-fest "American Psycho." This week brings news about a new rock musical revolving around "Deep Throat" -- and we're not talking Watergate here. For those too young -- or too pure -- to remember, "Deep Throat" was a 1972 film that, depending on whom you talk to, may or may not have been the most financially successful porn movie of all time. But it definitely turned its star, Linda Lovelace, into a household name.

Charles A. Nuzum, 85, the FBI agent in charge of the agency's investigation into the Watergate burglary, died Aug. 2 at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital in Florida after a fall. Nuzum oversaw the probe into the June 17, 1972, break-in at the Democratic national headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., when he was chief of the FBI's bankruptcy, antitrust and wiretapping unit. The investigation uncovered the connection of the White House to the burglary and of the burglary to wide-ranging crimes undertaken to punish perceived political enemies of President Nixon's administration.

PORNOGRAPHY is as old as time. But Los Angeles is the place that turned smut into gold. Inside faceless office buildings on Ventura Boulevard and tract houses in Woodland Hills, Angelenos have spent the last two decades transforming an underground world into a multibillion-dollar industry. You can catch an early glimpse in Russ Meyer's breast-laden flicks from the late 1950s and early 1960s -- which often featured Southern California as the background to their wild-woman antics.

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.

"All the President's Men," the classic 1976 film about Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's unraveling of Watergate, opens with hammering typewriter keystrokes that sound like gunshots. Thirty years later, those shots -- forged by relentless digging by two unlikely Washington Post reporters -- still reverberate.

Re "Keep on talking, Mr. Rove," editorial, July 15 Isn't it about time for Americans to stop screaming at each other in traffic and direct their anguish at the White House, where it might actually do some good? [Karl] Rove rage, that's what we need. Let 'em hear it! Jonathan Schwartz Marina del Rey Here's the issue I don't see anyone questioning: The Bush administration's smear attempt on former Ambassador Joe Wilson -- saying that his findings lacked credibility because his wife sent him to Niger -- doesn't make sense.

If Bob Woodward were in journalism school, his professor might have handed back his new book, "The Secret Man," as incomplete. Who, what, where, when, why and how: These are the questions all journalists are taught to answer before they are set loose on the streets. In this intermittently engaging but ultimately slight memoir, Woodward answers the what, where, when, how and, above all, the who of his dealings with W.