The Washington Post confirmed Tuesday that former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) official Mark Felt was the "Deep Throat" source in its coverage of the Watergate scandal that eventually led to the resignation of former president Richard Nixon. (Photo: Xinhua)

President Richard M. Nixon is shown standing in the East Room of the White House, Aug. 9, 1974, where he made a farewell address to the members of the White House staff. (File photo: Xinhua/AFP)

Bob Woodward, left, and Carl Bernstein, right, the Washington Post reporters who broke the Watergate scandal open in the 1970's, arrive at Woodward's home in Washington, Tuesday, May 31, 2005. In a statement issued Tuesday, Woodward and Bernstein confirmed that former FBI official W. Mark Felt was "Deep Throat", the secret Washington Post source that helped bring down President Nixon during the Watergate scandal. Earlier Felt stepped forward to reveal he was "Deep Throat." (Photo: Xinhua)

Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward. (File photo: Xinhua/AFP)

    WASHINGTON, May 31 (Xinhuanet) -- Finally, the best-kept secret in American journalism is out ¡ª the identity of "Deep Throat," the man who helped unravel the Watergate scandal.

    

"Deep Throat": Former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) official Mark Felt and his family. (Photo: Xinhua/REUTERS)

The Washington Post confirmed Tuesday that W. Mark Felt, a 91-year-old retiree and once the No. 2 man at the FBI, was the legendary "Deep Throat" source in its coverage of the Watergate scandal that eventually led to the resignation of former president Richard Nixon.

     The newspaper made the announcement on its Web site after Felt's family said earlier in the day that he was the long-anonymous source who leaked secrets about Nixon's Watergate cover-up to The Post.

    In a statement read by Felt's grandson Nick Jones in Santa Rosa, California, the family said they believed his account was 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," said the statement.

    "We all sincerely hope the country will see him this way as well," the statement said.

    Felt, 91, was second-in-command at the FBI in the early 1970s, and his claim was first revealed Tuesday by the Vanity Fair magazine.

    He confessed that he was the source of Post reporter Bob Woodward in the latter's coverage of the scandal, after keeping itsecret for almost three decades. "I'm the guy they used to call Deep Throat," Felt was quoted by the Vanity Fair article as saying.

    Felt lives in Santa Rosa and is reportedly in poor mental and physical health.

    Woodward and others at The Post involved in the Watergate scandal coverage had previously maintained they would never reveal the identity of "Deep Throat" until after his death.

    Nixon, who was first elected US president in 1968, resigned in August 1974, when he was facing impeachment for helping to cover up the break-in in June 1972 at the Democratic National Headquarters in Washington's Watergate complex. Enditem