WASHINGTON, July 2 (UPI) -- Washington Post editor Bob Woodward chronicles his relationship with Mark Felt, the man long known only as "Deep Throat," in a book to be released next week.
According to Woodward in "The Secret Man," Felt helped bring down Richard Nixon because he believed that the president was trying to "subvert" the FBI, The New York Times reports, not by anger at the Watergate burglary and the coverup that followed.
"The crimes and abuses were background music. Nixon was trying to subvert not only the law but the bureau," Woodward said. "So Watergate became Felt's instrument to reassert the bureau's independence and thus its supremacy. In the end, the bureau was damaged, seriously but not permanently, while Nixon lost much more, maybe everything."
Felt, the No. 2 man in the FBI in 1972, was long suspected of being the most famous anonymous source in reporting history. Now 91, he disclosed his identity last month in an article in Vanity Fair.
