The inner conflict

He was an FBI loyalist in the image J Edgar Hoover had created for the bureau in its glory days 8212; a career official who lived by the bureau8217;s codes, one of which was the sanctity of an investigation and the protection of secrets. He chased down lawbreakers of all kinds, using whatever means were available to the bureau, and was convicted in 1980 of authorising illegal break-ins of friends of members of the Weather Underground. He was later pardoned by President Reagan.

But if there were reasons to resist playing the role of anonymous source, there were other motives that drove him to talk. Felt believed that the White House was trying to frustrate the FBI8217;s Watergate investigation and that Nixon was determined to bring the FBI to heel after Hoover8217;s death in May 1972, six weeks before the break-in at the Democratic National Committee8217;s Watergate offices occurred.

8216;8216;From the very beginning, it was obvious to the bureau that a cover-up was in progress,8217;8217; Felt wrote in his 1979 memoir, The FBI Pyramid. Felt may have had a personal motivation as well to begin talking to Post reporter Bob Woodward. At the time of Hoover8217;s death, he was a likely successor to take over as FBI director. Instead the White House named a bureau outsider, L Patrick Gray, then an assistant attorney general, as acting director and then leaned on Gray to become a conduit to keep the White House informed of what the FBI was learning.

Felt operated during extraordinary times in the country8217;s history, and in the history of the bureau he had been trained to protect at all costs. Faced with a rogue White House, an explosive investigation and political pressure that must have been excruciating, he decided to spill out secrets, anonymously helping to change the course of history through clandestine meetings with Woodward in the middle of the night in underground parking garages.

Nixon and his White House colleagues during this period were engaged in what the House Judiciary Committee would eventually call a series of criminal acts 8212; obstruction of justice, withholding of material evidence, coercion of witnesses, and misuse of the CIA and the Internal Revenue Service. A secret investigative unit was run from the White House, supported by the CIA, and financed by campaign funds to spy on enemies and to break into a doctor8217;s office in a search for confidential files. Twenty-one participants in what came to be known as the Watergate scandal, including the President8217;s counsel, chief domestic adviser, attorney general and campaign finance director, pled guilty or were convicted of the crimes documented by the FBI and brought to light 8212; with Felt8217;s help.

As the Watergate investigation began to unfold, Felt was infuriated by what he saw as Gray8217;s capitulation to the White House. Gray was 8216;8216;sharing all the Bureau8217;s knowledge with the White House staff,8217;8217; he wrote in his memoir, which 8216;8216;felt they had neutralised the FBI.8217;8217; 8216;8216;For me, as well as for all the agents who were involved, it had become a question of our integrity,8217;8217; Felt wrote. 8216;8216;We were under attack for dragging our feet, and as professional law enforcement officers, we were determined to go on.8217;8217;

Within a week, in fact, the FBI8217;s investigation had begun to develop productive leads; its investigators had figured out that funds to pay the burglars were laundered through a bank account in Mexico City linked to Nixon8217;s re-election effort. As a result, Nixon8217;s chief of staff, H R Haldeman met with the President on June 23 to urge that Vernon A Walters, then the CIA8217;s deputy director, tell Gray to 8216;8216;stay the hell out of it8217;8217; as it would compromise CIA activities in Mexico, according to a transcript of their conversation.

According to a memo Walters wrote, Gray told him 8216;8216;this was a most awkward matter to come up during an election year and he would see what he could do.8217;8217; None of this was known publicly at the time. But two junior reporters at The Washington Post 8212; Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein 8212; repeatedly wrote articles that pointed toward White House involvement in the break-in and the subsequent cover-up. In doing so, they relied heavily on a man they described in their 1974 memoir, All the President8217;s Men, as 8216;8216;a source in the Executive Branch who had access to information at the Nixon re-election effort8230; as well as at the White House.

White House officials suspected Felt was leaking to The Post as early as October 1972. According to an account written five years ago by Chase Culeman-Beckman, Nixon, Haldeman and Dean were speculating about Felt during one of the sessions tape-recorded in the White House. 8216;8216;Is he Catholic?8217;8217; Nixon asked. Told by Haldeman that Felt was Jewish, Nixon replied, 8216;8216;Expletive, the bureau put a Jew in there?8217;8217; To which Haldeman responded, 8216;8216;Well that could explain it.8217;8217; Contrary to their belief, Felt is not Jewish.

Gray was never confirmed as FBI director, and in 1973 William D Ruckelshaus was nominated to replace him. Felt clashed repeatedly with his new boss and left the bureau later that year, well before Nixon was to leave office.

In his memoir, Felt acknowledged speaking once to Woodward, but in that book and whenever else he was asked, he denied being Deep Throat. On the day of his conviction in 1980, Felt told reporters: 8216;8216;I spent my entire adult life working for the government and I always tried to do what I thought was right and what was in the best interest of this country and what would protect the safety of this country,8217;8217; he said. Looking back, that quotation may express one of the motivations that led this otherwise unlikely public servant to engage in the surreptitious actions that led to Nixon8217;s political demise.

LAT-WP