W. Mark Felt

Edgar Hoover often moved Bureau agents around so they would have wide experience. Hoover, Felt observed, "wanted every agent to get into any Field office at anytime.

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 sixteen weeks of training at the FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia and FBI Headquarters in Washington, Felt was first assigned to Texas, working in the field offices in Houston and San Antonio, spending three months in each. Helmut Goldschmidt, operating under the codename "Peasant", was a German agent in custody in England.

Under Felt's direction, his German masters were informed "Peasant" had made his way to the United States, and were fed disinformation on Allied plans.
The Espionage Section was abolished in May 1945 after V-E Day. After the war, he was again in the field, sent first to Seattle, Washington.

Upon passage of the Atomic Energy Act and the creation of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, the Seattle office became responsible for completing background checks of workers at the Hanford plutonium plant near Richland, Washington.

Two months later, Felt was sent to New Orleans, Louisiana, as assistant special agent in charge of the field office. When he was transferred to Los Angeles, California fifteen months later, he held the same rank there. In 1956, Felt was transferred to Salt Lake City, Utah, and promoted to special agent in charge.

In February 1958, he went to Kansas City, Missouri, in his memoir dubbed "the Siberia of Field Offices", where he oversaw additional investigations of organized crime.


J. Hoover appointed Felt the third ranking official in the Bureau in 1971.

He returned to Washington in September 1962.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 Associate Director Clyde A. Sullivan's domestic spying operations, as Sullivan had been engaged in secret unofficial work for the White House.

Mitchell initiated these illegal activities that tainted the investigation.
In 1976, Felt publicly stated he had ordered break-ins and that individual agents were merely obeying orders and should not be punished for it. Felt said on the CBS television program Face the Nation that he would probably be a "scapegoat" for the Bureau's work. "I think this is justified and I'd do it again tomorrow", he said on the program.

Patrick Gray, 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. Felt took Tolson's post as Associate Director, the number-two job in the bureau. Felt served as an honorary pallbearer at Hoover's funeral.
On the day of his 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. Gray, the Bureau doesn't have any secret files", and later accompanied Gray to Hoover's office.

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 mixed feelings about Gray. 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 F.B.I. Gray's visits to all the field offices (except Honolulu), was something that Hoover had never done, and some felt this did much to raise the morale of the agents working in those field offices.

Felt saw all the FBI's files on its investigation of the break-in there in 1972.

As associate director, Felt saw everything compiled on Watergate before it went to Gray. He had been among the first to learn of the investigation, being informed at 7:00 on the morning of June 17. Ronald Kessler, who had spoken to former Bureau agents, reported that throughout the investigation they "were amazed to see material in Woodward and Bernstein's stories lifted almost verbatim from their reports of interviews a few days or weeks earlier."
Contact with Woodward
Bob Woodward first describes Deep Throat in All the President's Men as "a source in the Executive Branch who had access to information at CRP (the Committee to Re-elect the President, Nixon's 1972 campaign organization), as well as at the White House." The book also calls him "an incurable gossip" who was "in a unique position to observe the Executive Branch", a man "whose fight had been worn out in too many battles." Woodward had known the source before Watergate and had discussed politics and government with him.
Woodward in 2005 wrote that he met Felt at the White House in 1969 or 1970 when Woodward was an aide to Admiral Thomas H.

Woodward has written that idea for the nickname first came to Simons because Felt had been providing the information on a deep background basis.
When Felt's name was revealed, it was noted that "My Friend" has the same initial letters as "Mark Felt." Woodward has said this was a coincidence, but in looking back at some of his notes, interviews with Felt during the earliest days of the story were marked with "M.F."
Code for contacting Woodward
Woodward claimed that when he wanted to meet Deep Throat, he would move a flowerpot with a red flag on the balcony of his apartment, number 617, at the Webster House at 1718 P Street, Northwest, and when Deep Throat wanted a meeting, he would circle the page number on page twenty of Woodward's copy of The New York Times and draw clock hands to signal the hour. Adrian Havill questioned these claims in his 1993 biography of Woodward and Bernstein, stating Woodward's balcony faced an interior courtyard and was not visible from the street, but Woodward responded that it has been bricked in since he lived there. Could Felt have had the counterintelligence agents regularly report on the status of my flag and flowerpot? That seems unlikely, but not impossible.
Days after the break-in, Nixon and White House chief of staff H.

Haldeman told President Nixon on June 23, 1972, "Mark Felt wants to cooperate because he's ambitious."
Haldeman informed Nixon that Felt was leaking information
Despite initial suspicions that other agents, including Angelo Lano, had been speaking to the Post, in a taped conversation on October 19, 1972, Haldeman told the president that he had sources, which he declined to name, confirming Felt was speaking to the press. He says White House staff members are concerned that you are the FBI source of leaks to Woodward and Bernstein", to which 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.

Clean and I want a fellow in there that is not part of the old guard and that 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 M. While admitting the break-ins were "extralegal", he justified it as protecting the "greater good." Felt said:
To not take action against these people and know of a bombing in advance would simply be to stick your fingers in your ears and protect your eardrums when the explosion went off and then start the investigation.
The Attorney General in the new Carter administration, Griffin B.

Nixon appeared as a rebuttal witness for the defense, and testified that presidents since Franklin D. Roosevelt had authorized the bureau to engage in break-ins while conducting foreign intelligence and counterespionage investigations. It was Nixon's first courtroom appearance since his resignation in 1974.