Mark Felt, Watergate's `Deep Throat,' dies at 95

William Mark Felt, Sr. (August 17, 1913 – December 18, 2008 was an agent of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, who retired in 1973 as the Bureau's Associate Director. After thirty years of denying his involvement with reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, Felt revealed himself on May 31, 2005 to be the Watergate scandal whistleblower called "Deep Throat."

Felt worked in several FBI field offices prior to his promotion to the Bureau's Washington headquarters. During the early investigation of the Watergate scandal (1972–74), Felt was the Bureau's Associate Director, the second-ranking post in the FBI. While Associate Director, Felt provided Washington Post reporter Woodward with critical leads on the story that eventually saw the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon in 1974. In 1980, Felt was convicted of the felony of violating the civil rights of people thought to be associated with members of the Weather Underground by ordering FBI agents to search their homes as part of an attempt to prevent bombings. He was ordered to pay a $5,000 fine but was pardoned by President Ronald Reagan during his appeal. In 2006, he published an update of his 1979 autobiography, The FBI Pyramid. His new book, written with John O'Connor, is titled A G-Man's Life.


William Mark Felt was born on August 17, 1913 in Twin Falls, Idaho, the son of a Jewish carpenter and building contractor Mark Earl Felt and his wife, the former Rose Dygert. After graduating from Twin Falls High School in 1931, he received a BA from the University of Idaho in 1935, and was a member and president of the Gamma Gamma chapter of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity.

He went to Washington, D.C. to work in the office of U.S. Senator James P. Pope (D-Idaho). In 1938, Felt married Audrey Robinson of Gooding, Idaho, whom he had known when they were both students at the University of Idaho. She had come to Washington to work at the Bureau of Internal Revenue, and they were wed by the chaplain of the United States House of Representatives, the Rev. Sheara Montgomery. Felt and Audrey, who died in 1984, had two children, Joan and Mark.

Felt stayed on with Pope's successor in the Senate, David Worth Clark (D-Idaho).[Felt attended The George Washington University Law School at night, earning his law 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 the work. His workload was very light. He was assigned a case 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.


Vanity Fair magazine revealed 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 on Felt's behalf, in which Felt said, "I'm the guy they used to call Deep Throat." After the Vanity Fair story broke, Benjamin C. Bradlee, the key 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, who wanted to capitalize on the book deals and other lucrative opportunities that Felt would inevitably be offered in order, at least in part, to pay off his grandchildren's education.

Public response varied widely. Felt's family called him an "American hero", suggesting that he leaked information for moral or patriotic reasons. G. Gordon Liddy, who was convicted of burglary in the Watergate scandal, said Felt should have gone to the grand jury rather than leak. Some have contrasted Felt's media treatment with that of other whistleblowers.

Nixon 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"[80], but a Los Angeles Times editorial argued that this argument was specious, "as if there's no difference between nuclear strategy and rounding up hush money to silence your hired burglars." Ralph de Toledano, who co-wrote Felt's 1979 memoir, said Mark Felt Jr. had approached him in 2004 to buy Toledano's half of the copyright. Toledano agreed to sell but was never paid and attempted to rescind the deal, threatening legal action. A few days before the Vanity Fair article was released, Toledano finally received a check. He later said:

I had been gloriously and illegally deceived, and Deep Throat was, in characteristic style, back in business — which given his history of betrayal, was par for the course.
Speculation about Felt's motives at the time of the scandal has varied widely as well. Some suggested it was revenge for Nixon choosing Gray over Felt to replace Hoover as FBI Director. Others suggest Felt acted out of institutional loyalty to the FBI. Publishers were interested in signing Felt to a book deal after the revelation. Weeks after the Vanity Fair article was released, PublicAffairs Books, whose CEO was a Washington Post reporter and editor during the Watergate era, announced that it signed a deal with Felt. The new book was to include material from his 1979 memoir with an update. The new volume was scheduled for publication in the spring of 2006. Felt sold the movie rights to his story to Universal Pictures for development by Tom Hanks's production company, Playtone. The book and movie deals were valued at US $1 million.

In the summer of 2005, Woodward's longtime publisher, Simon and Schuster, swiftly issued Woodward's account of his contacts with Felt, The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate's Deep Throat (ISBN 0-7432-8715-0). The book received mixed reviews.


At 12:45pm on December 18, 2008, Felt died in his sleep at a hospice care facility in Santa Rosa, California. He was 95 years old. No cause of death was released immediately to the press, but it was known that Felt had suffered from congestive heart failure in recent years. His death was reported in the Washington Post by Bob Woodward.

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