Mark Felt's Real Agenda?

It's likely that Watergate was not the beginning of an on going collaboration between Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward and Mark Felt, a collaboration through which Felt may have more than once tried to boost an ambitious but fading career. Additionally, at least one related claim Felt made in his memoir appears to be questionable, at best.

With tons of documents to read involving the Deep Throat story over the years, at least one already suggests that far from a "hero," Felt may have been a J. Edgar Hoover wannabe that co-operated with Bob Woodward on other occasions to advance to the top spot at the FBI.

Following this link to a 2002 Slate report on a lunch between Woodward and Felt, shows that Woodward likely met with Felt to address any fears resulting from Woodward's blunder in disclosing the source to his wife and family. Slate also speculates that Woodward may have wanted to break the Deep Throat story at the time.

Also, as far back as 1999 Felt was reportedly already too far gone to be seen as a credible source of information, supporting the notion that he's little more than a pawn of his family by coming forward at this time. 

In the summer of 1999, [Bob] Woodward showed up unexpectedly at the home of Felt's daughter, Joan, in Santa Rosa, California, north of San Francisco, and took him to lunch, Joan Felt, who was taking care of him at her home, told me.

She recalled that Woodward made his appearance just after a mini-controversy broke in the press late July 1999 about whether Bernstein had told his then-wife, Nora Ephron, that Felt was Deep Throat.

Woodward had been interviewing former FBI officials for a book he was writing on Watergate. However, now confused because of the effects of a stroke, Felt was in no shape to provide credible information.

Joan said her father greeted Woodward like an old friend, and their mysterious meeting appeared to be more of a celebration than an interview, lending support to the notion that Felt was, in fact, Deep Throat. "Woodward just showed up at the door and said he was in the area," Joan Felt said.

"He came in a white limousine, which parked at a schoolyard about 10 blocks away. He walked to the house. He asked if it was OK to have a martini with my father at lunch, and I said it would be fine."

Going back further in time, courtesy of The Atlantic, Felt addressed his career ambitions in a 1979 memoir, The FBI Pyramid.

It did not cross my mind that the President would appoint an outsider to replace Hoover. Had I known this, I would not have been hopeful about the future. There were many trained executives in the FBI who could have effectively handled the job of Director. My own record was good and I allowed myself to think I had an excellent chance.

But the above paragraph doesn't ring true, as it was already known in Washington that Nixon was very likely to appoint an outsider to the post. Felt had to have known this along with everyone else, which leads to possibly the first instance of cooperation between Woodward and Felt - taking out Felt's competition.

Woodward was still new to the Post and already showing an uncanny ability to come up with "inside" information only a few, including Felt could have provided.

When Bob Woodward arrived in the Post newsroom, less than a year before Watergate, he quickly established himself as one of the top investigative reporters on the local staff. Other reporters might spend weeks, months, or even years on a single project (as, indeed, Woodward himself does now). Woodward distinguished himself by delivering stories fast, sometimes coming up with new information on the controversy of the week.

Yet in writing about the D.C. police, Woodward happened to step onto one of the main political battlegrounds in the ongoing struggle between the Nixon Administration and the FBI.

At that time the District of Columbia Police Department was favored by Nixon and particularly by his Attorney General, John Mitchell. Top FBI officials suspected, rightly, that Nixon and Mitchell would have liked to name the D.C. police chief, Jerry V. Wilson, to be the next FBI director. Wilson's police force was everything the FBI was not: it espoused a belief in the need for more-progressive law-enforcement techniques, and it got along well with the Administration.

In short, the FBI viewed the D.C. police force as an ally of the Nixon Administration and thus an implied rebuke to the Bureau and its independent tradition.

The symbolic value of the investigation into police corruption was openly discussed and debated at the time. Here is how Woodward himself put it in an article on January 13, 1972:

Because Washington is the nation's capital and since President Nixon has said he wants to make Washington a model city of law enforcement, the allegation of police corruption has political overtones.

Some investigators say political pressure has been brought to find widespread corruption. They conjecture it is perhaps to discredit the President. On the other hand, some other investigators say pressure has been exerted to not uncover too much and protect the Administration.

While Woodward was writing on the above story, the White house was also already rallying around the DC police; consequently, the very same people and sides later played out in Watergate were already drawn - long before the break in even occurred.

The above and additional information to follow suggests that Woodward may have had high level FBI help gaining access to information that directly discredited Felt's primary outside appointment threat at the time - DC Chief of Police, Wilson. Clearly Watergate wasn't the first, or even next story Woodward stumbled onto with some "help."

The Atlantic piece concludes that Woodward's source was almost certainly FBI as a result of the particular bits of information Woodward produced as regards the attempted assassination of George Wallace.

The FBI had been in charge of the investigation of the D.C. police, and Woodward would have dealt with FBI officials in the course of his reporting.

Then, in mid-May of 1972, with the investigations winding down, the Post's metropolitan staff, and Woodward in particular, shifted their attention to a new story: the attempted assassination of Alabama Governor George Wallace.

By this time Woodward was clearly making considerable and frequent use of a source at the FBI.

As the former Post city editor Barry Sussman has disclosed in his Watergate book, The Great Cover-Up, within hours of the Wallace shooting, when the identity of the assailant was still not publicly known, Woodward volunteered that he had a "friend" who might be able to help.

And indeed, on that day and over the following two weeks, working as part of a team of Post reporters, Woodward was able to come up with details about the life and travels of Arthur Bremer, the man who stalked and finally shot Wallace, virtually as soon as FBI investigators uncovered them.

High federal officials who have reviewed investigative reports on the Wallace shooting said yesterday that there is no evidence whatsoever to indicate that Bremer was a hired killer.

At least 200 FBI agents still were following leads across the country and have found no indication of a conspiracy in the Wallace shooting, federal sources here in Washington said.... officially the FBI declined to comment on the search. [Bob Woodward, May 18.

A reliable federal source close to the investigation termed "incredible" the picture of Bremer's travels being assembled by federal investigators. Bremer has been positively placed in the following places.... [Hedley Burrell and Bob Woodward, May 25.]

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has finished its investigation into the life and travels of suspect Arthur Herman Bremer and has found no evidence of any conspiracy or accomplices in the May 15 shooting of Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace, federal sources said yesterday. [Philip McCombs and Bob Woodward, June 3.]

Two weeks after the last of the above stories on the Wallace shooting, five men were arrested inside the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate. Immediately, on Monday, June 19, Woodward turned to his source at the FBI for help: "Federal sources close to the investigation said the address books contain the name and home telephone number of Howard E. Hunt [sic], with the notations 'W. House' and 'W.H.'" (Bob Woodward and E. J. Bachinski, June 20.)

By Woodward's own description, in All the President's Men, this source was Deep Throat. "It was he who had advised Woodward on June 19 that Howard Hunt was definitely involved in Watergate," Woodward wrote. At the time of the Watergate break-in, of course, "Deep Throat" was not yet the name of a Watergate source but merely the name of a recently released pornographic movie.

Rather, during the summer and early fall of 1972, Woodward spoke to me repeatedly of "my source at the FBI," or, alternatively, of "my friend at the FBI" -- each time making it plain that this was a special, and unusually well-placed, source.

Understanding Felt as a protege of J. Edgar Hoover may provide some insight into what was really playing out at the time of the above events. It's well established that Hoover, more than anyone, knew that power came from information.

Felt may be telling the truth when he says he never intended to bring down Richard Nixon. If he was at all interested in reaching the top spot at the FBI in Hoover's style, he'd likely have much preferred to simply have the goods on some Nixon team members, while leaving an indebted President in place.

But Nixon acted almost immediately in appointing an outsider to the bureau's number one spot. Imagine how that would have made a passed-over Felt feel, given this quote:

Invoking Hoover's name, Felt made clear that he and his colleagues believed that the FBI's traditions and its future were at stake:

In fact, no one could have stopped the driving force of the investigation without an explosion in the Bureau -- not even J. Edgar Hoover. For me, as well as for all the Agents who were involved, it had become a question of our integrity. We were under attack for dragging our feet and as professional law enforcement officers we were determined to go on.

In an article at the Crime Library we see that Hoover and Felt were clearly aligned when Hoover took out his number two, William Sullivan for disagreeing with him. A move that Felt must have believed cleared the way for his own later ascendancy.

By the end of the year, Hoover was still firmly in the saddle.   "With Mark Felt as his right-hand man, he had once again established firm control over the FBI.  He had ended the COINTELPRO operations that had posed the greatest danger to himself and the Bureau, and he had resisted all efforts to draw the FBI into reckless new ventures." (Powers)

Given Felt's conviction and subsequent pardon for un-authorized break ins while investigating the anti-war movement of the late sixties:

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.

it's difficult to argue that Felt would have protested the Watergate break in purely on principle; apparently it had more to do with what or who was being targeted, than the means being employed.

There is significant information available to consider Felt, not as the hero of the left, but a Hoover-bred FBI functionary determined to get and hold onto a job with a willing, if unknowing accomplice in Woodward, Bernstein and The Washington Post.

This post is also available at Blogger News Network.

Comments

[Nickie Goomba]

GREAT GREAT POST!!

Thank you

[Pile On]

Nice post Dan, but I have to ask, are you charging by the word now? :)

[John from WuzzaDem]

Definitive Mark Felt post. Excellent.

[Rhod]

Now THIS is investigative reporting! Terrific. Now we have to prove that Woodward was actually the Hall 9000. Every time I listen to this maundering jackass I wonder if he's had a cerebral event of some kind.