WASHINGTON: Former US President Bill Clinton has said that FBI official Mark Felt “did the right thing” by leaking information to The Washington Post that helped lead to President Nixon’s resignation in the Watergate scandal in 1974. “I think he did a good thing, and I think it was unusual circumstances,” said Mr Clinton in an interview to CNN’s “Larry King Live.”

Mr Felt, once the No. 2 official at the FBI, was “Deep Throat,” the secret source for Washington Post reporters in the aftermath of the bungled 1972 break-in at the Democratic Party offices in the Watergate complex.

His identity remained unknown to the public for more than 30 years — one of the best-kept secrets in the history of journalism.

“I think Mr Felt believed that there was a chance that this thing would be covered up,” Mr Clinton said, referring to the break-in and Nixon administration’s cover-up. “Ordinarily, I think a law-enforcement official shouldn’t leak to the press because you should let criminal action take its course.

“But there was some reason to believe he was right. He always felt ambivalent about it apparently, and I think that’s good,” the former president said. “Under these circumstances he did the right thing.”

Mr Clinton also said he had no problem with Mr Felt, 91, coming forward today.

Mr Clinton said he had long felt it likely that “Deep Throat” was someone who worked in the “executive office complex. I really had no idea.” But Henry Kissinger, President Nixon’s secretary of state, told FOX News, “Hero’ is not the first word that comes to my mind.”

“I view him as a troubled man. I don’t think it’s heroic to act as a spy on your president when you’re in high office. I could fully understand if he resigned ... or if he went to the prosecutor. That would be heroic,” Mr Kissinger said.

Alexander Haig, President Nixon’s former chief of staff who had been fingered by Nixon White House counsel John W. Dean as Deep Throat, also said he doesn’t view Mr Felt in a favourable way. “I don’t think I would categorize him as a hero in any way,” he said.

“I live by a code that if you work for a president, you stay loyal to that president and if you can’t for whatever reasons, then you have the obligation to resign and take whatever steps necessary in your power,” he said.

Meanwhile, Watergate journalist Bob Woodward published a long, six-page story in Thursday’s Washington Post, going public with a secret he did not disclose for more than three decades.

Mr Woodward was a 27-year-old Navy lieutenant, when he first met Mr Felt, in the White House while delivering a document in 1970. Mr Woodward, a recent Yale graduate in 1970, was sitting in a West Wing waiting room when a tall man with an air of confidence came in and sat beside him. The man was Mr Felt, a senior FBI official.

The two men bonded over graduate studies they had both pursued at George Washington University and work they’d done for home-state politicians. Mr Woodward recalled that Mr Felt’s interest in him seemed somehow paternal.

Mr Woodward asked for Mr Felt’s phone number and was given his direct line.

And so began the relationship between Mr Woodward and Mr Felt, who would go on to become the FBI’s No 2 man. Mr Felt’s friendship with Woodward became historic a year after that fateful meeting, when Mr Woodward joined The Washington Post and began a journalism career that would eventually lead to the downfall of an American president.

Mr Woodward wrote in Thursday’s edition of The Washington Post that it was Mr Felt’s idea to meet in an underground garage located in northern Virginia like the one famously portrayed in the movie, “All the President’s Men.” It was there he would give Woodward critical guidance with what the reporter describes as ‘staggering authority’.

Mr Woodward recalls the encounters this way: “[T]he former World War II spy hunter liked the game. I suspect in his mind I was his agent. He beat it into my head: secrecy at all costs, no loose talk, no talk about him at all, no indication to anyone that such a secret source existed.”

Mr Woodward says at the time he didn’t question Mr Felt’s motives, but now believes he was intent on protecting the FBI from an overbearing Nixon White House for which Felt had nothing but contempt.

Why did Mr Felt leak information – likely an illegal act – in spite of the risk? Mr Woodward surmised that Mr Felt was protecting the FBI’s integrity and independence as well as making Richard Nixon and his aides answer for their actions.

“There is little doubt that Felt thought of the Nixon team as Nazis,” Mr Woodward wrote. “He had nothing but contempt for the Nixon White House and their efforts to manipulate the bureau for political reasons.”