I am 'Deep Throat' !

AP- A former FBI official claims he was "Deep Throat," the long-anonymous source who leaked secrets about President Nixon's Watergate coverup to The Washington Post, his family said Tuesday.

W. Mark Felt, 91, was second-in-command at the FBI in the early 1970s. His identity was revealed Tuesday by Vanity Fair magazine, and family members said they believe his account is true.

"The family believes my grandfather, Mark Felt Sr., is a great American hero who went well above and beyond the call of duty at much risk to himself to save his country from a horrible injustice," a family statement read by grandson Nick Jones said. "We all sincerely hope the country will see him this way as well."

Felt, who lives with his daughter Joan in Santa Rosa and is in declining health, kept the secret even from his family until 2002, when he confided to a friend that he had been Post reporter Bob Woodward's source, the magazine said.

"My grandfather is pleased he is being honored for his role as Deep Throat with his friend Bob Woodward," Jones said.

"As he recently told my mother, 'I guess people used to think Deep Throat was a criminal, but now they think he was a hero.'"

The Washington Post had no immediate comment on the report.

The existence of Deep Throat, nicknamed for a popular porn movie of the early 1970s, was revealed in Woodward and Carl Bernstein's best-selling book "All the President's Men." In the hit movie based on the book, Deep Throat was played by Hal Holbrook.

But his identity of the source whose disclosures helped bring down the Nixon presidency remained a mystery.

Among those named over the years as Deep Throat were Assistant Attorney General Henry Peterson, deputy White House counsel Fred Fielding, and even ABC newswoman Diane Sawyer, who then worked in the White House press office. Ron Zeigler, Nixon's press secretary, White House aide Steven Bull, speechwriters Ray Price and Pat Buchanan, and John Dean, the White House counsel who warned Nixon of "a cancer growing on the presidency," also were considered candidates.

And some theorized Deep Throat wasn't a single source at all but a composite figure.

In 1999, Felt denied he was the man.

"I would have done better," Felt told The Hartford Courant. "I would have been more effective. Deep Throat didn't exactly bring the White House crashing down, did he?"

In 2003, Woodward and Bernstein reached an agreement to keep their Watergate papers at the University of Texas at Austin.

At the time, the pair said documents naming "Deep Throat" would be kept secure at an undisclosed location in Washington until the source's death.

MSNBC quoted Bernstein as saying Tuesday that he and Woodward would stick to their pledge not to say anything until Deep Throat dies.

In the family statement, Jones said his grandfather believes "the men and women of the FBI who have put their lives at risk for more than 50 years to keep this country safe deserve recognition more than he."

"On behalf of the Felt family we hope you see him as worthy of honor and respect as we do," Jones said.