Mark Felt

Born on August 17, 1913, in Twin Falls, Idaho, Felt was the son of Rose R. Dygert and Mark Earl Felt, a carpenter and building contractor. His maternal grandparents were born in Canada and Scotland. Through his maternal grandfather, Felt was collaterally descended from Revolutionary War general Nicholas Herkimer of New York. He was a member and president of the Gamma Gamma chapter of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity, and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1935. Felt then went to Washington, D.C., to work in the office of Democratic US Senator James P. Pope. In 1938, Felt married Audrey Robinson of Gooding, Idaho, whom he had known when they were students at the University of Idaho. She had come to Washington to work at the Bureau of Internal Revenue. Their wedding was officiated by the chaplain of the United States House of Representatives, the Rev. James Shera Montgomery. Felt stayed on with Pope's successor in the Senate, David Worth Clark (D-Idaho). He then attended the George Washington University Law School at night, earning his J.D. degree in 1940, and admitted to the District of Columbia Bar in 1941. Upon graduation, Felt took a position at the Federal Trade Commission but did not enjoy his work. His workload was very light, and he was assigned to investigate whether a toilet paper brand, called "Red Cross", was misleading consumers into thinking it was endorsed by the American Red Cross. Felt wrote in his memoir: My research, which required days of travel and hundreds of interviews, produced two definite conclusions: 1. Most people did use toilet tissue. 2. Most people did not appreciate being asked about it. That was when I started looking for other employment. He applied for a job with the FBI in November 1941 and was accepted. His first day at the Bureau was January 26, 1942. ==Early FBI years==

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover often moved Bureau agents around so they would have wide experience in the field. This was typical of other agencies and corporations of the time. Felt observed that Hoover "wanted every agent to get into any field office at any time. Since he [Hoover] had never been transferred and did not have a family, he had no idea of the financial and personal hardship involved." After completing 16 weeks of training at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, and FBI Headquarters in Washington, Felt was assigned to Texas, spending three months each in the field offices in Houston and San Antonio. He returned to FBI Headquarters, where he was assigned to the Espionage Section of the Domestic Intelligence Division, tracking down spies and saboteurs during World War II. He worked on the Major Case Desk. His most notable counterintelligence work was on the "Peasant" case. Helmut Goldschmidt, operating under the codename "Peasant", was a German agent in custody in England. Under Felt's direction, his German masters were led to believe that "Peasant" had made his way to the US, and thus were fed disinformation on Allied plans. The Espionage Section was abolished in May 1945 after V-E Day. After the war, Felt was assigned to the Seattle field office. After two years of general work, he spent another two as a firearms instructor and was promoted from agent to supervisor. Upon passage of the Atomic Energy Act and the creation of the US Atomic Energy Commission, the Seattle office became responsible for completing background checks of workers at the Hanford plutonium plant near Richland, Washington. Felt oversaw those investigations. In 1954 Felt returned briefly to Washington as an inspector's aide. Two months later, he was sent to New Orleans as Assistant Special Agent-in-Charge of the field office. When he was transferred to Los Angeles fifteen months later, he held the same rank there. ==Investigates organized crime==

In 1956, Felt was transferred to Salt Lake City and promoted to Special Agent-in-Charge. The Salt Lake City office included Nevada within its purview, and Felt oversaw some of the Bureau's earliest investigations into organized crime, assessing the Mob's operations in the Reno and Las Vegas casinos.) In February 1958, Felt was assigned to Kansas City, Missouri (which he dubbed "the Siberia of field offices" in his memoir), where he directed further investigations of organized crime. By this time, Hoover had come to believe in organized crime, in the wake of the infamous conclave of underworld bosses in November 1957 in Apalachin, New York. ==Middle career==

, director of the FBI, photographed in 1961. Hoover appointed Felt the third-ranking official in the Bureau in 1971. Felt returned to Washington, D.C., in September 1962. As assistant to the bureau's assistant director in charge of the Training Division, Felt helped oversee the FBI Academy. In his memoir, Felt quoted Hoover as having said, "I need someone who can control Sullivan. I think you know he has been getting out of hand." ==After Hoover's death==

, acting director of the FBI from May 1972 to April 1973 Hoover died in his sleep and was found on the morning of May 2, 1972. Tolson was nominally in charge until the next day, when Nixon appointed L. Patrick Gray as Acting FBI Director. Tolson submitted his resignation, which Gray accepted. Felt succeeded to Tolson's post as Deputy Director, the number-two job in the Bureau. Felt served as an honorary pallbearer at Hoover's funeral. On the day of Hoover's death, Hoover's secretary for five decades, Helen Gandy, began destroying his files. She turned over twelve boxes of the "Official/Confidential" files to Felt on May 4, 1972. These contained 167 files and 17,750 pages, many of them containing derogatory information about individuals whom Hoover had investigated. He used this information as power over them. Felt stored the files in his office. The existence of such files had long been rumored. Gray told the press that afternoon that "there are no dossiers or secret files. There are just general files and I took steps to preserve their integrity." Felt earlier that day had told Gray, "Mr. Gray, the Bureau doesn't have any secret files", and later accompanied Gray to Hoover's office. They found Gandy boxing up papers. Felt said Gray "looked casually at an open file drawer and approved her work", though Gray would later deny he looked at anything. Gandy retained Hoover's "Personal File" and destroyed it. When Felt was called to testify in 1975 by the House of Representatives about the destruction of Hoover's papers, he said, "There's no serious problems if we lose some papers. I don't see anything wrong and I still don't." At the same hearing, Gandy claimed that she had destroyed Hoover's personal files only after receiving Gray's approval. In a letter submitted to the committee in rebuttal of Gandy's testimony, Gray vehemently denied ever giving such permission. Both Gandy's testimony and Gray's letter were included in the committee's final report. In his memoir, Felt expressed ambivalence about Gray. Its second director, Gray had no background in the agency, but he had been a submarine captain in the Navy, an Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department, and was nominated to be Deputy Attorney General, the second highest-ranking position, at the time of Hoover's death. While noting that Gray did work hard, Felt was critical of how often Gray was away from FBI headquarters. Gray lived in Stonington, Connecticut, and commuted to Washington. He also visited all of the Bureau's field offices except Honolulu; a permanent Resident Agency was established in Guam in 1975, becoming the FBI's westernmost investigative office. His frequent absences led to the nickname "Three-Day Gray". These absences, combined with Gray's hospitalization and recuperation from November 20, 1972, to January 2, 1973, meant that Felt was effectively in charge for much of his final year at the Bureau. Bob Woodward wrote "Gray got to be director of the FBI and Felt did the work." Felt wrote in his memoir: The record amply demonstrates that President Nixon made Pat Gray the Acting Director of the FBI because he wanted a politician in J. Edgar Hoover's position who would convert the Bureau into an adjunct of the White House machine. Gray's defenders would later argue that Gray had practiced a management system that differed from Hoover's. Gray's program of field office visits was something that Hoover had not done since his early years as director; some believed that Gray's visits helped raise the morale of the field agents. Gray's form of leadership seemed to continue what he had learned as a captain in the US Navy, in which the executive officer concentrates on the basic operation of the ship while the captain concentrates on its position and heading. Felt believed Gray's methods were an unnecessary distraction from the work of the FBI and showed a lack of leadership. He asserted that he was not the only career manager at the FBI who disapproved of Gray's methods, all of whom had served only under Hoover. ==Watergate==

As Deputy Director, Felt saw everything compiled on Watergate before it was given to Gray. The Agent in Charge, Charles Nuzum, sent his findings to Investigative Division Head Robert Gebhardt, who passed the information on to Felt. From the day of the burglary, June 17, 1972, until the FBI investigation was mostly completed in June 1973, Felt was the key control point for FBI information. He had been among the first to learn of the investigation, being informed the morning of June 17. Code for contacting Woodward in 1972 Woodward explained that when he wanted to meet Deep Throat, he would move a flowerpot with a red flag on his apartment balcony; he lived at number 617, Webster House, 1718 P Street, Northwest. On occasions when Deep Throat wanted a meeting, he would circle the page number on page twenty of Woodward's copy of The New York Times (delivered to his building) and draw clock hands to signal the hour. But in a taped conversation on October 19, 1972, Haldeman told the president that sources had said that Felt was speaking to the press. You can't say anything about this because it will screw up our source and there's a real concern. Mitchell is the only one who knows about this and he feels strongly that we better not do anything because ... if we move on him, he'll go out and unload everything. He knows everything that's to be known in the FBI. He has access to absolutely everything. Haldeman also said that he had spoken to White House counsel John W. Dean about punishing Felt, but Dean said Felt had committed no crime and could not be prosecuted. When Acting FBI Director Gray returned from his sick leave in January 1973, he confronted Felt about being the source for Woodward and Bernstein. Gray said he had defended Felt to Attorney General Richard G. Kleindienst: "You know, Mark, Dick Kleindienst told me I ought to get rid of you. He says White House staff members are concerned that you are the FBI source of leaks to Woodward and Bernstein". Felt replied, "Pat, I haven't leaked anything to anybody." Gray told Felt: I told Kleindienst that you've worked with me in a very competent manner and I'm convinced that you are completely loyal. I told him I was not going to move you out. Kleindienst told me, "Pat, I love you for that." Nixon passes over Felt again On February 17, 1973, Nixon nominated Gray as Hoover's permanent replacement as Director. Until then, Gray had been in limbo as Acting Director. In another taped conversation on February 28, Nixon spoke to Dean about Felt's acting as an informant and mentioned that he had never met Felt. Gray was forced to resign on April 27 after it was revealed that he had destroyed a file that had been in the White House safe of E. Howard Hunt. Gray recommended Felt as his successor. The day Gray resigned, Kleindienst spoke to Nixon, urging him to appoint Felt as Director of the FBI. Nixon instead appointed William Ruckelshaus as Acting Director. Stanley Kutler reported that Nixon said, "I don't want him. I can't have him. I just talked to Bill Ruckelshaus and Bill is a Mr. Clean and I want a fellow in there who is not part of the old guard and who is not part of that infighting in there." On another White House tape, from May 11, 1973, Nixon and White House Chief of Staff Alexander Haig spoke of Felt leaking material to The New York Times. Nixon said, "he's a bad guy, you see." He said that William Sullivan had told him of Felt's ambition to be Director of the Bureau. ==Clashes with Ruckelshaus and resignation==

Felt called his relationship with Ruckelshaus "stormy". On June 21, Ruckelshaus met privately with Felt and accused him of leaking information to The New York Times, a charge that Felt adamantly denied. Ruckelshaus told Felt to "sleep on it" and let him know the next day what he wanted to do. Felt resigned from the Bureau the next day, June 22, 1973, ending his 31-year career. In a 2013 interview, Ruckelshaus noted the possibility that the original caller was a hoax. He said that he considered Felt's resignation "an admission of guilt" anyway. Ruckelshaus, who had served only as Acting Director, was replaced several weeks later by Clarence M. Kelley, who had been nominated by Nixon as FBI Director and confirmed by the Senate. ==Trial and conviction==

In the early 1970s, Felt had supervised Operation COINTELPRO, initiated by Hoover in the 1950s. This period of FBI history has generated great controversy for its abuses of private citizens' rights. The FBI was spying on, infiltrating, and disrupting the Civil Rights Movement, Anti-War Movement, Black Panthers, and other New Left movements. By 1972, Felt was heading the investigation into the Weather Underground, which had planted bombs at the Capitol, the Pentagon, and the State Department building. Felt, along with Edward S. Miller, ordered FBI agents to break into homes secretly in 1972 and 1973, without a search warrant, on nine separate occasions. These kinds of FBI operations were known as "black bag jobs". The break-ins occurred at five addresses in New York and New Jersey, at the homes of relatives and acquaintances of Weather Underground members. They did not contribute to the capture of any fugitives. The use of "black bag jobs" by the FBI was declared unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court in the Plamondon case, 407 U.S. 297 (1972). Many agents were investigated after the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI and the subsequent Church Committee of Congress revealed the FBI's illegal activities. In 1976, Felt publicly stated he had ordered break-ins and recommended against punishment of individual agents who had followed orders. Felt also stated that Gray had also authorized the break-ins, but Gray denied this. Felt said on the CBS television program Face the Nation he would probably be a "scapegoat" for the Bureau's work. Felt and Miller attempted to plea bargain with the government, willing to agree to a misdemeanor guilty plea to conducting searches without warrants—a violation of . The government rejected the offer in 1979. After eight postponements, the case against Felt and Miller went to trial in the US District Court for the District of Columbia on September 18, 1980. He testified that in authorizing the Bureau to conduct break-ins to gather foreign intelligence information "he was acting on precedents established by a number of Presidential directives dating to 1939." It was Nixon's first courtroom appearance since before Watergate. He had avoided appearing in any legal proceedings during it and had been pardoned by President Gerald Ford after his resignation. Nixon also contributed money to Felt's defense fund, since Felt's legal expenses were running over $600,000 by then. Also testifying were former Attorneys General Mitchell, Kleindienst, Herbert Brownell Jr., Nicholas Katzenbach, and Ramsey Clark, all of whom said warrantless searches in national security matters were commonplace and understood not to be illegal. Mitchell and Kleindienst denied they had authorized any of the break-ins at issue in the trial. The Bureau used a national security justification for the searches because it alleged the Weather Underground was in the employ of Cuba. The charge carried a maximum sentence of ten years in prison and a $10,000 fine; on December 15, Judge William B. Bryant fined Felt $5,000 and Miller $3,500, but imposed no jail time for either. Writing an OpEd piece in The New York Times a week after the conviction, attorney Roy Cohn claimed that Felt and Miller were being used as scapegoats by the Carter administration and it was an unfair prosecution. Cohn wrote the break-ins were the "final dirty trick" of the Nixon administration, and there had been no "personal motive" to their actions. The New York Times praised the convictions, saying "the case has established that zeal is no excuse for violating the Constitution." Felt and Miller appealed their verdicts. ==Pardon==

pardoned Felt and Miller. In a phone call on January 30, 1981, Edwin Meese encouraged President Ronald Reagan to issue a pardon. After further encouragement from Felt's former colleagues, President Reagan pardoned Felt and Miller. The pardon was signed on March 26, but due to the assassination attempt on March 30, was not announced to the public until April 15, 1981. In the pardon, Reagan wrote: Nixon sent Felt and Miller bottles of champagne with the note "Justice ultimately prevails." Carter Attorney General Griffin Bell said he did not object to the pardons, as the convictions had upheld constitutional principles. Despite their pardons, Felt and Miller won permission from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to appeal their convictions so as to remove it from their record and to prevent it from being used in civil suits by victims of the break-ins they had ordered. Ultimately, the court restored Felt's law license in 1982, based on Reagan's pardon. In June 1982, Felt and Miller testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee's security and terrorism subcommittee. They said that the restrictions placed on the FBI by Attorney General Edward H. Levi were threatening the country's safety. ==Family==

Felt and Audrey had two children: a daughter, Joan, and a son, Mark Jr. Joan graduated from high school in 1961 in Kansas City during his assignment there, then attended the University of Kansas for two years, before transferring to Stanford in California to study drama. Felt settled in Alexandria, Virginia, while she was an undergraduate, for his post at the FBI Academy. Prior to the Watergate scandal, Felt had become estranged from Joan. They had been close during her childhood, but after she graduated from Stanford, she had gone to Chile under a Fulbright scholarship to continue her studies. While there, she became friends with Marxist revolutionary Andrés Pascal Allende, nephew of future president Salvador Allende. When she returned home, her political views had shifted to the extreme left, putting her in conflict with her conservative father. Joan did not learn the truth about her mother's suicide until 2001. Joan, who was caring for her father, told Kessler that her father had greeted Woodward like an old friend. Their meeting appeared to be more of a celebration than an interview. "Woodward just showed up at the door and said he was in the area," Joan Felt was quoted as saying in Kessler's 2002 book: "He came in a white limousine, which parked at a schoolyard about ten blocks away. He walked to the house. He asked if it was okay to have a martini with my father at lunch, and I said it would be fine." ==Memoir==

Felt published his memoir The FBI Pyramid: From the Inside in 1979. It was co-written with Hoover biographer Ralph de Toledano, though the latter's name appears only in the copyright notice. Toledano in 2005 wrote that the volume was "largely written by me since his original manuscript read like The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table". Toledano said: "Felt swore to me that he was not Deep Throat, and that he had never leaked information to the Woodward-Bernstein team or anyone else. The book was published and bombed." ==Deep Throat speculation==

The identity of Deep Throat was debated for more than three decades, and though Felt was not prominently mentioned as Watergate unfolded, his name was subsequently mentioned often as a possibility. An October 1990 Washingtonian magazine article about "Washington secrets" listed the 15 most prominent Deep Throat candidates, including Felt. Jack Limpert published evidence as early as 1974 that Felt was the informant. During a grand jury investigation in 1976, Felt was called to testify. The prosecutor, J. Stanley Pottinger, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, discovered that Felt was "Deep Throat", but the secrecy of the proceedings protected the information from being public. Ephron read in Woodward and Bernstein's book ''All the President's Men'' that in Bernstein's notes, he referred to Deep Throat as "MF"; Ephron was invited by Arianna Huffington to write about the experience in The Huffington Post, for which Ephron was a regular blogger and part-time editor. and then served on the Supreme Court until his death in 2005. ==Deep Throat revealed==

Vanity Fair magazine revealed that Felt was Deep Throat on May 31, 2005, when it published an article (eventually appearing in the July issue of the magazine) on its website by John D. O'Connor, an attorney acting in Felt's behalf. Felt said, "I'm the guy they used to call Deep Throat." After the Vanity Fair story broke, Benjamin C. Bradlee on June 1, 2005, the editor of the Washington Post during Watergate, confirmed that Felt was Deep Throat. According to the Vanity Fair article, Felt was persuaded to come out by his family. They hoped to capitalize on the book deals and other lucrative opportunities which Felt would be offered in order to help pay for his grandchildren's education. His family was unaware that he was Deep Throat for many years. Although Felt was suffering from dementia and had previously denied he was Deep Throat, both Woodward and Bernstein confirmed the attorney's claim. Felt's family realized the truth after his retirement, when they became aware of his close friendship with Bob Woodward. Nixon's Chief Counsel Charles Colson, who served prison time for his actions in the Nixon White House, said Felt had violated "his oath to keep this nation's secrets". In mid-2005 Woodward published an account of his contacts with Felt, ''The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate's Deep Throat'' (). ==Death==

Felt died at home, in his sleep, in Santa Rosa, California, on December 18, 2008. He was 95 years old and his death was attributed to heart failure. In the 2023 TV mini-series White House Plumbers, he was played by Gary Cole. ==Works==