¡¡WASHINGTON, June 1 (Xinhuanet) -- US President George W. Bush saidWednesday that he had been caught by surprise by the revelation ofthe identity of "Deep Throat," an anonymous source in the Watergate scandal that eventually led to the resignation of formerpresident Richard Nixon in 1974.

    "All I can tell you is, is that it was a revelation that caught me by surprise," Bush said in response to a question on the sidelines of a meeting with South African President Thabo Mbeki.

    Bush said he thought the news was "very interesting," and he was looking forward to reading about it, "reading about his relationship with the news media."

    The Washington Post confirmed Tuesday that Mark Felt, a deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the early 1970s,was the "Deep Throat" source in its coverage of the Watergate scandal, 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.

    "It's a brand new story, you know, for a lot of us who have been wondering a long time who he was," Bush said.

    "And a lot of us have always wondered who Deep Throat might have been. And the mystery was solved yesterday," he added.

    At a Pentagon press conference on Wednesday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he was in Belgium as ambassador to NATO when the Watergate scandal unfolded, some three decades ago.

    "I think that any time wrongdoing occurs it's important that wrongdoing be reported, and I think that's appropriate," he said when asked about his reaction to the news.

    Like Bush, who said it was hard for him to judge whether Felt was a hero, Rumsfeld said he was "not knowledgeable enough to be in a position to judge it."

    "I'm not in a judgmental mood," he said. Enditem