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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"We really don't know to this day everything that Mark Felt did or didn't do in Watergate and his motives," said GWU's Feldstein. "All we really know is what Bob Woodward said and what Felt wrote in that first memoir. . . . Fundamentally, he was a loyal aide-de-camp to J. Edgar Hoover, who carried out Hoover's will. Watergate was really a tiny percentage of what he did. He has a lot to answer for up there at the pearly gates."

After Hoover's death May 2, 1972, Nixon appointed Gray as acting director of the agency. Felt was infuriated by Gray's capitulation to the administration's demands, including turning over FBI investigative files to the White House staff. But he succeeded in persuading Gray to resist Nixon's attempt to get the FBI off the case of the Watergate burglary.

While Gray worked with the White House and spent part of each week visiting most of the FBI's bureaus across the country, Felt was in operational charge of the agency. But after a disastrous confirmation hearing, Gray resigned, and Nixon refused to promote Felt, instead appointing William D. Ruckelshaus to the top FBI spot.

Ruckelshaus soon accused Felt of leaking information about illegal wiretaps -- not to The Washington Post, but to the New York Times. Felt angrily denied the charge, then immediately retired in 1973. Even in retirement, he stayed in touch with sources and reporters and tipped off Woodward one last time. The secret White House tape recordings that were rumored to exonerate Nixon contained "one or more . . . deliberate erasures," he said.

Felt moved to Santa Rosa from Alexandria in 1989. He suffered a stroke in 1999 and a second one in 2001. He was under hospice care at home when he died.

He met the other half of the Woodward and Bernstein duo just last month.

His son, Mark, became an Air Force pilot and flew then-Vice President George H.W. Bush in Air Force Two. His daughter, after living a countercultural life in California, became a teacher and lives in Santa Rosa. Survivors also include several grandchildren.

Because of questions about his memory by 2005, it is unclear whether Felt or co-author O'Connor wrote in his last book: "People will debate for a long time whether I did the right thing by helping Woodward. The bottom line is that we did get the whole truth out, and isn't that what the FBI is supposed to do?"

Associate Editor Bob Woodward and staff writers Anita Kumar, Martin Weil and Clarence Williams contributed to this report.