The Man Who Toppled the Ivory Tower...

Profile: Mark Felt
"Follow the money". This famous phrase has inspired generations of investigative reporters, but its author managed to evade detection for 30 years.


It was one of America's greatest mysteries: Who was the anonymous source who had leaked information about the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of US President Richard Nixon in 1974?

Mark Felt, a former deputy head of the FBI, has revealed that it was he who made the suggestion that led to the discovery of the link between the burglary at the Democratic National Committee HQ in Washington's Watergate complex in June 1972, and the financing of Nixon's re-election campaign.

For decades, the informant was known only as Deep Throat. He was the shadowy, chain-smoking character played by Hal Holbrook in the hit movie All the President's Men starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman.

Conflict

Mr Felt, who was responsible for investigating the burglary, has figured prominently in the 30-year guessing game about Deep Throat's identity.

But he repeatedly denied that he was the source who met Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in underground car parks to provide clues to the scandal.


Mr Felt, now 91, lives in retirement in Santa Rosa, California. According to reports, he has lived for decades in the belief that he betrayed his FBI badge by disclosing government secrets.

On Tuesday, his lawyer John O'Connor told US media: "Mark felt that he was somehow a dishonourable guy, an FBI agent who was disloyal, who leaked when he shouldn't have leaked. He kept saying an FBI agent doesn't do this."

Mr Felt's family only learned of his secret three years ago and, according to Mr O'Connor, they talked to him and helped convince him that he "was a hero".

"After talking to him for two to three years, probably for the last six to nine months, he was really convinced he was a hero. He knows he did the right thing. He knows he had to breach his code of ethics to save the country."

Mr Felt's son, Mark Junior, told Vanity Fair in an article detailing the revelation: "He would not have done it if he didn't feel it was the only way to get around the corruption in the White House and Justice Department. He was tortured inside, but never would show it."

'Dashing'

The former FBI official, described by Mr Woodward as a dashing, grey-haired figure, has a few possible motives for doing what he did. One was personal - anger at being passed over for director after the death of J Edgar Hoover. The other was concern that the White House was sabotaging the FBI's Watergate investigation.


In his memoir The FBI Pyramid, Mr Felt wrote that Patrick Gray, who succeeded Hoover, was "sharing all the Bureau's knowledge with the White House staff." He wrote that he "felt they had neutralised the FBI."

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


Mr Gray was never confirmed as FBI director, and in 1973 William D Ruckelshaus took over the bureau. Mr Felt left the bureau later that year.

He had had a long career with the FBI and, according to reports, was seen as a model official. Quoted in the Washington Post, Harry Brandon, who retired from the FBI as deputy assistant for counterintelligence and counterterrorism, described him as: "Straight. Very honest. Very straight."

Mr Felt was born in Idaho in 1913. He attended the University of Idaho and George Washington University Law School, before joining the FBI in January 1942.

During World War II he worked in the agency's espionage section. According to the Washington Post, it was here that he learned counter-intelligence tricks that became part of his relationship with their reporters: a flowerpot on Mr Woodward's balcony would indicate that the reporter required a meeting, while a clock face inked on the reporter's daily New York Times would reveal the time Mr Felt would be waiting in the car park.

Mr Felt steadily rose through the FBI's ranks and by the early 1970s was one of the bureau's top officials.

Pardoned

In 1978, he was involved in one of the most prominent cases of high-ranking FBI officials being the target of criminal charges.

He was indicted with another official, Edward Miller, on charges of authorising illegal break-ins during the Nixon administration on friends of members of the radical anti-Vietnam war movement, the Weather Underground.

They were convicted in 1980 but pardoned a few months later by President Ronald Reagan. The president said they had "acted on high principle to bring an end to the terrorism that was threatening our nation."

Today, while many commentators have praised Mr Felt's role as an informant, some have turned on the former FBI man. The former Nixon speechwriter and presidential hopeful, Pat Buchanan, has described Mr Felt a traitor.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/4598983.stm

Published: 2005/06/01 11:48:26 GMT

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The Scandal that Toppled a President
By Matthew Davis
BBC News, Washington

Watergate is the most notorious political scandal in American history, and Deep Throat the most famous unidentified single source in journalism.



What began as a seemingly innocuous burglary in June 1972 led to the downfall of President Richard Nixon.

It also unearthed a web of political spying, sabotage and bribery.

Some say it changed American political culture forever, knocking the president from his pedestal and emboldening the media.

Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein played a key role in bringing the scandal to light, aided by crucial information from their mysterious informant.

Political nightmare

Watergate is a general term used to describe a complex web of political scandals between 1972 and 1974.

But it also refers specifically to the Watergate complex in Washington DC which houses a hotel and many business offices.

It was here on 17 June 1972 that five men were arrested trying to bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee.

The break-in, during that year's election campaign, was traced to members of a Nixon-support group, the Committee to Re-elect the President.

The burglars and two accomplices were convicted in January 1973, with many, including trial judge John Sirica, suspecting a conspiracy reaching the higher echelons of power.

The affair transformed into a wider political scandal when one of the convicted burglars - who like the others had received a heavy sentence for his silence over the affair - wrote to Sirica alleging a massive cover-up.

Secret recordings

The Senate launched investigations that engulfed major political players including former attorney general John Mitchell and chief White House advisers John Ehrlichman and HR Haldeman.



In April 1974, Nixon bowed to public pressure and released edited transcripts of his taped conversations relating to Watergate.

But it failed to stop the steady erosion of support for his administration, or a public perception that he was implicated in the conspiracy.

In July that year, the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to turn over the tapes relating to the scandal.

Meanwhile, the House of Representatives' Judiciary Committee completed its investigation and passed three articles of impeachment against Nixon.

On 5 August, Nixon gave up transcripts of three recorded conversations.

He admitted he had been aware of the cover-up shortly after the Watergate break-in and that he had tried to halt the FBI's inquiry.

Four days later, he became the only US President to resign from office and was replaced by Vice-President Gerald Ford.

President Ford pardoned Nixon to avoid a trial, while Nixon's chief associates, Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Mitchell, were among those convicted in 1975 for their role.

'Follow the money'

Woodward and Bernstein broke many of the stories as the scandal grew. Their book on the scandal, All the President's Men, became a movie starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford.



Memorable scenes include Woodward's first meeting with Deep Throat, who lights a cigarette in a dark, dismal parking garage, and the source exhorting Woodward to "follow the money".

As Watergate unfolded, Deep Throat became nervous that his role in the Post's investigation would be discovered, Woodward has said.

He is believed to have demanded that the two stop conversing by phone, thinking that the line may be tapped, and they began meeting late at night in a Washington parking garage.

If Woodward wanted a meeting with Deep Throat, the reporter would rearrange a potted plant in his apartment window.

If Deep Throat wanted a meeting with Woodward, he would somehow ensure that page 20 of Woodward's daily New York Times delivery was circled.

For decades there has been speculation about who Deep Throat was, with the cloak-and-dagger intrigue only fuelling the mystery.

Now, the speculation has finally come to an end.


WATERGATE IN DATES
17 June 1972: Burglary at Watergate complex
11 Nov 1972: Nixon re-elected
30 Jan 1973: Seven convicted for Watergate break-in
18 May 1973: Senate begins televised hearings into scandal
17 Nov 1973: Nixon declares 'I am not a crook'
27 July 1974: House impeaches Nixon
8 August 1974: President Nixon resigns



Story from BBC NEWS:
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Published: 2005/05/31 21:22:47 GMT

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Watergate: Watershed Or Water Under the Bridge?

By Richard Allen Greene
BBC News Online


On 9 August 1974 Richard Nixon did something no US president before or since has ever done: He resigned.

His ignominious departure from the White House followed a break-in at the Watergate hotel headquarters of the Democratic National Committee.

The burglars were caught rifling through confidential papers and bugging the office of Nixon's political opponents - and they were linked to the president following investigation by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

The received wisdom has it that Watergate permanently changed American political culture, knocking the chief executive off his pedestal and emboldening the press.

But Stephen Hess, a presidential expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, is not entirely convinced.

"For a relatively short period, that's correct," he told BBC News Online.


The humiliation of Nixon "created - for a while - an exuberant Congress and press that felt itself justified in terms of its investigative powers", he said.

"But over time the balance righted itself."

He credited Nixon's successor, Gerald Ford, with restoring respect for the presidency via his civility and decency.

He said Mr Ford was right to pardon Nixon so the country could put Watergate behind it.

And while Watergate created the precedent for the impeachment of Bill Clinton a generation later, the Clinton impeachment made it more difficult for Congress to impeach a future president.

"So it cycles again," Mr Hess said.

Long-term decline

John Samples of the Cato Institute said Watergate had indeed shaken Americans' confidence in their government - but that it was part of a much larger trend.

"Watergate was not the period when public trust in government was lowest or the year when the largest number of people thought officials were crooked," he said.



I would say only that if some of my judgments were wrong, and some were wrong, they were made in what I believed at the time to be the best interest of the nation
Richard Nixon, announcing his intent to resign, 8 August 1974
Only 35% of people said they thought the government could be trusted "most of the time or just about always" in 1974 - but confidence had begun falling 10 years earlier.

"It started dropping in 1964 and continued until 1980. Watergate had a strong effect, but it was part of a story that had been going on for a decade before," he said.

It was 20 years after Watergate, in 1994, that trust reached its lowest level - 20% - and began climbing again, he added.

But other indicators showed Americans turning off politics around the time of Watergate, he pointed out.

The percentage of eligible voters casting ballots dropped sharply from 1968 to 1973, for example.

And he said Watergate had produced a "cultural shift for elites involved in politics".

"Before Watergate the president was a demi-god. People coming out and questioning the president's truthfulness in public was not something you did in 1965."

"Watergate destroyed that," he said, adding that the Vietnam war also played a role.


'Enormous impact'

Joseph Califano, a long-time Democratic party insider and lawyer who represented the Washington Post during the affair, agreed that the scandal had changed perceptions.

"Watergate had an enormous impact on the way statements by public officials were greeted by the press," he told BBC News Online.

He cited the media response to President George W Bush's recent terror warning as an example.

Press inquiries helped reveal that the alert was based on information several years old.

"That kind of scepticism would have been unthinkable before Watergate," he said.


Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/americas/3542650.stm

Published: 2004/08/08 10:10:48 GMT

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