Deep Throat, the Watergate whistle-blower, dies at 95

NEW YORK: The man known as Deep Throat, the secret informant in the Watergate scandal that led to the downfall of US president Richard M Nixon in 1974, has died at the age of 95.

Mark Felt, the "most famous anonymous source in American history", died in his sleep on Saturday at a California hospice, reported Bob Woodward, one of the two Washington Post journalists who exposed the Watergate affair.

The former FBI agent suffered from congestive heart failure, but the cause of death was not immediately known.

Post reporters Woodward and Carl Bernstein introduced Deep Throat in the 1974 book "All the President's Men". The book was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film two years later.

The journalists used Deep Throat's information to write a series of articles on the Watergate scandal, which played a decisive role in uncovering the misdeeds of the Nixon administration.

The scandal eventually led to the resignation of president Nixon as well as prison terms for White House chief of staff HR Haldeman, G Gordon Liddy, Egil Krogh, White House counsel Charles Colson, and presidential adviser John Ehrlichman.

Although Woodward and Bernstein pledged not to identify their secretive source until after his death, Felt spilled the beans himself in 2005.

The son of an Idaho building contractor, Felt earned a degree from George Washington University Law School, was admitted to the bar in the district of Columbia, and took a job with the Federal Trade Commission.

But he wanted to do something more adventurous, so he joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1942 and began tracking down Nazi spies in the US, the Daily News reported.

He left the bureau in 1973 and in 1991 moved to Santa Rosa, where he lived with his daughter, Joan.