London, Feb 16(ANI): "Deep Throat", the FBI source who exposed the Watergate scandal and was thought to be acting out of a concern for justice and the public good, was actually motivated by anger for missing out on a top job in the agency, a new book has claimed.
According to the book, former FBI number two Mark Felt spoke to journalists because he wanted to become head of the organization.
Felt hoped that by making former U.S. President Richard Nixon think that the FBI was leaky, then those suspected of talking would be fired.
He also routinely lied to Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein and told them that a rival he wanted out of his way was blackmailing Nixon.
Felt's identity was exposed in 2005 by Woodward and he died in 2008 having never made it to FBI director.
However, in 1969 when he was its second-in-command, he saw the Washington Post pair as his way of manoeuvring himself into the top job, writes historian Max Holland.
At the time Woodward trusted him implicitly and claimed he was a "truth teller" with "no axe to grind".
The truth was that less than one month before the Watergate break-in, the post of FBI director had come up for the first time in 37 years when J. Edgar Hoover died.
Enraged that Nixon's friend L Patrick Gray took his place, Felt tried to undermine him through a campaign of leaks which he knew would anger the notoriously paranoid Nixon.
Holland writes that the plot appeared to be working when a number of Felt's colleagues were fired or demoted.
Yet as Gray hung on Felt became even more cynical and claimed to reporters that a 'vigilante squad' from the White House was wiretapping journalists, even though it was untrue.
He also told reporters that the only way Gray was still in his job was because he was blackmailing Nixon.
Holland writes that in addition to making things up, Felt failed to leak genuine stories that would have been of significant interest.
The plots he kept quiet included attempts by the FBI to embarrass Martin Luthur King with sex tapes and burglaries known as 'black bag jobs' against anti-war groups under Felt's personal orders.
When the Watergate scandal became public it forced Nixon to resign in 1974.
Felt was later convicted of using illegal methods to monitor left-wing groups but pardoned by former U.S. President Ronald Reagan.
Woodward and Bernstein wrote a book about how they broke the story which was turned into a 1976 thriller called 'All the President's Men' starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford.
Holland's book 'Leak: Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat' will be published next month by University Press of Kansas. (ANI)
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