J. Stanley Pottinger, who as a high-ranking determine within the Division of Justice in the course of the Seventies was in all probability the one particular person in authorities to determine the id of Deep Throat, the pseudonymous man who offered crucial data to reporters within the Watergate scandal, died on Wednesday in Princeton, N.J. He was 84.
His son Matt mentioned the dying, at a hospital, was from most cancers. Mr. Pottinger, who went on to grow to be a best-selling novelist, lived in South Salem, N.Y., however was in Princeton to be close to the house of his daughter, Katie Pottinger.
Mr. Pottinger (pronounced POT-in-jer) served as the highest civil-rights official within the Division of Well being, Training and Welfare and within the Division of Justice below Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford. In early 1977, Jimmy Carter, the incoming president, requested him to remain on to steer a grand jury investigation into unlawful break-ins by the F.B.I.
In the course of the testimony of W. Mark Felt, who had been the bureau’s deputy director below Nixon, a juror requested him, offhand, if he was the one who had guided the journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of their investigation into White Home ties to a break-in on the Democratic Nationwide Committee headquarters on the Watergate advanced in Washington.
Mr. Pottinger was standing subsequent to Mr. Felt, and noticed his face go pale.
Mr. Felt requested him to repeat the query.
Mr. Pottinger requested if he was Deep Throat.
Mr. Felt mentioned no, however haltingly.
“I knew right away from his demeanor that he was Deep Throat,” Mr. Pottinger advised The New York Observer in 2005.
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