Vanity Fair's I am the man they used to call "Deep Throat"

8/9/2019 Vanity Fair's I am the man they used to call "Deep Throat"

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8 6 V A N I T Y F A I R www.vanityfair.com J U L Y 2 0 0 5

n a sunny California morning in August 1999, Joan Felt, a busy col-lege Spanish professor and single mother, was completing choresbefore leaving for class. She stopped when she heard an unex-pected knock at the front door. Upon answering it, she was metby a courteous, 50-ish man, who introduced himself as a jour-nalist from The Washington Post. He asked if he could see her fa-ther, W. Mark Felt, who lived with her in her suburban SantaRosa home. The man said his name was Bob Woodward.

Woodwards name did not register with Joan, and she assumedhe was no different from a number of other reporters, who had

called that week. This was, after all, the 25th anniversary of the res-ignation of President Richard Nixon, disgraced in the scandal known

as Watergate, and hounded from ofce in 1974. The journalists had all

P H O T O G R A P H B Y G A S P E R T R I N G A L E

O

IM THE GUY

THEY CALLEDDEEP THROAT Despite three decades of intense speculation, the identity of Deep Throat

the source who leaked key details of Nixons Watergate cover-up toWashington Postreporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernsteinhas never been revealed.

Now, at age 91, W. Mark Felt, number two at the F.B.I. in the early 70s, is nallyadmitting to that historic, anonymous role. In an exclusive,

JOHN D. OCONNORputs a name and face to one of American democracys heroes,learning about the struggle between honor and duty that nearly led Felt

to take his secret to the grave


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GRANDPA G-MAN

Former F.B.I. ofcialW. Mark Felt, 91, is now a

retiree living in Santa Rosa,California. He has told friends

and intimates that he was thecondential inside source

of Watergate fame.


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been asking whether her fatherthe number-two man in theF.B.I. during the Watergate yearswas Deep Throat, the leg-endary inside informant who, on the condition of anonymity,had systematically passed along clues about White House mis-deeds to two young reporters. Joan gured that similar phonecalls were probably being placed to a handful of other DeepThroat candidates. (See sidebar on page 131.)

These names, over the years, had become part of a parlorgame among historians: Who in the top echelons of governmenthad mustered the courage to leak secrets to the press? Who hadsought to expose the Nixon administrations conspiracy to obstruct justice through its massive campaign of political espionage and itssubsequent cover-up? Who, indeed, had helped bring about themost serious constitutional crisis since the 1868 impeachment trialof Andrew Johnsonand, in the process, changed the fate of thenation?

Joan was suddenly curious. Unlike the others, this reporterhad come by in person. Whats more, he claimed to be a friendof her fathers. Joan excused herself and spoke to her dad. Hewas 86 at the time, alert though clearly diminished by the years.Joan told him about the stranger at the door and was surprised

when he readily agreed to see Bob.She ushered him in, excused herself, and the two men talkedfor half an hour, Joan recalls. Then she invited them to join herfor a drive to the market nearby. Bob sat in the backseat, shesays. I asked him about his life, his job. He said hed been outhere on the West Coast covering [Arizona senator] John Mc-Cains [presidential] campaign and was in Sacramento or Fres-nofour hours awayand thought hed stop by. He lookedabout my age. I thought, Gee, [hes] attractive. Pleasant too. Toobad this guy isnt single.

Woodward and Felt waited in the car while Joan popped intothe grocery store. On the way home, Joan remembers, Wood-

ward asked her, Would it be all right to take your dad to lunch

and have a drink? She agreed. And so, once back at the house,Woodward left to get his car.

Joan, always looking after her dads health, realized sheshould probably caution Woodward to limit her father to one ortwo drinks. Yet when she opened the front door, she could ndneither the reporter nor his car. Puzzled, she decided to drivearound the neighborhood, only to discover him outside the Feltssubdivision, walking into a parking lot of a junior high schoolsome eight blocks from the house. He was just about to enter achauffeured limousine. Joan, however, was too polite to ask Wood-ward why he had chosen to park there. Or why, for that matter,he had come in a limo.

That night her father was ebullient about the lunch, recount-ing how Bob and he had downed martinis. Joan found it all a

bit odd. Her father had been dodging reporters all week, buthad seemed totally comfortable with this one. And why hadWoodward taken such precautions? Joan trusted her instincts.Though she still hadnt made the connection between Woodward,The Washington Post, and the Watergate scandal, she was con-vinced that this was a less than serendipitous visit.

Sure enough, in the years to follow, Mark Felt and his daugh-ter, along with Joans brother, Mark junior, and her son Nick,would continue to communicate with Woodward by phone (andin several e-mail exchanges) as Felt progressed into his 90s. Feltsuffered a mild stroke in 2001. His mental faculties began to de-teriorate a bit. But he kept his spirit and sense of humor. Andalways, say Joan, aged 61, and Mark junior, 58, Woodward re-mained gracious and friendly, occasionally inquiring about Feltshealth. As you may recall, Woodward e-mailed Joan in Augustof 2004, my father [is] also approaching 91. [He] seems happythe goal for all of us. Best to everyone, Bob.

hree years after Woodwards visit, my wife, Jan,and I happened to be hosting a rather lively din-ner for my daughter Christy, a college junior, and

seven of her friends from Stanford. The atmos-phere had the levity and intensity of a reunion, asseveral of the students had just returned fromsabbaticals in South America. Jan served her typ-

ical Italian-style feast with large platters of pasta, grilled chicken,and vegetables, and plenty of beer and wine. Our house, in MarinCounty, overlooks the San Rafael Hills, and the setting that springevening was perfect for trading stories about faraway trips.

Nick Jones, a friend of Christys whom I had known for threeyears, listened as I related a story about my father, an attorneywho had begun his career in Rio during World War II by serv-ing as an undercover F.B.I. agent. When talk turned to the allure

and intrigue of Rio in the 40s, Nick men-

tioned that his grandfather, also a lawyer, had joined the bureau around that time and hadgone on to become a career agent. Whatshis name?, I asked.

You may have heard of him, he said.He was a pretty senior guy in the F.B.I. . . .Mark Felt.

I was blown away. Here was an enterpris-ing kid who was working his way throughschool. He reminded me of myself in a way:an energetic overachiever whose father, likeNicks grandfather, had served as an intelli-

gence agent. (Nick and I were both good high-school athletes. I

went to Notre Dame, the University of Michigan Law School,class of 72, then joined the U.S. Attorneys Ofce in San Fran-cisco, ultimately landing at a highly respected Bay Area lawfirm.) I had taken Nick under my wing, encouraging him toconsider studying to become a lawyer. And yet I had no ideathat his grandfather was the same guylong rumored as the in-famous Deep Throatwhom Id heard about for years from mydays as a federal prosecutor. Felt had even worked with my ear-ly mentor, William Ruckelshaus, most famous for his role in theso-called Saturday Night Massacre, of 1973. (When Watergatespecial prosecutor Archibald Cox subpoenaed nine Nixon taperecordings that he had secretly made in the Oval Ofce, thepresident insisted that Cox be fired. Rather than dismiss Cox,Nixons attorney general, Elliot Richardson, and his deputy,


TJoan was too polite to askWoodward why he parkedeight blocks from the house.


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Ruckelshaus, resigned in protest, becoming national heroes.)Deep Throat, in fact, had been the hero who started it all

along with the two reporters he assisted, Bob Woodward andCarl Bernstein (both of whom would go on to make their jour-nalistic reputations, and riches, through their Watergate revela-tions). And my daughters friend, I suspected, was the famoussources grandson. Mark Felt!, I exclaimed. Youre kiddingme. Your granddad is Deep Throat! Did you know that?

Nick answered calmly, and maybe with an air of uncertainty,You know, Big John, Ive heard that for a long time. Just re-cently weve started to think maybe its him.

We let the subject drop that night, turning to other matters.But a few days later Nick phoned and asked me, in my role asan attorney, to come over and meet his grandfather. Nick andhis mother wanted to discuss the wisdom of Felts coming for-ward. Felt, Nick said, had recently admitted his secret identity,privately, to intimates, after years of hiding the truth even fromhis family. But Felt was adamant about remaining silent on thesubjectuntil his deaththinking his past disclosures somehowdishonorable.

Joan and Nick, however, considered him a true patriot. They

were beginning to realize that it might make sense to enlist some-one from the outside to help him tell his story, his way, before hepassed away, unheralded and forgotten.

I agreed to see Mark Felt later that week.

he identity of Deep Throat is modern journalismsgreatest unsolved mystery. It has been said that hemay be the most famous anonymous person inU.S. history. But, regardless of his notoriety, Amer-ican society today owes a considerable debt to thegovernment ofcial who decided, at great personalrisk, to help Woodward and Bernstein as they pur-

sued the hidden truths of Watergate.

First, some background. In the early-morning hours of June 17,1972, ve burglars were caught breaking into the headquartersof the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate com-plex, along the Potomac River. Two members of the team werefound to have address books with scribbles W. House andW.H. They were operating, as it turned out, on the orders of E. Howard Hunt, a onetime C.I.A. agent who had recentlyworked in the White House, and G. Gordon Liddy, an exF.B.I.agent who was on the payroll of the Committee to Re-elect thePresident ( CRP , pronounced Creep, which was organizing Nixonsrun against Senator George McGovern, the South Dakota Dem-ocrat).

Funds for the break-in, laundered through a Mexican bankaccount, had actually come from the coffers of CRP , headed byJohn Mitchell, who had been attorney general during Nixonsfirst term. Following the break-in, suspicions were raised through-out Washington: What were ve men with Republican connec-tions doing with gloves, cameras, large amounts of cash, andbugging equipment in the Democrats top campaign ofce?

The case remained in the headlines thanks to the dogged re-porting of an unlikely team of journalists, both in their late 20s:Carl Bernstein, a scruffy college dropout and six-year veteran of the Post (now a writer, lecturer, and Vanity Fair contributor), andBob Woodward, an exnavy ofcer and Yale man (now a cele-brated author and Post assistant managing editor). The heat was

also kept on because of a continuing F.B.I. investigation, headedby the bureaus acting associate director, C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 1 29 P H O T O G R A P H B Y H A R R Y B E N S O N

( B E R N S T E I N

A N D W O O D W A R D )

J U L Y 2 0 0 5

T

AGENT, PROVOCATEUR

From top: quick-draw Felt at a rearmsrange in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1956;Felt (far left) with F.B.I. directorand mentor J. Edgar Hoover (third fromleft); Washington Post reportersCarl Bernstein and Bob Woodward inthe papers newsroom in 1974;Robert Redford, as Woodward, at arendezvous with Deep Throat (playedby Hal Holbrook) in the 1976 lm All the Presidents Men.


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Whoever Deep Throat might have been,he was certainly a public ofcial in privateturmoil. As the two Post reporters would ex-plain in their 1974 behind-the-scenes bookabout Watergate, All the Presidents Men,Deep Throat lived in solitary dread, underthe constant threat of being summarily redor even indicted, with no colleagues in whomhe could confide. He was justifiably suspi-cious that phones had been wiretapped,rooms bugged, and papers rifled. He wascompletely isolated, having placed his careerand his institution in jeopardy. Eventually,Deep Throat would even warn Woodwardand Bernstein that he had reason to believe

everyones life is in dangermeaningWoodwards, Bernsteins, and, presumably,his own.

In the months that followed, the Post sexposs continued unabated in the face of mounting White House pressure and protest.Deep Throat, having become more enragedwith the administration, grew more bold.Instead of merely corroborating facts that thetwo reporters obtained from other sources,he began providing leads and outliningan administration-sanctioned conspiracy. (Inthe film version of the book, Robert Red-ford and Dustin Hoffman would portrayWoodward and Bernstein, while Hal Hol-

C O N T I N U E D F R O M PA G E 8 9 Mark Felt, whoseteams interviewed 86 administration and CRPstaffers. These sessions, however, were quick-ly undermined. The White House and CRPhad ordered that their lawyers be presentat every meeting. Felt believed that the C.I.A.deliberately gave the F.B.I. false leads. Andmost of the bureaus write-ups of the in-terviews were being secretly passed on toNixon counsel John Deanby none otherthan Felts new boss, L. Patrick Gray. (Gray,the acting F.B.I. director, had taken overafter J. Edgar Hoovers death,six weeks before the break-in.)Throughout this period, the Nix-on camp denied any White Houseor CRP involvement in the Water-gate affair. And after a three-month investigation there was noevidence to implicate any WhiteHouse staffers.

The Watergate probe appearedto be at an impasse, the break-inhaving been explained away asa private extortion scheme thatdidnt extend beyond the suspectsin custody. McGovern couldntgain campaign traction with theissue, and the president was re-elected in November 1972 by anoverwhelming majority.

B ut during that fateful summerand fall, at least one govern-ment ofcial was determined notto let Watergate fade away. Thatman was Woodwards well-placedsource. In an effort to keep theWatergate affair in the news, DeepThroat had been consistently con-rming or denying condential informationfor the reporter, which he and Bernsteinwould weave into their frequent stories, of-ten on the Post s front page.

Ever cautious, Woodward and Deep Throatdevised cloak-and-dagger methods to avoidtails and eavesdroppers during their numer-ous rendezvous. If Woodward needed to ini-tiate a meeting, he would position an emptyowerpot (which contained a red construc-tion ag) to the rear of his apartment bal-

cony. If Deep Throat was the instigator, thehands of a clock would mysteriously appearon page 20 of Woodwards copy of The NewYork Times, which was delivered before sev-en each morning. Then they would connectat the appointed hour in an undergroundparking garage. (Woodward would alwaystake two cabs and then walk a short dis-tance to their meetings.) The garage affordedDeep Throat a darkened venue for hushedconversation, a clear view of any potentialintruders, and a quick escape route.

brook assumed the Deep Throat role.)Soon public outcry grew. Other media

outlets began to investigate in earnest. TheSenate convened riveting televised hear-ings in 1973, and when key players such asJohn Dean cut immunity deals, the entireplot unraveled. President Nixon, it turnedout, had tape-recorded many of the meet-ings where strategies had been hashedoutand the cover-up discussed (in viola-tion of obstruction-of-justice laws). OnAugust 8, 1974, with the House of Repre-sentatives clearly moving toward impeach-ment, the president announced his res-ignation, and more than 30 government

and campaign officials in andaround the Nixon White Housewould ultimately plead guiltyto or be convicted of crimes. Inbrief, Watergate had reafrmedthat no person, not even thepresident of the United States,is above the law.

Due in no small part to thesecrets revealed by the Post,sometimes in consort with DeepThroat, the courts and the Con-gress have been loath to grant asitting president free rein, andare generally wary of adminis-trations that might try to impedeaccess to White House docu-ments in the name of executiveprivilege. Watergate helped setin motion what would becomeknown as the independent coun-sel law (for investigating topfederal ofcials) and helped makewhistle-blowing (on wrongdoingsin business and government) alegally sanctioned, if still riskyand courageous, act. Watergateinvigorated an independent press,

virtually spawning a generation of investiga-tive journalists.

A nd yet, ever since the political mael-strom of Nixons second term, DeepThroat has declined to reveal himself. He haskept quiet through seven presidencies anddespite an anticipated fortune that mighthave come his way from a tell-all book, lm,or television special. Woodward has said thatDeep Throat wished to remain anonymous

until death, and he pledged to keep hissources condence, as he has for more than ageneration. (Ofcially, Deep Throats identityhas been known only to Woodward, Bern-stein, their former editor Ben Bradleeandto Deep Throat himself.)

In All the Presidents Men, the authorsdescribed their source as a man of pas-sion and contradiction: Aware of his ownweaknesses, he readily conceded his aws.He was, incongruously, an incurable gossip,careful to label rumor for what it was, but

Deep Throat

BEFORE THE SECRETSMark Felt was working his way

through law school in Washington, D.C.,when he reconnected with fellow University

of Idaho student Audrey Robinson.The pair posed circa 1938, the year

they were married.

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fascinated by it. . . . He could be rowdy,drink too much, overreach. He was not goodat concealing his feelings, hardly ideal for aman in his position. Even though he was aWashington creature he was worn out byyears of bureaucratic battles, a man disen-chanted with the switchblade mentalityof the Nixon White House and its tacticsof politicizing governmental agencies. DeepThroat was someone in an extremely sen-sitive position, possessing an aggregateof hard information owing in and out of many stations, while at the same time quitewary of his role as a condential source.Deep Throat, noted Woodward in a lec-ture in 2003, lied to his family, to hisfriends, and colleagues, denying that he hadhelped us.

And as the years went on, Joan Felthad really begun to wonder whether her fa-ther might just be this courageous but tor-tured man.

B orn in Twin Falls, Idaho, in 1913, MarkFelt came of age at a time when the F.B.I.agent was an archetypal patriota crime-ghter in a land that had been torn by war,the Depression, and Mob violence. Raisedin modest circumstances, the outgoing, take-charge Felt worked his way through the Uni-versity of Idaho (where he was head of hisfraternity) and the George Washington Uni-versity Law School, married another Idahograd, Audrey Robinson, then joined the bu-reau in 1942.

Dapper, charming, and handsome, with afull head of sandy hair that grayed attractivelyover the years, Felt resembled actor LloydBridges. He was a registered Democrat (whoturned Republican during the Reagan years)with a conservative bent and a commonmans law-and-order streak. Often relocatinghis family, he would come to speak at eachnew school that Joan Felt attendedwearinga shoulder holster, hidden under his pin-stripes. In the bureau, he was popular withsupervisors and underlings alike, and enjoyedboth scotch and bourbon, though he wasever mindful of Hoovers edicts about hisagents sobriety. Felt helped curb the KansasCity Mob as that citys special agent in charge,

using tactics both aggressive and innovative,then was named second-in-command of thebureaus training division in 1962. Felt mas-tered the art of succinct, just-the-facts-maam memo writing, which appealed to themeticulous Hoover, who made him one of his closest protgs. In 1971, in a move torein in his power-seeking head of do-mestic intelligence, William C. Sullivan,Hoover promoted Felt to a newly createdposition overseeing Sullivan, vaulting Felt toprominence.

While Felt rose through the ranks, hisdaughter, Joan, became decidedly anti-Establishment. As Joans lifestyle changed,her father quietly but strongly disapproved,telling her that she and her peers remind-ed him of radical Weather Undergroundmembersa faction he happened to be inthe process of hunting down. Joan cut off contact with her parents for a time (shehas been reconciled with her dad for morethan 25 years now), retreating to a com-mune where, with a movie camera rolling,she gave birth to her rst son, Ludi (Nicksbrother, now called Will), a scene used inthe 1974 documentary The Birth of Ludi.On one occasion her parents arrived atJoans farm for a visit, only to nd her anda friend sitting naked in the sun, breast-feeding their babies.

Joans brother, Mark junior, a commer-cial pilot and retired air-force lieutenantcolonel, says that at that stage their fatherwas utterly absorbed in his work. By thetime hed got to Washington, Mark recalls,he worked six days a week, got home, haddinner, and went to bed. He believed in theF.B.I. more than anything else he believedin in his life. For a time, Mark says, hisdad also served as an unpaid technical ad-viser to the popular 60s TV program The F.B.I., occasionally going onto the set withEfrem Zimbalist Jr., who played an agentwith responsibilities similar to Felts. Hewas a cool character, says the younger Felt,willing to take risks and go outside of therule book to get the job done.

In his little-known 1979 memoir, The F.B.I. Pyramid, co-written with Ralph deToledano, Felt comes across as a down-to-earth counterpart to the imperious Hoo-vera man Felt deeply respected. Hoover,in Felts view, was charismatic, feisty,charming, petty, giant, grandiose, brilliant,egotistical, industrious, formidable, com-passionate, domineering; he possesseda puritanical streak, the bearing of aninexible martinet, and obsessive habits.(Hoover insisted on the same seats in theplane, the same rooms in the same hotels.[He had an] immaculate appearance . . . asif he had shaved, showered, and put on afreshly pressed suit for [every] occasion.)Felt, a more sociable gure, was still a manin the Hoover mold: disciplined, fiercely

loyal to the men under his command, andresistant to any force that tried to compro-mise the bureau. Felt came to see himself,in fact, as something of a conscience of the F.B.I.

W ell before Hoovers death, relationsbetween the Nixon camp and theF.B.I. deteriorated. In 1971, Felt was calledto 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The presi-dent, Felt was told, had begun climbingthe walls because someone (a government

insider, Nixon believed) was leaking detailsto The New York Times about the adminis-trations strategy for upcoming arms talkswith the Soviets. Nixons aides wanted thebureau to nd the culprits, either throughwiretaps or by insisting that suspects sub-mit to lie-detector tests. Such leaks led theWhite House to begin employing ex-C.I.A.types to do their own, homespun spying,creating its nefarious Plumbers unit, towhich the Watergate cadre belonged.

F elt arrived at the White House to con-front an odd gathering. Egil BudKrogh Jr., deputy assistant for domesticaffairs, presided, and attendees includedex-spy E. Howard Hunt and Robert Mar-dian, an assistant attorney generalabalding little man, Felt recalled, dressedin what looked like work clothes and dirtytennis shoes . . . shuffling about the room,arranging the chairs and I [first] took himto be a member of the cleaning staff.(Mardian had been summoned to theWest Wing from a weekend tennis game.)According to Felt, once the meeting be-gan, Felt expressed resistance to the ideaof wiretapping suspected leakers without acourt order.

After the session, which ended with noclear resolution, Kroghs group began tohave reason to suspect a single Pentagonemployee. Nixon, nonetheless, demandedthat four or ve hundred people in State,Defense, and so forth [also be polygraphed]so that we can immediately scare the bas-tards. Two days later, as Felt wrote in hisbook, he was relieved when Krogh told himthat the administration had decided to letthe Agency, not the F.B.I., handle thepolygraph interviews. . . . Obviously, JohnEhrlichman [Kroghs boss, Nixons topdomestic-policy adviser, and the head of the Plumbers unit] had decided to punishthe Bureau for what he saw as its lack of cooperation and its refusal to get involvedin the work which the Plumbers later un-dertook.

In 1972, tensions between the institutionsdeepened when Hoover and Felt resistedWhite House pressure to have the F.B.I.forensics lab declare a particularly damningmemo a forgeryas a way of exoneratingthe administration in a corruption scandal.

Believing that trumped-up forgery ndingswere improper, and trying to sustain thereputation of the F.B.I. lab, Felt claimed tohave refused entreaties by John Dean. (Theepisode took on elements of the absurdwhen Hunt, wearing an ill-fitting red wig,showed up in Denver in an effort to extractinformation from Dita Beard, the commu-nications lobbyist who had supposedly writ-ten the memo.)

C learly, Felt harbored increasing con-tempt for this curious crew at the White

Deep Throat



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House, whom he saw as intent on utilizingthe Justice Department for their politicalends. Whats more, Hoover, who had diedthat May, was no longer around to protectFelt or the bureaus Old Guard, the F.B.I.chief having been replaced by an interimsuccessor, L. Patrick Gray, a Republicanlawyer who hoped to permanently land Hoo-vers job. Gray, with his eyes on that prize,chose to leave an increasingly frustrated Feltin charge of the F.B.I.s day-to-day opera-tions. Then came the break-in, and a pitchedbattle began. We seemed to be continuallyat odds with the White House about almosteverything, Felt wrote, regarding the darkdays of 1972. He soon came to believe thathe was fighting an all-out war for the soulof the bureau.

A s the F.B.I. pushed on with its Water-gate investigation, the White Housethrew up more and more barriers. When Feltand his team believed they could trace thesource of the money that had been in thepossession of the Watergate burglars to abank in Mexico City, Gray, according toFelt, atly ordered [Felt] to call off any in-terviews in Mexico because they mightupset a C.I.A. operation there. Felt andhis key deputies sought a meeting withGray. Look, Felt recalled telling his boss,the reputation of the FBI is at stake. . . .Unless we get a request in writing [from theC.I.A.] to forgo the [Mexico] interview, weregoing ahead anyway!

Thats not all, Felt supposedly added.We must do something about the completelack of cooperation from John Dean andthe Committee to Reelect the President. Itsobvious theyre holding backdelaying andleading us astray in every way they know.We expect this sort of thing when we are in-vestigating organized crime.. . . The wholething is going to explode right in the Presi-dents face.

At a subsequent meeting, according toFelt, Gray asked whether the investigationcould be conned to these seven subjects,referring to the ve burglars, plus Hunt andLiddy. Felt responded, We will be goingmuch higher than these seven. These menare the pawns. We want the ones whomoved the pawns. Agreeing with his team,Gray chose to stay the course and continue

the probe.Felts book gives no indication that dur-ing this same period he decided to go out-side the bounds of government to exposethe corruption within Nixons teamor toovercome the impediments they were plac-ing on his ability to do his job. There areonly scant clues that he might have decid-ed to pass along secrets to The Washington Post; in fact, Felt makes a point of categor-ically denying he is Deep Throat. But, intruth, the White House had begun asking for

Felts head, even though Gray adamantlydefended his deputy. Felt would write:

Gray conded to me, You know, Mark, [At-

torney General] Dick Kleindienst told me thatI might have to get rid of you. He says WhiteHouse staff members are convinced that youare the FBI source of leaks to Woodward andBernstein. .. .

I said, Pat, I havent leaked anything toanybody. They are wrong! . . .

I believe you, Gray answered, but theWhite House doesnt. Kleindienst has told meon three or four occasions to get rid of youbut I refused. He didnt say this came fromhigher up but I am convinced that it did.

I t is clear from the Watergate tapes thatFelt was indeed one of the targets of Nixons wrath. In October 1972, Nixon in-sisted he would fire the whole GoddamnBureau, and singled out Felt, whom hethought to be part of a plot to underminehim through frequent press leaks. Is he aCatholic? he asked his trusted adviser H. R.Haldeman, who replied that Felt was Jew-ish. (Felt, of Irish descent, is not Jewish andclaims no religious affiliation.) Nixon, whosometimes suggested that a Jewish conspir-acy might be at the root of his problems,seemed surprised. Christ, he said, [thebureau] put a Jew in there? . . . It could bethe Jewish thing. I dont know. Its always apossibility.

It was Gray, however, not Felt, who be-came the fall guy. At Grays conrmationhearings, in February 1973, he was aban-doned by his onetime allies in the WestWing and was left to twist slowly, slowly inthe wind, in the words of Nixon aide JohnEhrlichman. With Gray now gone, Felt hadlost his last sponsor and protector. Next upwas interim F.B.I. director Ruckelshaus,who ultimately resigned as assistant attor-ney general in Nixons Saturday Night Mas-sacre. Felt left the bureau that same yearand went on the lecture circuit.

Then, in 1978, Felt was indicted oncharges of having authorized illegal F.B.I.break-ins earlier in the decade, in whichagents without warrants entered the resi-dences of associates and family members of suspected bombers believed to be involvedwith the Weather Underground. The careeragent was arraigned as hundreds of F.B.I.colleagues, outside the courthouse, demon-

strated on his behalf. Felt, over the strongobjections of his lawyers that the jury hadbeen improperly instructed, claimed that hewas following established law-enforcementprocedures for break-ins when national se-curity was at stake. Even so, Felt was con-victed two years later. Then, in a stroke of good fortune while his case was on appeal,Ronald Reagan was elected president and,in 1981, gave Felt a full pardon.

Felt and his wife had always looked for-ward to a retirement where they could live

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Parsed ThroatFelt, Fielding, and

a raft of other candidates

eep Throata phrase derivedfrom the title of the popular pornfilm at the timewas the code

name by which Washington Post insidersreferred to Bob Woodwards confidentialWatergate source. Watergate was thenickname used for the political-conspiracy-and-cover-up scandal that had been setin motion in 1972 when five men werearrested during a botched break-in at theheadquarters of the Democratic Nation-

al Committee, located in the Watergate,Washington, D.C.s famous hotel-apartment-and-office complex.

Other figures who have been men-tioned as plausible Deep Throat suspectsinclude: F.B.I. officials Robert Kunkel andL. Patrick Gray (the bureaus acting direc-tor, who lived four blocks from Wood-ward); Nixon speechwriters PatrickBuchanan, David Gergen, and RaymondPrice; Deputy Press Secretary GeraldWarren; Republican strategist JohnSears; White House counsels Len Gar-ment and Jonathan Rose; Assistant

Attorney General Henry Peterson; presi-dential aide Stephen Bull; AlexanderButterfield, Nixons deputy assistant (whodisclosed the existence of Nixons OvalOffice tape-recording system); Al Haig,top aide to national-security adviserHenry Kissinger; and Kissinger himself.As a project in his University of Illinoisinvestigative-journalism class, ProfessorBill Gaines had his students attempt toidentify Deep Throat; in 2003 they de-termined the likeliest prospect to be FredFielding, White House deputy counseland assistant to John Dean, who becamea central Watergate player. Other sus-

pects who have emerged in recent yearshave included Gerald Ford (Nixonsvice president) and the U.N. ambas-sador at the time, George H. W. Bush.ExWashington Post editor Barry Suss-man has provided strong evidence thatDeep Throat was an F.B.I. source; thecase for Felt has been made persuasivelyby several writers, including Ronald Kess-ler and James Mann.

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comfortably and bask proudly in his ac-complishments. But as he endured years of courtroom travails, they both felt betrayedby the country he had served. Audrey, al-ways an intense person, suffered profoundstress, anxiety, and nervous exhaustion,which both of them bitterly blamed on hislegal troubles. Long after her early passing,in 1984, Felt continued to cite the strain of his prosecution as a major factor in the deathof his wife.

A week after our festive dinner in 2002,Nick Jones introduced me to his moth-er, Joan Feltdynamic and open-minded,high-strung and overworked, proud andprotective of her father, slim and attractive(she had been an actress for a time)andto his grandfather. Felt, then 88, was achipper, easygoing man with a hearty laughand an enviable shock of white hair. Hiseyes sparkled and his handshake was rm.Though he required the assistance of a met-al walker on his daily rounds, having sus-tained a stroke the year before, he wasnonetheless engaged and engaging.

I soon realized the urgency behindNicks request. A few weeks beforepossi-bly in anticipation of the 30th anniversaryof the Watergate break-ina reporter forthe Globe tabloid, Dawna Kaufmann, hadcalled Joan to ask whether her father wasactually Deep Throat. Joan talked brieflyabout Woodwards mysterious visit threeyears before. Kaufmann then wrote a pieceheadlined DEEP THROAT EXPOSED ! In herstory she quoted a young man by thename of Chase Culeman-Beckman. He hadclaimed, in a 1999 Hartford Courant arti-cle, that while attending summer camp in1988 a young friend of his named JacobBernsteinthe son of Carl Bernstein andwriter Nora Ephronhad divulged a se-cret, mentioning that his father had toldhim that a man named Mark Felt was theinfamous Deep Throat. Ephron and Bern-stein, divorced by 1999, both asserted thatFelt was the favorite suspect of Ephrons,and that Bernstein had never disclosedDeep Throats identity. According to Bern-steins response at the time, their son

was simply repeating his mothers guess.(When approached by reporters speculat-ing about Deep Throats identity, Wood-ward and Bernstein have consistently re-fused to divulge it.)

Soon after the Globe article appeared,Joan Felt received a frantic phone call fromYvette La Garde. During the late 1980s, fol-lowing his wifes death, Felt and La Gardehad become close friends and frequent so-cial companions. Why is he announcing itnow? a worried La Garde asked Joan. I

thought he wouldnt be revealed until hewas dead.

Joan pounced. Announcing what? shewanted to know.

La Garde, apparently sensing that Joandid not know the truth, pulled back, thenfinally owned up to the secret she hadkept for years. Felt, La Garde said, hadconfided to her that he had indeed beenWoodwards source, but had sworn herto silence. Joan then confronted her father,who initially denied it. I know now thatyoure Deep Throat, she remembers tell-ing him, explaining La Gardes disclosure.His response: Since thats the case, well,yes, I am. Then and there, she pleadedwith him to announce his role immediatelyso that he could have some closure, and ac-colades, while he was still alive. Felt reluc-tantly agreed, then changed his mind. Heseemed determined to take his secret withhim to the grave.

B ut it turned out that Yvette La Gardehad also told others. A decade before,she had shared her secret with her eld-est son, Mickey, now retireda fortunateconfidant, given his work as an army lieu-tenant colonel based at NATO militaryheadquarters (requiring a top-secret secu-rity clearance). Mickey La Garde says hehas remained mum about the revelationever since: My moms condo unit wasin Watergate and Id see Mark, he recalls.In one of those visits, in 1987 or 88, sheconfided to [my wife] Dee and I thatMark had, in fact, been the Deep Throatthat brought down the Nixon administra-tion. I dont think Moms ever told anyoneelse.

Dee La Garde, a C.P.A. and governmentauditor, corroborates her husbands account.She confessed it, Dee recalls. The threeof us might have been at the kitchen tablein her apartment. Theres no question in mymind that she identied him. Youre the rstperson Ive discussed this with besides myhusband.

The day of her fathers grand admission,Joan left for class, and Felt went for a ridewith Atama Batisaresare, an assisted-livingaide. Felt, as a rule, exhibited a calm de-meanor, letting his thoughts wander fromone topic to another. On this trip, however,

so Batisaresare later told Joan and me, Feltbecame highly agitated and focused onone subject, which sort of came out of theblue. The caregiver now recalls, in his thickFijian accent, He did tell me, An F.B.I.man should have loyalty to the depart-ment. He talked about loyalty. He didntmention he was a Deep Throat. He toldme he didnt want to do it, but it wasmy duty to do it, regarding Nixon. (Feltwould frequently return to this theme.While watching a Watergate TV special

that month, he and Joan heard his namecome up as a Deep Throat candidate. Joan,trying to elicit a response, deliberately ques-tioned her father in the third person: Doyou think Deep Throat wanted to get rid of Nixon? Joan says that Felt replied, No,I wasnt trying to bring him down. Heclaimed, instead, that he was only doinghis duty.)

O n that Sunday in May when I rst metMark Felt, he was particularly con-cerned about how bureau personnel, thenand now, had come to regard Deep Throat.He seemed to be struggling inside withwhether he would be seen as a decent manor a turncoat. I stressed that F.B.I. agentsand prosecutors now thought Deep Throata patriot, not a rogue. And I emphasizedthat one of the reasons he might want toannounce his identity would be for the verypurpose of telling the story from his pointof view.

Still, I could see he was equivocating.He was amenable at first, his grandsonNick recalls. Then he was wavering. Hewas concerned about bringing dishonor toour family. We thought it was totally cool.It was more about honor than about anykind of shame [to] Grandpa. . . . To this day,he feels he did the right thing.

At the end of our conversation, Feltseemed inclined to reveal himself, but re-fused to commit. Ill think about whatyou have said, and Ill let you know of mydecision, he told me very rmly that day.In the meantime, I told him, I would takeon his cause pro bono, helping him nd areputable publisher if he decided to go thatroute. (I have written this piece, in fact, af-ter witnessing the decline of Felts healthand mental acuity, and after receiving hisand Joans permission to reveal this infor-mation, normally protected by provisions of lawyer-client privilege. The Felts were notpaid for cooperating with this story.)

Our talks dragged on, however. Felt toldJoan that he had other worries. He won-dered what the judge would think (mean-ing: were he to expose his past, might heleave himself open to prosecution for hisactions?). He seemed genuinely conicted.Joan took to discussing the issue in a cir-cumspect way, sometimes referring to Deep

Throat by yet another code name, JoeCamel. Nevertheless, the more we talked,the more forthright Felt became. On severaloccasions he conded to me, Im the guythey used to call Deep Throat.

He also opened up to his son. In previ-ous years, when Felts name had come upas a Deep Throat suspect, Felt had alwaysbristled. His attitude was: I dont think[being Deep Throat] was anything to be proud of, Mark junior says. You [should]not leak information to anyone. Now his

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father was admitting he had done just that.Making the decision [to go to the press]would have been difcult, painful, and ex-cruciating, and outside the bounds of hislifes work. He would not have done it if hedidnt feel it was the only way to get aroundthe corruption in the White House and Jus-tice Department. He was tortured inside,but never would show it. He was not thisHal Holbrook character. He was not anedgy person. [Even though] it would be themost difcult decision of his life, he wouldnthave pined over it.

At one lunch at a scenic restaurant over-looking the Pacific, Joan and Mark sattheir father down to lay out the case forfull, public disclosure. Feltargued with them, accord-ing to his son, warning themnot to betray him. I dontwant this out, Felt said.And if it got in the papers,Id guess Id know who putit there. But they persist-ed. They explained that theywanted their fathers legacyto be heroic and permanent,not anonymous. And be-yond their main motiveposteritythey thought thatthere might eventually besome prot in it. Bob Wood-wards gonna get all theglory for this, but we couldmake at least enough mon-ey to pay some bills, likethe debt Ive run up for thekids education, Joan re-calls saying. Lets do it forthe family. With that, bothchildren remember, he nal-ly agreed. He wasnt par-ticularly interested, Marksays, but he said, Thats a good reason.

F elt had come to an interim decision: hewould cooperate, but only with theassistance of Bob Woodward. Acceding tohis wishes, Joan and I spoke to Woodwardby phone on a half-dozen occasions over aperiod of months about whether to make a joint revelation, possibly in the form of abook or an article. Woodward would some-times begin these conversations with a

caveat, saying, more or less, Just becauseIm talking to you, Im not admitting that heis who you think he is. Then hed expresshis chief concerns, which were twofold, as Irecall. First, was this something that Joanand I were pushing on Felt, or did he actu-ally want to reveal himself of his own ac-cord? (I interpreted this to mean: was hechanging the long-standing agreement themen had kept for three decades?) Second,was Felt actually in a clear mental state? Tomake his own assessment, Woodward told

Joan and me, he wanted to come out andsit down with her father again, not havingseen him since their lunch.

We went through a period where hedid call a bit, Joan says of her discussionswith Woodward. (Nick says he sometimesanswered the phone and spoke with him,too.) Hes always been very gracious. Wetalked about doing a book with Dad, andI think he was considering. That was myunderstanding. He didnt say no at rst. . . .Then he kept kind of putting me off onthis book, saying, Joan, dont press me.. . . For him the issue was competency: wasDad competent to release him from theagreement the two of them had made not

to say anything until after Dad died? At onepoint I said, Bob, just between you andme, off the record, I want you to confirm:was Deep Throat my dad? He wouldntdo that. I said, If hes not, you can at least

tell me that. We could put this to rest. Andhe said, I cant do that.Joan says that during this period Wood-

ward had at least two phone conversationswith Felt without anyone else listening.Dads memory gradually has deterioratedsince the original lunch they had, [but] Dadremembered Bob whenever he called.. . . Isaid, Bob, its unusual for Dad to remem-ber someone as clearly as you. She saysthat Woodward responded, He has goodreason to remember me.

Woodward spoke with Mark junior athis home in Florida, as well. He called meand discussed whether or not, and when,to visit Dad, he says. I asked him brief-ly, Are you ever going to put this DeepThroat issue public? And he said, essen-tially, that he made promises to my dad or someone that he wouldnt reveal this. . . . Icant imagine another reason why Wood-ward would have any interest in Dad or meor Joan if Dad wasnt Deep Throat. Hisquestions were about Dads present condi-tion. Why would he care so much aboutDads health?

According to Joan, Woodward scheduledtwo visits to come and see her father and,

so she hoped, to talk abouta possible collaborative ven-ture. But he had to cancelboth times, she says, then nev-er rescheduled. That was dis-appointing, she says. Maybe[he was] just hoping that Iwould forget about it.

Today, Joan Felt has onlypositive things to say aboutBob Woodward. Hes so re-assuring and top-notch, sheinsists. They still stay in touchby e-mail, exchanging goodwishes, their relationship en-gendered by a bond her fa-ther had forged in troubledtimes.

N owadays, Mark Feltwatches TV sitting be-neath a large oil painting of his late wife, Audrey, andgoes for car rides with anew caregiver. Felt is 91 andhis memory for details seemsto wax and wane. Joan al-

lows him two glasses of wine each evening,and on occasion the two harmonize in arendition of The Star-Spangled Banner.While Felt is a humorous and mellowman, his spine stiffens and his jaw tightenswhen he talks about the integrity of hisdear F.B.I.

I believe that Mark Felt is one of Ameri-cas greatest secret heroes. Deep in his psy-che, it is clear to me, he still has qualmsabout his actions, but he also knows that

historic events compelled him to behave ashe did: standing up to an executive branchintent on obstructing his agencys pursuitof the truth. Felt, having long harbored theambivalent emotions of pride and self-reproach, has lived for more than 30 yearsin a prison of his own making, a prisonbuilt upon his strong moral principles andhis unwavering loyalty to country and cause.But now, buoyed by his familys revelationsand support, he need feel imprisoned nomore. P H

O T O G R A P H

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G A S P E R

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J U L Y 2 0 0 5 1 3 3www.vanityfair.com V A N I T Y F A I R

FAMILY AFFAIRFelt, seated by his backyard pool,

is joined by his caregiverFereimi Boladau, daughter Joan,

and family dog Carlos.

Documents

Vanity Fair's I am the man they used to call "Deep Throat"