Conflicted And Mum For Decades

Felt was born in Idaho in 1913. He graduated from the University of Idaho and George Washington University Law School, and joined the FBI in January 1942. He spent World War II in the bureau's espionage section -- experience that came into play 30 years later as he set up the series of signals and codes he and Woodward used when they needed to meet with one another.

He steadily rose through the bureau's ranks. By the early 1970s, as one of the bureau's top officials, he was beginning to demonstrate political independence. At a White House meeting in 1971, he resisted a directive to begin massive wiretaps or polygraph tests to find the source of leaks about the Nixon administration's national security strategy.

In March 1972, the administration was deeply embarrassed by the disclosure of a memo written by a lobbyist at telecommunications giant ITT. It stated that a $400,000 contribution to Nixon's reelection would cause the Justice Department to abandon an antitrust suit against ITT.

White House special counsel Charles W. Colson asked Nixon's personal counsel, John W. Dean III, to obtain an official FBI judgment that the memo was a forgery. Hoover assigned the task of overseeing its inspection to Felt. But Felt reported several days later that the agency's laboratory could not "make a definite finding," a conclusion that undermined the forgery claim, according to Dean's 1976 book, "Blind Ambition."

"Colson, outraged, called Felt to complain. . . . He insisted that I persuade Felt to change the [FBI's summary] letter, at least to make it innocuous. Felt would not budge, because the director would not budge," Dean wrote. Felt, in his memoir, confirmed that the bureau had been subjected to "partisan instructions and pressure" in the case.

Yesterday, Colson said he was stunned to learn that Felt was Deep Throat, saying he never suspected the FBI official because "he was a professional and that wasn't a professional way to behave."

Shortly after that incident, Hoover died and Felt was passed over to succeed him in favor of Nixon loyalist Gray. As the Watergate investigation began to unfold, Felt was infuriated by what he saw as Gray's capitulation to the White House. Gray was "sharing all the Bureau's knowledge with the White House staff," he wrote in his memoir, which "felt they had neutralized the FBI."

"For me, as well as for all the Agents who were involved, it had become a question of our integrity," Felt wrote. "We were under attack for dragging our feet, and as professional law enforcement officers, we were determined to go on."

Within a week, in fact, the FBI's investigation had begun to develop productive leads; its investigators figured out that funds to pay the burglars were laundered through a bank account in Mexico City linked to Nixon's reelection effort. As a result, Nixon's chief of staff, H.R. "Bob" Haldeman, met with the president on June 23 to urge that Vernon A. Walters, then the CIA's deputy director, tell Gray to "stay the hell out of it" on grounds that it would compromise CIA activities in Mexico, according to a transcript of their conversation.

Gray wanted to do so, Haldeman added, and he just needed an order: "He'll call Mark Felt in, and the two of them -- and Mark Felt wants to cooperate because he's ambitious." Nixon replied, "Yeah." Haldeman went on: "He'll call him in and say, 'We've got the signal from across the [Potomac] river to put the hold on this.' "

Later in the conversation, Haldeman sought reassurance that this was the right course of action: "You seem to think the thing to do is get them to stop?" Nixon replied, "Right, fine." Walters met with Gray that day, and according to a memo Walters wrote, Gray told him "this was a most awkward matter to come up during an election year and he would see what he could do."

None of this was known publicly at the time. But two junior reporters at The Post -- Woodward and Carl Bernstein -- repeatedly wrote articles that pointed toward White House involvement in the break-in and the subsequent coverup.