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128Tit YHAIll No. 179 R MD THURSDAY, JUNE 2005 How Mark Felt Became As a Friendship — and the Watergate Story — Developed, Source's
By BOB WOODWARD I had been waiting for a while a tall man Wasiungton. Post Staff Wmer with perfectly combed gray hair came in and sat down near me. His suit was dark, In 1970, when I was serving as a lieu- his shirt white and his necktie subdued. tenant in the U.S. Navy and assigned to He was probably 25 to 30 years older than Adm. Thomas H. Moorer, the chief-of na- 1 and was carrying what looked like a file val operations, I sometimes acted as a cou- case or briefcase. He was very distin- rier, taking documents to the White guished-looking and had a studied air of House. confidence, the posture and calm of some- One evening I was dispatched with a one used to giving orders and having package to the lower level of the West them obeyed instantly. Wing of the White House, where there I could tell he was watching the situa- was a little waiting area near the Situation tion very carefully. There was nothing In 1958, W. Mark in the early 1970s, Room. It could be a long wait for the right overbearing in his attentiveness, but his Felt was rising in Bob Woodward was person to come out and sign for the mate- eyes were darting about in a kind of gen- the FBI ranks. trying journalism. rial. sometimes an hour or more, and after tlemanly surveillance. After several min- • Leaks occurred in post-Hoover power struggle. I Nation, A13 • The story behind a lost scoop. MARYLAND ton EDITION lb 35' NnEn m4y wary in RIMS IxormitherelSa9010en Nashopton. r See Amon /...n `Deep Throat' Motives Remained a My‘4tely to Woodward
utes, I introduced myself. "Lieutenant had been involuntarily extended an addi- Bob Woodward," I said, carefully append- tional year because of the Vietnam War. ing a deferential "sir." During that year in Washington, I ex- "Mark Felt," he said. pended a great deal of energy trying to I began telling him about myself, that find things or people who were interest- this was my last year in the Navy and I was ing. I had a college classmate who was go- bringing documents from Adm. Moorer's ing to clerk for Chief Justice Warren E. office. Felt was in no hurry to explain any- Burger, and I made an effort to develop a thing about himself or why he was there. friendship with that classmate. To quell This was a time in my life of consider- my angst and sense of drift, I was taking able anxiety, even consternation, about graduate courses at George Washington my future. I had graduated in 1965 from University. One course was in Shake- Yale, where I had a Naval Reserve Offi- speare, another in international relations. cers' Training Corps scholarship that re- When I mentioned the graduate work quired that I go into the Navy after getting my degree. After four years of service, I See WOOPWARD, A10. Col. I
Nation., A13 ■ At,the FBI, reflections on loyalty. f Federal Page, .421 A10 THURSDAY. JUNE 2, 2005
D.C. police and
telephone experts
which now loomed more ominously. the people I consulted in depth about my future, I had set the hook. Felt was going to be one of
If
investigate the lune [7, /972. break•in at the Democratic Party's national headquarter in the Watergate complex.
DEEP THROAT
WOODWARD AND FELT
True
WASHING FIN
Pas r From Al school before starting real work. WOODWARD, Felt seemed sympathetic to the lost-soul quality of my to Felt, he perked up immediately, saying he had gone to questions. He said that after he had his law degree his first night law school at GW in the 1930s before joining — and job had been with the Federal Trade Commission. His first assignment was to determine if toilet paper with the brand this is the first time he mentioned it — the FBI. While in law school, he said, he had worked full time for a senator - name Red Cross was at an unfair competitive advantage his home-state senator from Idaho. I said that I had been because people thought it was endorsed or approved by the doing some volunteer work at the office of my congress- American Red Cross. The FTC was a classic federal bu- man, John Erlenborn, a Republican from the district in reaucracy — slow and leaden — and he hated it. Within a Wheaton, Ill., where I had been raised. year he had applied to the FBI and been accepted. Law So we had two connections — graduate work at GW and school opened the most doors, he seemed to be saying, but work with elected representatives from our home states. don't get caught in your own equivalent of a toilet-paper in- Felt and I were like two passengers sitting next to each vestigation. other on a long airline flight with nowhere to go and noth- ing really to do but resign ourselves to the dead time. He A TWO-WIES( TRYOUT showed no interest in striking up a long conversation, but I was intent on it I finally extracted from him the in- Coming to The Post formation that he was an assistant director of the FBI in In August 1970, I was formally discharged from the Na- charge of the inspection division, an important post under vy. I had subscribed to The Washington Post, which I knew Director J. Edgar Hoover. That meant he led teams of was led by a colorful, hard-charging editor named Ben Bra- agents who went around to FBI field offices to make sure dlee. There was a toughness and edge to the news coverage they were adhering to procedures and carrying out Hoo- that I liked; it seemed to fit the times, to fit with a general ver's orders. I later learned this was called the "goon sense of where the world was much more than law school. squad." Maybe reporting was something I could do. Here was someone at the center of the secret world I was During my scramble and search for a future, I had sent a only glimpsing in my Navy assignment, so I peppered him letter to The Post asking for a job as a reporter. Somehow with questions about his job and his world. As I think back — I don't remember exactly how — Harry Rosenfeld, The on this accidental but crucial encounter — one of the most Post's metropolitan editor, agreed to see me. He stared at important in my life — I see that my patter probably me through his glasses in some bewilderment Why, he verged on the adolescent. Since he wasn't saying much wondered, would I want to be a reporter? I had zero — ze- about himself, I turned it into a career-counseling session. ro! — experience. Why, he said, would The Washington I was deferential, but I must have seemed very needy. He Post want to hire someone with no experience? But this is was friendly, and his interest in me seemed somehow pa- just crazy enough, Rosenfeld finally said, that we ought to ternal. Still the most vivid impression I have is that of his try it. We'll give you a two-week tryout. distant but formal manner, in most ways'a product of Hoo- he gave After two weeks, I had written perhaps a dozen stories ver's FBI. I asked Felt for his phone number, and or fragments of stories. None had been published or come me the direct line to his office. close to being published. None had even been edited. I believe I encountered him only one more time at the See, you don't know how to do this, Rosenfeld said, White House. But I had set the hook. He was going to be bringing my tryout to a merciful close. But I left the news- one of the people I consulted in depth about my future, room more enthralled than ever. Though I had failed the which now loomed more ominously as the date of my dis- tryout — it was a spectacular crash — I realized I had charge from the Navy approached. At some point I called found something that I loved. The sense of immediacy in him, first at the FBI and then at his home in Virginia. I was the newspaper was overwhelming to me, and I took a job at a little desperate, and rm sure I poured out my heart. I had the Montgomery Sentinel, where Rosenfeld said I could applied to several law schools for that fall, but, at 27, I won- learn how to be a reporter. I told my father that law school dered if I could really stand spending three years in law was off and that I was taking a job, at about $115 a week, as a reporter at a weekly newspaper in Maryland. "You're crazy," my father said, in one of the rare judg- mental statements he had ever made to me. I also called Mark Felt, who, in a gentler way, indicated that he, too, thought this was any. He said he thought newspapers were too shallow and too quick on the draw. Newspapers didn't do in-depth work and rarely got to the bottom of events. Well, I said, I was elated_ Maybe he could help me with stories. He didn't answer, I recall. During the year 1 spent on the Sentinel, I kept in touch with Felt through phone calls to his office or home. We were becoming friends of a sort. He was the mentor, keep- ing me from toilet-paper investigations, and I kept asking for advice. One weekend I drove out to his home in Virginia and met his wife, Audrey. Somewhat to my astonishment, Felt was an admirer of J. Edgar Hoover. He appreciated his orderliness and the way he ran the bureau with rigid procedures and an iron fist Felt said he appreciated that Hoover arrived at the office at 6:30 each morning and everyone knew what was expected. The Nixon White House was another matter, Felt said. The political pressures were immense, he said without being specific. I believe he called it "corrupt" and sinister. Hoo- ver, Felt and the old guard were the wall that protected the FBI, he said. In his own memoir, "The FBI Pyramid: From the In- side," which received almost no attention when it was pub- lished in 1979, five years after President Richard M. Nix- on's resignation. Felt angrily called this a "White House-Justice Department cabal." At the time, pre-Watergate, there was little or no public knowledge of the vast pushing, shoving and outright acri- mony between the Nixon White House and Hoover's FBI. The Watergate investigations later revealed that in 1970 a young White House aide named Tom Charles Huston had come up with a plan to authorize the CIA, the FBI and mil- itary intelligence units to intensify electronic surveillance of "domestic security threats," authorize illegal opening of mail and lift the restrictions on surreptitious entries or break-ins to gather intelligence. Huston warned in a top-secret memo that the plan was "clearly illegal." Nixon initially approved the plan anyway. Hoover strenuously objected, because eavesdropping, Bob Woodward's apartment Woodward would move a flowerpot on his balcony to signal fur a meeting with W. Mark Felt. bupont - effete
Logan Y 1j MILE
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1.110 IP BY NEVIN a ARN-THE Wft511P4UrON PPP
On the night of the break-in at the Watergate complex, FBI official W. Mark Felt was called at home by a night supervisor at the bureau. By Parking garage Rosslyn 8:30 a.m., Felt was at the FBI. About the same Woodward would time, The Washington Post city editor woke Bob meet Felt at the Woodward at home to cover the burglary. bottom level of an underground garage CONFaillT10N AVE in Rosslyn just over - • - the Key Bridge.
Wa5ffidq.turt the Mail Monuroent iNDEFENDENCt AVE
BY GENE 1110PP -Pt YON pAICITON POST THE WASHINGTON POST THILITSDAT. JUNE 2. 2005 All DEEP THROAT WOODWARD AND FELT
This was the moment when a source in the investigative agencies is invaluable. I called Felt. It would be our first talk about Watergate.
Bah Woodward and Cari Bernstein several years atter their reporting helped The Washington Post win a Pulitzer Prize and they published A hest-selling honk.
wrote that he considered Huston "a kind of White House House White of kind "a Huston considered he that wrote
"gauleiter" is not in most dictionaries, but in the four-inch- the in but dictionaries, most in not is "gauleiter" opening mail and breaking into homes and offices of do- of offices and homes into breaking and mail opening
gauleiter over the intelligence community." The word word The community." intelligence the over gauleiter the bureau didn't want competition. Four days later, Nixon Nixon later, days Four competition. want didn't bureau the
mestic security threats was basically the FBI bailiwick and and bailiwick FBI the basically was threats security mestic
a file on every member of Students for a Democratic Soci- Democratic a for Students of member every on file a
rescinded the Huston plan. plan. Huston the rescinded
thick Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of of Dictionary Unabridged Encyclopedic Webster's thick
ety. ety.
commune" in the Los Angeles area, for example, or to open open to or example, for area, Angeles Los the in commune"
in the bureau to "identify every member of every hippie hippie every of member every "identify to bureau the in
sought Hoover's approval on policy matters. matters. policy on approval Hoover's sought seemed uppermost in his mind. mind. his in uppermost seemed
Thus, my friend became the day-to-day manager of all FBI FBI all of manager day-to-day the became friend my Thus,
clearly he was a a was he clearly Nazis. During this period, he had to stop efforts by others others by efforts stop to had he period, this During Nazis.
ficial of a political district under Nazi control.' control.' Nazi under district political a of ficial and the Watergate break-in -- Hoover promoted Felt to be be to Felt promoted Hoover -- break-in Watergate the and
Tolson was also ill and did not come to work many days, days, many work to come not did and ill also was Tolson meaning he had no operational control of the bureau. bureau. the of control operational no had he meaning
the English Language it is defined as 'the leader or chief of- chief or leader 'the as defined is it Language English the
ed to hire me. I started at The Post the next month. month. next the Post The at started I me. hire to ed
the number three official in the F131. Though Hoover's side- Hoover's Though F131. the in official three number the
kick, Clyde Tolson, Tolson, Clyde kick, integrity and independence of the bureau was real and and real was bureau the of independence and integrity
matters as long as he kept Hoover and Tolson informed or or informed Tolson and Hoover kept he as long as matters
someone in the FBI or Justice Department No one one No Department Justice or FBI the in someone
sential that I be careful. The only way to ensure that was to to was that ensure to way only The careful. be I that sential
list and checked in with him. He was relatively free with me me with free relatively was He him. with in checked and list
but insisted that he, the the he, that insisted but
had some information that Vice President Spiro T. Agnew Agnew T. Spiro President Vice that information some had
ing, insistent voice. I promised, and he said that it was es- was it that said he and promised, I voice. insistent ing, tell tell in his desk drawer. I passed this on to Richard Cohen, the the Cohen, Richard to on this passed I drawer. desk his in source at all. Cohen said, and later wrote in his book on the the on book his in wrote later and said, Cohen all. at source
era. He was stern and strict about those ruls with a boom- a with ruls those about strict and stern was He era. tap Maryland reporter for The Post, not identifying the the identifying not Post, The for reporter Maryland tap
Agnew investigation revealed that the vice president had had president vice the that revealed investigation Agnew
had received received had
received such a bribe in his office. office. his in bribe a such received
kept out of anything I might use indirectly or pass onto nth nth onto pass or indirectly use might I anything of out kept
Agnew investigation, that he thought it was "preposter- was it thought he that investigation, Agnew knew about the bribe. We got nowhere. Two years later, the the later, years Two nowhere. got We bribe. the about knew
around Baltimore for the alleged person who supposedly supposedly who person alleged the for Baltimore around
nus " Another Post reporter and I spent a day chasing chasing day a spent I and reporter Post Another " nus
Felt, a much more learned man than most realized, later later realized, most than man learned more much a Felt,
There is little doubt Felt thought the Nixon team were were team Nixon the thought Felt doubt little is There
None of this surfaced directly in our discussions, but but discussions, our in directly surfaced this of None On July 1, 1971 — about a year before Hoover's death death Hoover's before year a about — 1971 1, July On
Though I was busy in my new job, I kept Felt on my call call my on Felt kept I job, new my in busy was I Though
In August, it year after my failed tryout, Rosenfeld decid- Rosenfeld tryout, failed my after year it August, In
In the spring, he said in utter confidence that the FBI FBI the that confidence utter in said he spring, the In
no One One no
that we knew each other other each knew we that
a a
bribe of $2,500 in cash that Agnew had put put had Agnew that cash in $2,500 of bribe
man man
was was
under pressure, and the threat to the the to threat the and pressure, under
• •
technically the number tivAfticiad, tivAfticiad, number the technically
FBI FBI
Mark Felt's Rise at the FBI FBI the at Rise Felt's Mark
Clark Clark
Sen. O. Worth Commission Commission Worth O. Sen.
Assistant to to Assistant
SOLISICL
Mark Felt In In Felt Mark
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