Deep Throat had four heads

Brendon Lyons of the Albany Times Union has dug a little deeper into the revelations that Mark Felt was Deep Throat. A retired FBI agent says he's known for decades that Felt was Deep Throat, but that Felt wasn't -- and couldn't be -- acting alone. He was joined by three other senior FBI officials, the head of the agency's white collar crimes section, the agent in charge of the Washington field office, and the assitant director of the FBI's criminal investigative division.

The story puts the lie to claims that Felt was motivated by a personal grievance with Nixon's passing him over for promotion. They did it, says the agent who knew all three, "to protect the integrity of the FBI."

The FBI officials met regularly in their Washington, D.C., offices to discuss what information they would reveal to fuel media interest. Their motive, according to Daly, was to counteract the Nixon White House's efforts to quash the FBI investigation of the Watergate burglary and related wrongdoing linked to the Oval Office.

[...]

Long then spelled out how he, Bates, Kunkel and others had funneled information to Felt that was then leaked to the press. Their private meetings would take place usually at the end of the workday, after briefings from field agents and others who were investigating the five burglars arrested while trying to break into Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate hotel and office complex.

The FBI group, according to Daly, each brought snippets of information to the table. Felt, who was the bureau's second-in-command, was their leader. Felt would glean information from the others, and that was part of the reason FBI and White House efforts to find Deep Throat were thwarted. No one person could have known everything that Woodward and Bernstein were printing, Daly and others have said.

"What he (Long) said is the reason was they were trying to find a way to prevent the White House and the external forces from containing the investigation," Daly said.

Macchiavelli would have smiled and nodded.