HeadLine News Online

By Jack Bell

This season’s top goal scorer in Europe does not play in England. He does not play in Spain, France, Italy or Germany.

His name is Marc Janko and he plays for Red Bull Salzburg of the Austrian Bundesliga, making beautiful music in the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Janko has scored an incredible 30 goals so far this season for first place Salzburg and was thwarted in his bid to increase that total when Friday’s match at SK Austria Kärnten was postponed because of a snowstorm in the south of the country. And now, with the Austrian league set for its long winter break after this weekend’s games, it is possible that Janko has played his final match for Red Bull Salzburg.

Janko, a 25-year-old, 6-foot-5 striker, is at or near the top of nearly every transfer list as the January transfer period creeps closer. He has been scouted heavily by struggling Blackburn Rovers of the English Premier League.

“England is still my dream,” Janko said in an interview with the Austrian Press Agency. “There football is much more physical and quick. It is another world. Any player moving there needs some time to adjust, even top international stars. But at the end of the day quality always comes out on top and I’m confident I could manage it.”
Here is a look at Janko in action, albeit a bit on the fuzzy side:



Janko, who has played seven times for Austria’s national team, has an athletic pedigree. His mother, Eva, won a bronze medal in the javelin at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City.

Janko, who scored only seven goals for Salzburg the past two seasons, has blossomed playing for a new coach in Salzburg (the Dutchman Co Adriaanse replaced the Italian Giovanni Trapattoni, who left to take over as coach of Ireland’s national team). He has scored his 30 goals in only 18 matches.

Source Article and Video : New York Times & Youtube
Read the full story

By Russ Britt, MarketWatch

LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) -- In an effort to boost the job market, President-elect Barack Obama has proposed a massive stimulus package of up to $775 billion over two years as part of an unprecedented spending plan designed to overhaul the nation's infrastructure, schools, broadband networks and energy consumption, a Congressional source said Thursday.

Obama has conveyed a package worth in the range of $675 billion to $775 billion over two years to Congressional leaders, the source said. Obama talked to House and Senate officials Wednesday but the size of the package is likely to change, the source said.

Obama officials have not returned calls for comment but already Congressional leaders were calling for its passage. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said a package similar to what Obama proposes was needed in light of the Labor Department's report Thursday that another 554,000 Americans filed for unemployment benefits.

"This package must renew our infrastructure, stimulate our economy by extending unemployment insurance, invest in new energy technologies, and help cash-strapped states protect vital services like education and health care from damaging cuts," Hoyer said in a prepared statement.
The Wall Street Journal reported there is concern the package could expand to as much as $850 billion as it works its way through Capitol Hill. But Obama is trying to keep the stimulus below $1 trillion, an important psychological barrier, as those on Capitol Hill and Wall Street would be wary of what the source called "the 'T' word."

The president-elect has said the stimulus package needs to be big enough to "jolt" the moribund American economy. Since the recession officially began last December, almost 2 million workers have lost their jobs, and more than 500,000 jobs were shed in November alone, according to government data.

The package does not consist of another rebate for taxpayers, the source said. Instead, a number of other programs such as infrastructure, schools, energy efficiency and health care will be targeted.

States also will receive aid, and the package would assume more of the cost of Medicaid. It is expected that $100 billion would go to that cause.
Passage would allow Obama to kill several birds with one stone. He'll essentially try to jump-start the economy on one hand while fulfilling a number of campaign promises with the other.

The president-elect hopes to get lawmakers to put together a package that could hit the House and Senate floors when the 111th Congress convenes on Jan. 6. Obama is to be inaugurated on Jan. 20.

Reports say that Obama would like to have Congress debate and approve the bill in the two weeks between when lawmakers convene and the inauguration so that the new president could sign the legislation shortly after he is sworn in.

"Congressional Democrats urge President Bush to drop his opposition to the recovery package; but if he does not, Congress will ensure that President-elect Obama can sign it soon after taking the oath of office," Hoyer went on to say in his statement.
Republican lawmakers have been skeptical of this quick time frame, saying that a bill this massive and expensive needs to be transparent and debated thoroughly.

Democrats' inability to elect 60 members and get a filibuster-proof Senate in this year's elections may manifest itself with the passage of this bill as Republicans could well employ the measure to gain concessions from the other side of the aisle.

Russ Britt is the Los Angeles bureau chief for MarketWatch. Read the full story

"Seven Pounds," Will Smith’s holiday offering, is a relentlessly depressing, strange piece of cinema that really has no business being released at Christmas, if ever. If you thought Nazis trying to kill Hitler or couples fighting would bum you out right now, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

If you don’t want to know what happens in "Seven Pounds," then stop here. Otherwise, here’s the whole sordid story of a manipulative but clever film designed to tug heart strings even though it makes very little sense.

What you will see: a gaunt looking Smith, morose and ponderous, self righteous and self pitying, playing a man who’s planning his own suicide. That he carries it out at the end of the film is not so much of a surprise. (In the opening scene, he calls in his own suicide to 911.) It’s so graphic and elaborate all the scene is missing is a fat lady singing opera on the soundtrack.

The premise of "Seven Pounds" is that Smith’s character, Ben Thomas, has caused the deaths of seven people including his beloved wife or girlfriend in an auto accident. He can’t live with himself, so he plots a way to commit suicide and at the same time save the lives of seven strangers. This will be his redemption.

Among the seven strangers is a blind piano player, a young woman with a heart condition, an older woman who needs a liver transplant, and an abused woman and her children. Maybe they’re supposed to be a rainbow coalition, but it’s of note that none of the people Ben picks out is an African American man unless you count his character’s brother, played with maximum consternation by Michael Ealy.

There’s a standout performance in all this muck and melodrama from Rosario Dawson, who manages to be a beacon of light and air in the turgid renderings around her. The idea is that Ben inadvertently falls for her, and then must make his ultimate sacrifice for her. Dawson, to her credit, manages to set herself apart from Smith’s homage to wrongheaded heroism.
"Seven Pounds" weighs a lot more than the title would indicate, more like seven tons. In the audience you will hear weeping, and many hankies are pulled from sleeves and handbags as the multiple "surprise" endings and "twists" are revealed. Rarely has there been a more portentous movie — ominous melancholy music is as ceaseless as the movie is grim, and the look on Smith’s face never lets you forget it.

If the recession, Bernie Madoff, and two wars isn’t enough to depress you this Christmas, "Seven Pounds" should do the trick. If only it were plausible, or likeable. There’s something incredibly self-righteous about Ben’s predicament. Somehow, those seven deaths are all about him. I might have been more interested if the recipients of his largesse were somehow connected to the victims. They aren’t. And it’s hard to buy because it’s not Ben intended to kill these people. It was an accident. He’s not evil. He’s a good guy to whom a bad thing happened.

But Smith and director Gabriel Muccino — who collaborated on the more successful "Pursuit of Happyness" — are determined to make this work. Ben becomes frustratingly god-like in his pursuit of redemption. Even his advice to a neighbor on growing flowers works wonders! (Have you eve tried banana peels in the mulch?) That makes "Seven Pounds" very uncomfortable. But it tracks with recent Will Smith movies. No matter how his characters start out, they are "saviors." In the "I Am Legend" press materials, he’s described as "mankind’s last best hope." The title character in "Hancock" learns to be a saint after being a sinner. "I Robot," and "Pursuit of Happyness," same thing.

You could go deeper into the craziness at the center of "Seven Pounds." There’s no sense that Ben has been treated for depression, or that he’s even spoken to anyone about it. His life has fallen apart, and –as he’s lost faith — has been seemingly abandoned by everyone in his life. His brother — the Ealy character — is ineffectual at best because he can’t stand in the way of Ben’s ultimate sacrifices. I won’t even get into how improbably these things are, but suffice to say that viewers of TV soap operas know this terrain all too well.

It’s not like I have ice running through my veins, but I do think anyone with a brain will wonder how the hell this project came to be a Will Smith movie, and a holiday one at that. Not since Jim Carrey nosedived in "The Cable Guy" have I seen a more misguided star vehicle. To be in a Will Smith movie and not have one laugh for 90 minutes, and then a rueful one of foreshadowing, is really jaw dropping.

You could call "Seven Pounds" a courageous move for Smith, a bold choice, a way to stretch. "Hancock," a very bad movie, was a hit. It’s possible that Smiths’ Teflon moment will extend to this film, too, but I think it’s unlikely. "Seven Pounds" is just gruesome, a horrid misfire by a well intentioned actor who will definitely be able to bounce back. I hope.

Celebs Pay Big Bucks For Inauguration Party

Who wants to go the presidential inauguration? Why, all of us. But only a lucky few will get the really good tickets. And then again, some people are paying big bucks to see the ceremony with Aretha Franklin, pastor Rick Warren, and John Williams—not to mention Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

The contributors list, released today by the Inaugural Committee, contains a lot of well known names. The top donors start with the family of Democratic fundraiser and financier George Soros, at $200,000. Soros and three members of his family sent in $50,000 apiece. That should get them some good seats.

Carol Burnett is a political bundler. This is not to be confused with bungler, or with political blunders. A bundler groups together small political donations into one big one. Burnett has bundled up $187,500 to give to the Obama Inaugural Committee. The cap for bundling is $300,000. The cap for individual donors is $50,000.

Other bundlers so far for the inauguration in the $300,000 group: music exec Nicole Avant, New York movers and shakers Barbara Lee Diamondstein-Spielvogel and husband Carl; Washington DC fundraiser Mary Pat Bonner. Also bundling so far: RealPlayer founder Michael Parham ($150,000); Hollywood political image consultant Andy Spahn ($100,000); Chelsea Piers owners Tom and Andrea Bernstein ($150.000) and Santa Barbara Democratic powerhouse Nancy Koppelman ($100,000).

The $50,000 also includes a host of Hollywood names: Halle Berry, Sharon Stone, Jamie Lee Curtis and husband Chris Guest, Will Smith manager James Lassiter, director Ron Howard, Samuel L. Jackson, Jamie Foxx, “Back to the Future” director Robert Zemeckis, Muppets scion Lisa Henson, “West Wing” director Brad Whitford, Motown founder Berry Gordy, Global Green USA president Diane Meyer Simon (who enlists celebs like Leo DiCaprio for her causes), powerhouse attorney Skip Brittenham, “Cosby Show” producer Marcy Carsey, Harvard author Daniel Yergin, William Morris TV agent John Ferriter ("Project Runway," "Fear Factor") and commercial artist Dale Chihuly.

In the $25,000 group: director Reginald Hudlin, former Motown president and Democratic supporter Clarence Avant, Lionel Richie ex wife Brenda, James Farentino's ex-wife Debra, and “Terminator” producer Gale Hurd, who’s also the ex-wife of both Brian DePalma and James Cameron.

The best entry so far among donors: Keiran Brandabur Langer of San Anselmo, California. He sent in $250 and listed under “Employer”—“my kids.”

Oscars Get First Real Predictors

The Screen Actors Guild nominees are out, and so the Oscar race really starts.

SAG is the best predictor of Academy Award nominees and winners because the same group essentially votes twice.And the winners are, so far: "Slumdog Millionaire," "Milk," "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," "Doubt," and "Frost/Nixon."

But they're only winners in the sense that SAG doesn't have a Best Picture category. They vote for Best Ensemble in Acting. Still in the running for the Oscar's Best Picture are "The Reader," "Revolutionary Road," and "Gran Torino." Any one or more of them could knock out one of these SAG choices easily. So don't get too comfortable yet.

SAG also doesn't choose directors, screenwriters, or other types of nominees. So the Oscars are far from done deal. But the SAG acting choices are pretty much in line with what I thought. The only big omission is Clint Eastwood for Best Actor in "Gran Torino." Clearly, there's something lacking in Warner's campaign for Eastwood, since it was also snubbed by the Golden Globes. They'd better get cracking.

The list of acting nominees in movies follows:

Outstanding performance by a male actor in a leading role:

Richard Jenkins, "The Visitor"

Frank Langella, "Frost/Nixon"

Sean Penn, "Milk"

Brad Pitt, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"

Mickey Rourke, "The Wrestler"

Outstanding performance by a female actor in a leading role:

Anne Hathaway, "Rachel Getting Married"

Angelina Jolie, "Changeling"

Melissa Leo, "Frozen River"

Meryl Streep, "Doubt"

Kate Winslet, "Revolutionary Road"

Outstanding performance by a male actor in a supporting role:

Josh Brolin, "Milk"

Robert Downey Jr., "Tropic Thunder"

Philip Seymour Hoffman, "Doubt"

Heath Ledger, "The Dark Knight"

Dev Patel, "Slumdog Millionaire"

Outstanding performance by a female actor in a supporting role:

Amy Adams, "Doubt"

Penelope Cruz, "Vicky Cristina Barcelona"

Viola Davis, "Doubt"

Taraji P. Henson, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"

Kate Winslet, "The Reader"

Madoff’s House Arrest; Susan Lucci’s Hands; Aimee Mann’s Xmas Plans; ‘Reader’ Music

Seeing pictures of disgraced alleged mega-thief Bernie Madoff on afternoon stroll yesterday brought back memories. Madoff, who’s accused of stealing $50 billion and ruining countless lives, is under house arrest on the Upper East Side. He was photographed smiling as he perambulated near his spread on 64th between Park and Third, where one of his neighbors is none other than Matt Lauer.

Why isn’t this man in jail?

The memory: of Sotheby’s Diana "DeeDee" Brooks, convicted of price fixing art works. I reported in this space some years ago that ran into her at Starbucks on Lex and 79th St. during her so-called incarceration. Like Madoff, she was confined to her zillion dollar apartment and allowed to wander about one of the most expensive nabes in the world. His ankle bracelet, like Brooks’s, might as well have come from Tiffany…

Meantime, it was only on November 4th, six weeks ago, that it was reported Madoff’s son, Andrew, purchased a luxury spread for $4.83 million not too far away on 74th Street and 1st Avenue… It’s a condo which means no board approval, no prying eyes into tax returns or other personal papers…

…Congrats to Tony Bennett’s son and manager Danny, and his beautiful wife Carrie. They welcomed their first child, a bouncing baby girl named Sadie, into this swingin’ world on November 30th…She’s said to sleeping through the night to the sounds of Grampa’s new Christmas album…

…You could have a busy time of it in Times Square tonight. At 7 p.m., Susan Lucci is putting her handprints in cement at Planet Hollywood. This is not to be missed. Susan’s been playing vixen Erica Kane on "All My Children" since 1910 — or so it would seem. But the real Lucci is a doll, a great lady and a lot of fun. You may have read that ABC forced her to take a massive pay cut recently as all soaps are on the decline. Frankly, without Lucci, and Erika Slezak on "One Life to Live" — there would be no ABC Daytime…

…Across the street at the Nokia Theater, the amazing Aimee Mann puts on her annual Xmas show at 8pm. She has a bunch of guest stars with her, but it’s Aimee we want to see and hear playing songs like "Voices Carry," "Say Anything" and tracks from her current wonderful CD, "@#%&*! Smilers"…if you can’t get there, download her, and check her out...

…Last week I told you about a lunch I went to for Stephen Daldry, director of "The Reader," at Café Carlyle. Our entertainment was 27-year-old composer Nico Muhly accompanied by violinist Nadia Sirota. Of course, like everything else, now that extraordinary performance has turned up on YouTube. (Who puts this stuff up, night and day?) Anyway, Muhly’s score is one of my favorites this year, along with Thomas Newman for "Revolutionary Road" and Howard Shore for "Doubt." Philip Glass, whose own score for Daldry’s "The Hours" was nominated in 2001, was there to cheer young Muhly on. Glass was Muhly’s mentor for six years.

… Condolences to our pal Laura Bickford, producer for Steven Soderbergh. Her husband, actor Sam Bottoms, passed away yesterday at age 53. Sam had a long list of credits including his debut at age 15 in Peter Bogdanovich’s "The Last Picture Show." His war against cancer was valiant. This year, he traveled with Laura to help promote Soderbergh’s "Che," winning new friends always with his charm and wit. He will be sorely missed … Read the full story

Posted by Greg Sandoval

YouTube's traffic machine may finally be turning into a cash machine.

For the first time, there are signs that YouTube is driving significant revenue for itself and some of the video site's partners. In an interview with CNET News this week, Rio Caraeff, executive vice president of Universal Music Group's eLabs, said the largest of the top recording companies is bringing in "tens of millions of dollars" from YouTube.

"(YouTube) is not like radio, where it's just promotional," said Caraeff, who heads up Universal's digital group. "It's a revenue stream, a commercial business. It's growing tremendously. It's up almost 80 percent for us year-over-year in the U.S. in terms of our revenue from this category."

"Doug Morris, Universal's CEO, has led the industry to set up videos as a revenue stream. Since 2005, Universal has gone from making zero dollars on music videos to nearly $100 million."

Universal, the home of such acts as Akon, the Black Eyed Peas, and U2, has a two-part licensing deal with YouTube, as do the other major labels. Under the deal, the recording companies post music videos on the site and share advertising revenue with YouTube. The two companies also share ad revenue for music posted to the site by users.
"YouTube is the ideal place for labels to promote music and for fans to discover new artists and old favorites," said Chris Maxcy, YouTube's partner development director. "We're committed to being a good partner to music labels and are pleased they're having success on the site."

Caraeff declined to give specifics on Universal's deal with YouTube, but a music industry source close to the label said Universal will likely book nearly $100 million in revenue from video streaming this year. That figure includes video-streaming money from all of the company's partners, such as iMeem, MTV, and MySpace. The source said, however, that most of the cash comes from YouTube.

Universal is starting to see some significant cash from its deal with the video-sharing site for two reasons: first, YouTube's recent efforts to find a business model are working. The other is that music, by far the strongest single segment on YouTube, has always been a major draw.

"It's really coming to fruition I think in part due to YouTube's recent focus on monetization," Caraeff said, "and really trying to drive revenue around premium content more so than they have in the history of their short existence. They have finally turned their spotlight on 'How do we turn this into a business?' And that's benefiting the entire ecosystem of content owners as well."

This year, Google CEO Eric Schmidt pledged to wring more profits out of YouTube. Google paid $1.65 billion for the video-sharing powerhouse in October 2006. In the two years since, YouTube appeared to take tentative steps toward generating revenue while trying to avoid alienating users with too many ads.

This year, the company has become more aggressive. Among the long list of changes was last month's announcement that YouTube would sell keyword search terms. To make the site more attractive to advertisers as well as video producers, YouTube has improved the quality of video and rolled out a test version of a wide-screen player. More importantly, YouTube has improved the quality of its filtering technology so unauthorized copies of television shows and films can be removed quickly by copyright owners.

But the big question is whether the growth in music-video revenue says more about the music industry than it does about YouTube.

Universal's YouTube channel is overwhelmingly the largest on the video site. The record label is the all-time most viewed channel, with nearly 3 billion views. Second-place Sony BMG, the second largest recording company, trails by more than 2 billion views with 485 million total views.

Of the top 10 channels on YouTube, 7 are music related. They include channels from Warner Bros. Records, Soulja Boy, and Disney's Hollywood Records.

Only a few years ago, the record labels saw music videos as promotional vehicles only. Some argue one of the music industry's biggest mistakes was giving videos away to MTV nearly 30 years ago. Doug Morris, Universal's CEO, has led the industry to set up videos as a revenue stream. Since 2005, Universal has gone from making zero dollars on music videos to nearly $100 million.

"Certainly, in the last year the rise of free to consumer ad-supported video has become a very significant part of our business coming from a variety of areas," Caraeff said. "YouTube is driving a very large quantity of that... We have a great relationship with YouTube, and the future for us will be more than with YouTube than we're doing today.

"We're working with them on a variety of new concepts and new businesses to take the groundwork we've done in the last year and half and do a lot more with it," he added. "I wouldn't expect to see us just do business with YouTube like we used to do."

Source article and image: News Cnet Read the full story

By TIM WEINER

W. Mark Felt, who was the No. 2 official at the F.B.I. when he helped bring down President Richard M. Nixon by resisting the Watergate cover-up and becoming Deep Throat, the most famous anonymous source in American history, died Thursday. He was 95 and lived in Santa Rosa, Calif.

His death was confirmed by Rob Jones, his grandson.

In 2005, Mr. Felt revealed that he was the one who had secretly supplied Bob Woodward of The Washington Post with crucial leads in the Watergate affair in the early 1970s. His decision to unmask himself, in an article in Vanity Fair, ended a guessing game that had gone on for more than 30 years.

The disclosure even surprised Mr. Woodward and his partner on the Watergate story, Carl Bernstein. They had kept their promise not to reveal his identity until after his death. Indeed, Mr. Woodward was so scrupulous about shielding Mr. Felt that he did not introduce him to Mr. Bernstein until this year, 36 years after they cracked the scandal. The three met for two hours one afternoon last month in Santa Rosa, where Mr. Felt had retired. The reporters likened it to a family reunion.

Mr. Felt played a dual role in the fall of Nixon. As a secret informant, he kept the story alive in the press. As associate director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, he fought the president’s efforts to obstruct the F.B.I.’s investigation of the Watergate break-in.

Without Mr. Felt, there might not have been a Watergate — shorthand for the revealed abuses of presidential powers in the Nixon White House, including illegal wiretapping, burglaries and money laundering. Americans might never have seen a president as a criminal conspirator, or reporters as cultural heroes, or anonymous sources like Mr. Felt as a necessary if undesired tool in the pursuit of truth.

Like Nixon, Mr. Felt authorized illegal break-ins in the name of national security and then received the absolution of a presidential pardon. Their lives were intertwined in ways only they and a few others knew.

Nixon cursed his name when he learned early on that Mr. Felt was providing aid to the enemy in the wars of Watergate. The conversation was recorded in the Oval Office and later made public.

“We know what’s leaked, and we know who leaked it,” Nixon’s chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, told the president on Oct. 19, 1972, four months after a team of washed-up Central Intelligence Agency personnel hired by the White House was caught trying to wiretap the Democratic Party’s national offices at the Watergate complex.

“Somebody in the F.B.I.?” Nixon asked.

“Yes, sir,” Mr. Haldeman replied. Who? the president asked. “Mark Felt,” Mr. Haldeman said. “Now why the hell would he do that?” the president asked in a wounded tone.

No one, including Mr. Felt, ever answered that question in full. Mr. Felt later said he believed that the president had been misusing the F.B.I. for political advantage. He knew that Nixon wanted the Watergate affair to vanish. He knew that the White House had ordered the C.I.A. to tell the bureau, on grounds of national security, to stand down in its felony investigation of the June 1972 break-in. He saw that order as an effort to obstruct justice, and he rejected it. That resistance led indirectly to Nixon’s resignation.

Mr. Felt had expected to be named to succeed J. Edgar Hoover, who had run the bureau for 48 years and died in May 1972. The president instead chose a politically loyal Justice Department official, L. Patrick Gray III, who later followed orders from the White House to destroy documents in the case.

The choice infuriated Mr. Felt. He later wrote that the president “wanted a politician in J. Edgar Hoover’s position who would convert the bureau into an adjunct of the White House machine.”

Hoover had sworn off break-ins without warrants — “black bag jobs,” he called them — in 1966, after carrying them out at the F.B.I. for four decades. The Nixon White House hired its own operatives to steal information, plant eavesdropping equipment and hunt down the sources of leaks. The Watergate break-in took place six weeks after Hoover died.

While Watergate was seething, Mr. Felt authorized nine illegal break-ins at the homes of friends and relatives of members of the Weather Underground, a violent left-wing splinter group. The people he chose as targets had committed no crimes. The F.B.I. had no search warrants. He later said he ordered the break-ins because national security required it.

In a criminal trial, Mr. Felt was convicted in November 1980 of conspiring to violate the constitutional rights of Americans. Nixon, who had denounced him in private for leaking Watergate secrets, testified on his behalf. Called by the prosecution, he told the jury that presidents and by extension their officers had an inherent right to conduct illegal searches in the name of national security.

As Deep Throat, Felt helped establish the principle that our highest government officials are subject to the Constitution and the laws of the land,” the prosecutor, John W. Nields, wrote in The Washington Post in 2005. “Yet when it came to the Weather Underground bag jobs, he seems not to have been aware that this same principle applied to him.

Seven months after the conviction, President Ronald Reagan pardoned Mr. Felt. Then 67, Mr. Felt celebrated the decision as one of great symbolic value. “This is going to be the biggest shot in the arm for the intelligence community for a long time,” he said. After the pardon, Nixon sent him a congratulatory bottle of Champagne.

Mr. Felt then disappeared from public view for a quarter of a century, denying unequivocally, time and again, that he had been Deep Throat. It was a lie he told to serve what he believed to be a higher truth.

William Mark Felt was born in Twin Falls, Idaho, on Aug. 17, 1913. After graduating from the University of Idaho, he was drawn to public service in Washington and went to work for Senator James P. Pope, a Democrat.

In 1938, he married his college sweetheart, Audrey Robinson, in Washington. They were wed by the chaplain of the House of Representatives. She died in 1984. The couple had a daughter, Joan, and a son, Mark. They and four grandsons survive Mr. Felt.

Days before Pearl Harbor, after earning a law degree in night classes at George Washington University, Mr. Felt applied to the F.B.I. and joined it in January 1942. He spent most of World War II hunting German spies.

After stints in Seattle, New Orleans and Los Angeles, Hoover named him special agent in charge of the Salt Lake City and Kansas City offices in the late 1950s. Rising to high positions at the headquarters in the 1960s, he oversaw the training of F.B.I. agents and conducted internal investigations as chief of the inspection division.

In early 1970, while waiting in an anteroom of the West Wing of the White House, Mr. Felt chanced to meet a Navy lieutenant delivering classified messages to the National Security Council staff. The young man in dress blues was Bob Woodward. By his own description fiercely ambitious and in need of adult guidance, Mr. Woodward tried to wring career counseling from his elder. He left the White House with the number to Mr. Felt’s direct line at the F.B.I.

On July 1, 1971, Hoover promoted Mr. Felt to deputy associate director, the third in command at the headquarters, beneath Hoover’s right-hand man and longtime companion, Clyde A. Tolson. With both of his superiors in poor health, Mr. Felt increasingly took effective command of the daily work of the F.B.I. When Mr. Hoover died and Mr. Tolson retired, he saw his path to power cleared.

But Nixon denied him, and he seethed with frustrated ambition in the summer of 1972.

One evening that summer, a few weeks after the Watergate break-in, Mr. Woodward, then a neophyte newspaperman, knocked on Mr. Felt’s door in pursuit of the story. Mr. Felt decided to co-operate with him and set up an elaborate system of espionage techniques for clandestine meetings with Mr. Woodward.

If Mr. Woodward needed to talk, he would move a flowerpot planted with a red flag on the balcony of his apartment on P Street in Washington. If Mr. Felt had a message, Mr. Woodward’s home-delivered New York Times would arrive with an inked circle on Page 20. Mr. Woodward would leave his apartment by the back alley that night and take one taxi to a downtown hotel, then a second to an underground parking garage in the Rosslyn section of Arlington, Va.

Within weeks, Mr. Felt steered The Post to a story establishing that the Watergate break-in was part of “a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage” directed by the White House. For the next eight months, he did his best to keep the newspaper on the trail, largely by providing, on “deep background,” anonymous confirmation of facts reporters had gathered from others. The Post’s managing editor, Howard Simons, gave him his famous pseudonym, taken from the pornographic movie then in vogue.

By June 1973, Mr. Felt was forced out of the F.B.I. Soon he came under investigation by some of the same agents he had supervised, suspected of leaking information not to The Post but to The New York Times. He spent much of the mid-1970s testifying in secret to Congress about abuses of power at the F.B.I. Millions of Americans knew him only as a shadowy figure in the 1976 movie made from the Watergate saga, “All the President’s Men,” which made “Woodward and Bernstein” legends of American journalism. In the movie, Deep Throat (Hal Holbrook) gives Mr. Woodward (Robert Redford) probably the most famous bit of free advice in the history of investigative journalism. It was a three-word road map to the heart of the matter: “Follow the money.”

Mr. Felt never said it. It was part of the myth that surrounded Deep Throat.


Source article and image from: New York Times Read the full story