W. Mark Felt , who was the No. 2 official at the FBI when he helped bring down President Richard M. Nixon by resisting the Watergate cover-up and becoming Deep Throat , the most famous anonymous source in American history , died on Thursday .
bring down
w. mark felt no. 2 official fbi he help bring president richard m. nixon resist watergate cover-up deep throat famous anonymous source american history die thursday
W. Mark Felt , who was the No. 2 official at the FBI when he helped <m> bring down </m> President Richard M. Nixon by resisting the Watergate cover-up and becoming Deep Throat , the most famous anonymous source in American history , died on Thursday .
Mark Felt , FBI official who became 'Deep Throat , ' dead at 95
W. Mark Felt , who was the No. 2 official at the FBI when he helped <m> bring down </m> President Richard M. Nixon by resisting the Watergate cover-up and becoming Deep Throat , the most famous anonymous source in American history , died on Thursday .
He was 95 and lived in Santa Rosa .
His death was confirmed by Rob Jones , his grandson .
In 2005 , Felt revealed that he was the source who had secretly supplied Bob Woodward of The Washington Post with crucial leads in the Watergate affair in the early nineteen seventies .
His decision to unmask himself , in an article in Vanity Fair , ended a guessing game that had gone on for more than 30 years .
The disclosure even surprised Woodward and his partner on the Watergate story , Carl Bernstein .
They had kept their promise not to reveal his identity until after his death .
Indeed , Woodward was so scrupulous about shielding Felt that he did not introduce him to Bernstein until this year , 36 years after they cracked the scandal .
The three met for two hours one afternoon in November in Santa Rosa , where Felt had retired .
The reporters likened it to a family reunion .
Felt played a dual role in Nixon 's downfall .
As a secret informant , he kept the story alive in the press .
As associate director of the FBI , he fought the president 's efforts to obstruct the FBI 's investigation of the Watergate break-in .
Felt later said he believed that Nixon had been misusing the FBI for political advantage .
He knew that Nixon wanted the Watergate affair to vanish .
He knew that the White House had ordered the CIA to tell the bureau , on grounds of national security , to stand down in its felony investigation of the June 1972 break-in .
He saw that order as an effort to obstruct justice , and he rejected it .
That resistance led indirectly to Nixon 's resignation .
Passed up for promotion
Felt had expected to be named to succeed J. Edgar Hoover , who had run the bureau for 48 years and died in May 1972 .
The president instead chose a politically loyal Justice Department official , L. Patrick Gray , who later followed orders from the White House to destroy documents in the case .
The choice infuriated Felt .
He later wrote that the president `` wanted a politician in J. Edgar Hoover 's position who would convert the bureau into an adjunct of the White House machine . ''
Hoover had sworn off break-ins without warrants - `` black bag jobs , '' he called them - in 1966 , after carrying them out at the FBI for four decades .
The Nixon White House hired its own operatives to steal information , plant eavesdropping equipment and hunt down the sources of leaks .
The Watergate break-in took place six weeks after Hoover died .
While Watergate was seething , Felt authorized nine illegal break-ins at the homes of friends and relatives of members of the Weather Underground , a violent left-wing splinter group .
The people he chose as targets had committed no crimes .
The FBI had no search warrants .
He later said he ordered the break-ins because he felt national security required it .
In a criminal trial , Felt was convicted in November 1980 of conspiring to violate the constitutional rights of Americans .
Nixon , who had denounced him in private for leaking Watergate secrets , testified on his behalf .
Called by the prosecution , he told the jury that presidents and by extension their officers had an inherent right to conduct illegal searches in the name of national security .
`` As Deep Throat , Felt helped establish the principle that our highest government officials are subject to the Constitution and the laws of the land , '' the prosecutor , John W. Nields , wrote in The Washington Post in 2005 .
`` Yet when it came to the Weather Underground bag jobs , he seems not to have been aware that this same principle applied to him . ''
Seven months after the conviction , President Ronald Reagan pardoned Felt .
Then 67 , Felt celebrated the decision as one of great symbolic value .
`` This is going to be the biggest shot in the arm for the intelligence community for a long time , '' he said .
After the pardon , Nixon sent him a congratulatory bottle of champagne .
Felt then disappeared from public view for a quarter of a century , denying unequivocally , time and again , that he had been Deep Throat .
It was a lie he told to serve what he believed to be a higher truth .
William Mark Felt was born in Twin Falls , Idaho , on Aug. 17 , 1913 .
After graduating from the University of Idaho , he was drawn to public service in Washington and went to work for Sen. James P. Pope , D-Idaho .
In 1938 , he married his college sweetheart , Audrey Robinson , in Washington .
They were wed by the chaplain of the House of Representatives .
She died in 1984 .
The couple had a daughter , Joan , and a son , Mark .
They and four grandsons survive Felt .
Days before Pearl Harbor , after earning a law degree in night classes at George Washington University , Felt applied to the FBI and joined it in January 1942 .
He spent most of World War II hunting German spies .
After stints in Seattle , New Orleans and Los Angeles , Hoover named him special agent in charge of the Salt Lake City and Kansas City offices in the late nineteen fifties .
Rising to high positions at the headquarters in the 1960s , he oversaw the training of FBI agents and conducted internal investigations as chief of the inspection division .
In early 1970 , while waiting in an anteroom of the West Wing of the White House , Felt chanced to meet a Navy lieutenant delivering classified messages to the National Security Council staff .
The young man in dress blues was Bob Woodward .
By his own description fiercely ambitious and in need of adult guidance , Woodward tried to wring career counseling from his elder .
He left the White House with the number to Felt 's direct line at the FBI
On July 1 , 1971 , Hoover promoted Felt to deputy associate director , the third in command at the headquarters , beneath Hoover 's right-hand man and longtime companion , Clyde A. Tolson .
With both of his superiors in poor health , Felt increasingly took effective command of the daily work of the FBI .
When Hoover died and Tolson retired , he saw his path to power cleared .
But Nixon denied him , and he seethed with frustrated ambition in summer 1972 .
Breaking Watergate
One evening that summer , a few weeks after the Watergate break-in , Woodward , then a neophyte newspaperman , knocked on Felt 's door in pursuit of the story .
Felt decided to cooperate with him and set up an elaborate system of espionage techniques for clandestine meetings with Woodward .
If Woodward needed to talk , he would move a flowerpot planted with a red flag on the balcony of his apartment on P Street in Washington .
If Felt had a message , Woodward 's home-delivered New York Times would arrive with an inked circle on Page 20 .
Woodward would leave his apartment by the back alley that night and take one taxi to a downtown hotel , then a second to an underground parking garage in the Rosslyn section of Arlington , Virginia .
Within weeks , Felt steered The Post to a story establishing that the Watergate break-in was part of `` a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage '' directed by the White House .
For the next eight months , he did his best to keep the newspaper on the trail , largely by providing , on `` deep background , '' anonymous confirmation of facts reporters had gathered from others .
The Post 's managing editor , Howard Simons , gave him his famous pseudonym , taken from the pornographic movie then in vogue .
Millions of Americans knew him only as a shadowy figure in the 1976 movie made from the Watergate saga , `` All the President 's Men , '' which made `` Woodward and Bernstein '' legends of American journalism .
In the movie , Deep Throat ( Hal Holbrook ) gives Woodward ( Robert Redford ) probably the most famous bit of free advice in the history of investigative journalism .
It was a three-word road map to the heart of the matter : `` Follow the money . ''
Felt never said it .
It was part of the myth that surrounded Deep Throat .