‘Deep Throat’ Mark Felt dies, aged 95

Mark Felt, the FBI whistleblower better known to the world as 'Deep Throat' for his role in the Watergate scandal which brought down President Richard Nixon in 1974, has died at the age of 95. His nickname was inspired by the notorious porn film starring Linda Lovelace and was coined by an editor at the Washington Post, the paper that broke the scandal.

For more than 30 years Felt (pictured with his daughter Ruth Felt) kept his identity as the figure at the heart of one of the 20th century's greatest dramas a secret. Only in 2005 did he admit that he was the high-level informant who guided Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward and his colleague Carl Bernstein to the story of the 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee's HQ at the Watergate office building in Washington, and their subsequent exposure of the Nixon government's campaign of spying, sabotage and money laundering.

He owned up in an interview with Vanity Fair magazine, saying "I'm the guy they used to call Deep Throat."

Famously, Woodward would summon Felt to clandestine meetings by placing a flowerpot on his balcony; if Felt wanted to arrange a rendezvous he would slip into Woodward's building and ink in the clock face printed on page 20 of his New York Times.