From the cover of Vanity Fair's July 2005 issue blared this headline: “I'm the Guy They Called Deep Throat.”
The accompanying article, written by a California lawyer named John D. O'Connor, revealed the identity of Bob Woodward's legendarily anonymous source after “three decades of intense speculation”—and there he was in the Vanity Fair photo, FBI veteran Mark Felt, 91, a white-haired man wearing a jaunty red blazer and looking fit.
But Felt, O'Connor wrote, wasn't quite as sharp as he used to be, and “his memory for details seems to wax and wane.” Still, “his spine stiffens and his jaw tightens when he talks about the integrity of his dear F.B.I.” And, on occasion, after a glass of wine or two, Felt and his daughter Joan were known to “harmonize in a rendition of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.'” Felt was, according to O'Connor, “one of America's greatest secret heroes.”
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