Lawman's Unwavering Compass Led Him to White House Showdown

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'Deep Throat' Dead at 95

Mark Felt, the man better known as Deep Throat, has died at the age of 95 at his home in California from congestive heart failure. Felt's information, given to Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, helped uncover the Watergate scandal.

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Felt, who saw all the FBI investigative paperwork on Watergate, was acquainted with Woodward from a chance meeting at the White House in 1970, when Woodward was still in the Navy. After Woodward became a reporter, Felt helped him on a story about the attempted assassination in May 1972 of George C. Wallace Jr., the segregationist Alabama governor then running for president.

Days after the June 17, 1972, break-in at the Watergate, Felt told Woodward that The Post could safely make a connection between the burglars and a former CIA agent working at the White House, E. Howard Hunt.

Months later, Felt again provided key context and reassurance, telling Woodward that a story tying Nixon's campaign committee to the break-in could be "much stronger" than the first draft and still be on solid ground.

One of the most important encounters between Woodward and his source came Oct. 8, 1972. In the early hours in a deserted parking garage in Rosslyn, Felt laid out a much broader view of the scandal than Woodward and Bernstein had yet imagined.

"On evenings such as these, Deep Throat had talked about how politics had infiltrated every corner of government -- a strong-arm takeover of the agencies by the Nixon White House. . . . He had once called it the 'switchblade mentality' -- and had referred to the willingness of the president's men to fight dirty and for keeps," Woodward and Bernstein wrote in "All the President's Men." "The Nixon White House worried him. 'They are underhanded and unknowable,' he had said numerous times."

Felt urged Woodward to follow the case to the top: to Nixon's former attorney general, John N. Mitchell; to Nixon's inner brace of aides, H.R. "Bob" Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman; and even to Nixon himself.

"Only the president and Mitchell know" everything, he hinted.

It took many newspaper stories (not all of them first reported by The Post), a House and Senate investigation, the revelation of a secret tape recording system in the Oval Office, the firing of a special prosecutor, the opening of articles of impeachment and the discovery of a "smoking gun" tape recording before Nixon resigned Aug. 9, 1974.

The Post won journalism's highest honor, the Pulitzer Prize for public service, in 1973 for its investigation of the Watergate case.

That same year, Felt was passed over for the job of FBI director a second time, and he retired from the bureau that summer.

But in 1978, he was drawn back into the public view when he and another top FBI official, Edward Miller, were indicted for nine break-ins in New York and New Jersey that had happened in 1972 and 1973.

Felt said he believed he was acting with the approval of Hoover when he authorized the break-ins of people who the FBI believed were connected to the Weather Underground. When he was arraigned, several hundred FBI agents greeted him at the courthouse in a show of solidarity.