Rediscover: The Secret Man

On the night of June 17, 1972, five men were arrested for breaking and entering into the Democratic National Committee's headquarters at the Watergate complex. Two years later, Richard Nixon resigned rather than face certain impeachment. The story of how a bungled burglary overthrew a president began with a trail of money that connected Nixon's Committee to Reelect the President and the Watergate break-in. Reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post helped bring the scandal to public light. Their anonymous source, whom Woodward met in a parking garage several times between June 1972 and January 1973, revealed that Watergate's roots lay in the highest branches of the Federal government.

The identity of this leaker, nicknamed Deep Throat, remained a mystery for 33 years. In 2005, former FBI associate director Mark Felt was finally confirmed as Woodward's source. Woodward said Felt was compelled to release publicly FBI findings after the Nixon administration's attempts to interfere with the Bureau's investigation. Mark Felt's 2006 memoir, A G-Man's Life: The FBI, Being 'Deep Throat,' And the Struggle for Honor in Washington (PublicAffairs), co-authored with John O'Connor, is currently out of print. In 2005, Woodward wrote The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate's Deep Throat (Simon & Schuster, $16.99, 9780743287166), which chronicles Woodward's long relationship with Felt, one that preceded Watergate and became tumultuous when Felt later went on trial for authorizing unconstitutional searches of Weather Underground members' homes. --Tobias Mutter

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