Mark Felt
William Mark Felt Sr. was an American law enforcement officer who worked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 1942 to 1973 and was known for his role in uncovering the Watergate scandal. Felt was an FBI special agent who eventually rose to the position of Deputy Director, the Bureau's second-highest-ranking post. Felt worked in several FBI field offices prior to his promotion to the Bureau's headquarters. In 1980, he was convicted of having violated the civil rights of people thought to be associated with members of the Weather Underground, by ordering FBI agents to break into their homes and search the premises as part of an attempt to prevent bombings. He was ordered to pay a fine, but was pardoned by President Ronald Reagan during his appeal.
In 2005, at age 91, Felt revealed to Vanity Fair magazine that during his tenure as Deputy Director of the FBI he had been the anonymous source known as "Deep Throat", who provided The Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein with critical information about the Watergate scandal, which ultimately led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974. Woodward, who had long vowed not to reveal Deep Throat's identity while the source was still alive, quickly confirmed Felt's claim. Though Felt's identity as Deep Throat was suspected, including by Nixon himself, it had generally remained a secret for 30 years. Felt finally acknowledged that he was Deep Throat after being persuaded by his daughter to reveal his identity before his death.
Felt published two memoirs: The FBI Pyramid in 1979 and A G-Man's Life, written with John O'Connor in 2006. In 2012, the FBI released Felt's personnel file covering the period from 1941 to 1978. The agency also released files pertaining to an extortion threat made against Felt in 1956.
Early life and career
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 paternal grandfather was a Free Will Baptist minister. 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.After graduating from Twin Falls High School in 1931, Felt attended the University of Idaho in Moscow. He was a member and president of the Gamma Gamma chapter of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity, and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1935.
Felt then went to Washington, D.C., to work in the office of Democratic U.S. 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. He attended the George Washington University Law School at night, earning his J.D. degree in 1940, and was 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 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 United States, 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 United States 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, 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
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 November 1964, he was promoted to an Assistant Director of the Bureau, as Chief Inspector of the Bureau and Head of the Inspection Division. This division oversaw compliance with Bureau regulations and conducted internal investigations.On July 1, 1971, Felt was promoted by Hoover to Deputy Associate Director, assisting Deputy Director Clyde Tolson. Hoover's right-hand man for decades, Tolson was in failing health and unable to fulfill his duties. Richard Gid Powers wrote that Hoover installed Felt to rein in William C. Sullivan's domestic spying operations, as Sullivan had been engaged in secret unofficial work for the White House. 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." In his book, The Bureau, Ronald Kessler said that Felt "managed to please Hoover by being tactful with him and tough on agents". Curt Gentry described Felt as "the director's latest fair-haired boy", who had "no inherent power" in his new post, the real number three being John P. Mohr.
Weather Underground investigations
Among the criminal organizations that the FBI investigated in the early 1970s was the Weather Underground. Their case was dismissed by the court because it concluded that the FBI had conducted illegal activities, including unauthorized wiretaps, break-ins, and mail interceptions. The lead federal prosecutor on the case, William C. Ibershof, claims that Felt and Attorney General John Mitchell initiated these illegal activities that tainted the investigation.After Hoover's death
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 U.S. House 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.