Mark Felt facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Mark Felt
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| 2nd Associate Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation | |
| In office May 3, 1972 – June 22, 1973 |
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| President | Richard Nixon |
| Preceded by | Clyde Tolson |
| Succeeded by | James B. Adams |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
William Mark Felt
August 17, 1913 Twin Falls, Idaho, U.S. |
| Died | December 18, 2008 (aged 95) Santa Rosa, California, U.S. |
| Spouse |
Audrey Isabelle Robinson
(m. 1938; died 1984) |
| Children | 2 |
| Alma mater |
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William Mark Felt Sr. (August 17, 1913 – December 18, 2008) was an American law enforcement officer who worked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 1942 to 1973 and was known for his role in the Watergate scandal. Felt was an FBI special agent who eventually rose to the position of Associate Director, the Bureau's second-highest-ranking post. Felt worked in several FBI field offices prior to his promotion to the Bureau's headquarters. In 1980, he was convicted of having violated the civil rights of people thought to be associated with members of the Weather Underground, by ordering FBI agents to break into their homes and search the premises as part of an attempt to prevent bombings. He was ordered to pay a fine, but was pardoned by President Ronald Reagan during his appeal.
In 2005, at age 91, Felt revealed to Vanity Fair magazine that during his tenure as associate director of the FBI he had been the notorious anonymous source, who provided The Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein with critical information about the Watergate scandal, which ultimately led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974.
Felt published two memoirs: The FBI Pyramid in 1979 (updated in 2006) and A G-Man's Life, written with John O'Connor in 2006. In 2012, the FBI released Felt's personnel file covering the period from 1941 to 1978. The agency also released files pertaining to an extortion threat made against Felt in 1956.
Contents
Early life and career
Born on August 17, 1913, in Twin Falls, Idaho, Felt was the son of Rose R. Dygert and Mark Earl Felt, a carpenter and building contractor. His paternal grandfather was a Free Will Baptist minister. His maternal grandparents were born in Canada and Scotland. Through his maternal grandfather, Felt was descended from Revolutionary War general Nicholas Herkimer of New York.
After graduating from Twin Falls High School in 1931, Felt attended the University of Idaho in Moscow. He was a member and president of the Gamma Gamma chapter of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity, and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1935.
Felt then went to Washington, D.C., to work in the office of Democratic U.S. Senator James P. Pope. In 1938, Felt married Audrey Robinson of Gooding, Idaho, whom he had known when they were students at the University of Idaho. She had come to Washington to work at the Bureau of Internal Revenue. Their wedding was officiated by the chaplain of the United States House of Representatives, the Rev. Sheara Montgomery. Audrey died on July 20, 1984; she and Felt had two children, Joan and Mark.
Felt stayed on with Pope's successor in the Senate, David Worth Clark (D-Idaho). He attended the George Washington University Law School at night, earning his J.D. degree in 1940, and was admitted to the District of Columbia Bar in 1941.
Upon graduation, Felt took a position at the Federal Trade Commission but did not enjoy his work. His workload was very light, and he was assigned to investigate whether a toilet paper brand, called "Red Cross", was misleading consumers into thinking it was endorsed by the American Red Cross.
He applied for a job with the FBI in November 1941 and was accepted. His first day at the Bureau was January 26, 1942.
Early FBI years
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover often moved Bureau agents around so they would have wide experience in the field. This was typical of other agencies and corporations of the time. Felt observed that Hoover "wanted every agent to get into any field office at any time. Since he [Hoover] had never been transferred and did not have a family, he had no idea of the financial and personal hardship involved."
After completing 16 weeks of training at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, and FBI Headquarters in Washington, Felt was assigned to Texas, spending three months each in the field offices in Houston and San Antonio. He returned to FBI Headquarters, where he was assigned to the Espionage Section of the Domestic Intelligence Division, tracking down spies and saboteurs during World War II. He worked on the Major Case Desk. His most notable counterintelligence work was on the "Peasant" case. Helmut Goldschmidt, operating under the codename "Peasant", was a German agent in custody in England. Under Felt's direction, his German masters were led to believe that "Peasant" had made his way to the United States, and thus were fed disinformation on Allied plans.
The Espionage Section was abolished in May 1945 after V-E Day. After the war, Felt was assigned to the Seattle field office. After two years of general work, he spent another two as a firearms instructor and was promoted from agent to supervisor. Upon passage of the Atomic Energy Act and the creation of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, the Seattle office became responsible for completing background checks of workers at the Hanford plutonium plant near Richland, Washington. Felt oversaw those investigations. In 1954 Felt returned briefly to Washington as an inspector's aide. Two months later, he was sent to New Orleans as Assistant Special Agent-in-Charge of the field office. When he was transferred to Los Angeles fifteen months later, he held the same rank there.
Middle career
Felt returned to Washington, D.C., in September 1962. As assistant to the bureau's assistant director in charge of the Training Division, Felt helped oversee the FBI Academy. In November 1964, he was promoted to an Assistant Director of the Bureau, as Chief Inspector of the Bureau and Head of the Inspection Division. This division oversaw compliance with Bureau regulations and conducted internal investigations.
On July 1, 1971, Felt was promoted by Hoover to Deputy Associate Director, assisting Associate Director Clyde Tolson. Hoover's right-hand man for decades, Tolson was in failing health and unable to carry out his duties. Richard Gid Powers wrote that Hoover installed Felt to rein in William C. Sullivan's domestic spying operations, as Sullivan had been engaged in secret unofficial work for the White House. In his memoir, Felt quoted Hoover as having said, "I need someone who can control Sullivan. I think you know he has been getting out of hand." In his book, The Bureau, Ronald Kessler said that Felt "managed to please Hoover by being tactful with him and tough on agents". Curt Gentry described Felt as "the director's latest fair-haired boy", who had "no inherent power" in his new post, the real number three being John P. Mohr.
Weather Underground investigations
Among the criminal groups that the FBI investigated in the early 1970s was the Weather Underground. Their case was dismissed by the court because it concluded that the FBI had conducted illegal activities, including unauthorized wiretaps, break-ins, and mail interceptions. The lead federal prosecutor on the case, William C. Ibershof, claims that Felt and Attorney General John Mitchell initiated these illegal activities that tainted the investigation.
After Hoover's death
Hoover died in his sleep and was found on the morning of May 2, 1972. Tolson was nominally in charge until the next day, when Nixon appointed L. Patrick Gray as Acting FBI Director. Tolson submitted his resignation, which Gray accepted. Felt succeeded to Tolson's post as Associate Director, the number-two job in the Bureau. Felt served as an honorary pallbearer at Hoover's funeral.
On the day of Hoover's death, Hoover's secretary for five decades, Helen Gandy, began destroying his files. She turned over twelve boxes of the "Official/Confidential" files to Felt on May 4, 1972. These contained 167 files and 17,750 pages, many of them containing derogatory information about individuals whom Hoover had investigated. He used this information as power over them. Felt stored the files in his office.
The existence of such files had long been rumored. Gray told the press that afternoon that "there are no dossiers or secret files. There are just general files and I took steps to preserve their integrity." Felt earlier that day had told Gray, "Mr. Gray, the Bureau doesn't have any secret files", and later accompanied Gray to Hoover's office. They found Gandy boxing up papers. Felt said Gray "looked casually at an open file drawer and approved her work", though Gray would later deny he looked at anything. Gandy retained Hoover's "Personal File" and destroyed it.
When Felt was called to testify in 1975 by the U.S. House about the destruction of Hoover's papers, he said, "There's no serious problems if we lose some papers. I don't see anything wrong and I still don't." At the same hearing, Gandy claimed that she had destroyed Hoover's personal files only after receiving Gray's approval. In a letter submitted to the committee in rebuttal of Gandy's testimony, Gray vehemently denied ever giving such permission. Both Gandy's testimony and Gray's letter were included in the committee's final report.
In his memoir, Felt expressed mixed feelings about Gray. As its second director, Gray was the first person appointed as head of the FBI who had no background in the agency, but he had command experience in the Navy, had been an Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department, and been nominated to be its Deputy Attorney General, its number two position, at the time of Hoover's death. While noting Gray did work hard, Felt was critical of how often he was away from FBI headquarters. Gray lived in Stonington, Connecticut, and commuted to Washington. He also visited all of the Bureau's field offices except Honolulu. His frequent absences led to the nickname "Three-Day Gray". These absences, combined with Gray's hospitalization and recuperation from November 20, 1972, to January 2, 1973, meant that Felt was effectively in charge for much of his final year at the Bureau. Bob Woodward wrote "Gray got to be director of the FBI and Felt did the work."
Gray's defenders would later argue that Gray had practiced a management style that differed from Hoover's. Gray's program of field office visits was something that Hoover had not done since his early years as director; some believed that Gray's visits helped raise the morale of the field agents. Gray's leadership style seemed to continue what he had learned as a captain in the US Navy, in which the executive officer concentrates on the basic operation of the ship while the captain concentrates on its position and heading. Felt believed Gray's methods were an unnecessary distraction from the work of the FBI and showed a lack of leadership. He believed that he was not the only career manager at the FBI who disapproved of Gray's methods, all of whom had served only under Hoover.
Watergate
As Associate Director, Felt saw everything compiled on Watergate before it was given to Gray. The Agent in Charge, Charles Nuzum, sent his findings to Investigative Division Head Robert Gebhardt, who passed the information on to Felt. From the day of the break-in, June 17, 1972, until the FBI investigation was mostly completed in June 1973, Felt was the key control point for FBI information. He had been among the first to learn of the investigation, being informed the morning of June 17. Ronald Kessler, who spoke to former Bureau agents, reported that throughout the investigation they "were amazed to see material in Woodward and Bernstein's stories lifted almost verbatim from their reports of interviews a few days or weeks earlier".
Trial and conviction
In the early 1970s, Felt had supervised Operation COINTELPRO, initiated by Hoover in the 1950s. This period of FBI history has generated great controversy for its abuses of private citizens' rights. The FBI was spying on, infiltrating, and disrupting the Civil Rights Movement, Anti-War Movement, Black Panthers, and other New Left movements. By 1972, Felt was heading the investigation into the Weather Underground, which had planted bombs at the Capitol, the Pentagon, and the State Department building. Felt, along with Edward S. Miller, ordered FBI agents to break into homes secretly in 1972 and 1973, without a search warrant, on nine separate occasions. These kinds of FBI operations were known as "black bag jobs". The break-ins occurred at five addresses in New York and New Jersey, at the homes of relatives and acquaintances of Weather Underground members. They did not contribute to the capture of any fugitives. The use of "black bag jobs" by the FBI was declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court in the Plamondon case, 407 U.S. 297 (1972).
Many agents were investigated after the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI and the subsequent Church Committee of Congress revealed the FBI's illegal activities. In 1976, Felt publicly stated he had ordered break-ins and recommended against punishment of individual agents who had carried out orders. Felt also stated that Gray had also authorized the break-ins, but Gray denied this. Felt said on the CBS television program Face the Nation he would probably be a "scapegoat" for the Bureau's work. "I think this is justified and I'd do it again tomorrow," he said on the program. While admitting the break-ins were "extralegal", he justified them as protecting the "greater good".
Griffin Bell, the Attorney General in the Jimmy Carter administration, directed investigation of these cases. On April 10, 1978, a federal grand jury charged Felt, Miller, and Gray with conspiracy to violate the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens by searching their homes without warrants.
Felt told his biographer Ronald Kessler: "I was shocked that I was indicted. You would be too, if you did what you thought was in the best interests of the country and someone on technical grounds indicted you."
Felt, Gray, and Miller were arraigned in Washington, D.C., on April 20. Seven hundred current and former FBI agents were outside the courthouse applauding the "Washington Three", as Felt referred to himself and his colleagues in his memoir. Gray's case did not go to trial and was dropped by the government for lack of evidence on December 11, 1980.
Felt and Miller attempted to plea bargain with the government, willing to agree to a misdemeanor guilty plea to conducting searches without warrants—a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2236. The government rejected the offer in 1979. After eight postponements, the case against Felt and Miller went to trial in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on September 18, 1980. On October 29, former President Nixon appeared as a rebuttal witness for the defense. He testified that in authorizing the Bureau to conduct break-ins to gather foreign intelligence information "he was acting on precedents established by a number of Presidential directives dating to 1939." It was Nixon's first courtroom appearance since before Watergate. He had avoided appearing in any legal proceedings during it and had been pardoned by President Gerald Ford after his resignation. Nixon also contributed money to Felt's defense fund, since Felt's legal expenses were running over $600,000 by then. Also testifying were former Attorneys General Mitchell, Kleindienst, Herbert Brownell Jr., Nicholas Katzenbach, and Ramsey Clark, all of whom said warrantless searches in national security matters were commonplace and understood not to be illegal. Mitchell and Kleindienst denied they had authorized any of the break-ins at issue in the trial. The Bureau used a national security justification for the searches because it alleged the Weather Underground was in the employ of Cuba.
The jury returned guilty verdicts on November 6, 1980, two days after the presidential election. The charge carried a maximum sentence of ten years in prison and a $10,000 fine; on December 15, Judge William B. Bryant fined Felt $5,000 and Miller $3,500, but imposed no jail time for either. Writing an OpEd piece in The New York Times a week after the conviction, attorney Roy Cohn claimed that Felt and Miller were being used as scapegoats by the Carter administration and it was an unfair prosecution. Cohn wrote the break-ins were the "final dirty trick" of the Nixon administration, and there had been no "personal motive" to their actions. The New York Times praised the convictions, saying "the case has established that zeal is no excuse for violating the Constitution."
Felt and Miller appealed their verdicts.
Pardon
In a phone call on January 30, 1981, Edwin Meese encouraged President Ronald Reagan to issue a pardon. After further encouragement from Felt's former colleagues, President Reagan pardoned Felt and Miller. The pardon was signed on March 26, but due to the assassination attempt on March 30, was not announced to the public until April 15, 1981.
Nixon sent Felt and Miller bottles of champagne with the note "Justice ultimately prevails." The New York Times disapproved in an editorial, saying that the United States "deserved better than a gratuitous revision of the record by the President". Felt and Miller said they would seek repayment of their legal fees from the government.
The prosecutor at the trial, John W. Nields Jr., said, "I would warrant that whoever is responsible for the pardons did not read the record of the trial and did not know the facts of the case." Nields also complained that the White House did not consult with the prosecutors in the case, which was contrary to the usual practice when a pardon was under consideration.
At a press conference the day of the announcement, Miller said, "I certainly owe the Gipper one." Carter Attorney General Griffin Bell said he did not object to the pardons, as the convictions had upheld constitutional principles.
Despite their pardons, Felt and Miller won permission from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to appeal their convictions so as to remove it from their record and to prevent it from being used in civil suits by victims of the break-ins they had ordered. Ultimately, the court restored Felt's law license in 1982, based on Reagan's pardon. In June 1982, Felt and Miller testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee's security and terrorism subcommittee. They said that the restrictions placed on the FBI by Attorney General Edward H. Levi were threatening the country's safety.
Family
Felt married Audrey Robinson in 1938. They had two children, Joan and Mark. Audrey died on July 20, 1984.
His daughter Joan earned two degrees from Stanford University and won a Fulbright Scholarship. She has three sons, Will Felt (a.k.a. Ludi, born 1974), Robbie Jones (born circa 1979), and Nick Jones (born circa 1981).
Memoir
Felt published his memoir The FBI Pyramid: From the Inside in 1979. It was co-written with Hoover biographer Ralph de Toledano, though the latter's name appears only in the copyright notice.
Appraisal of Watergate role
Public response to Felt and his actions has varied widely since the 2005 revelations. In the immediate aftermath, Felt's family called him an "American hero", suggesting that he leaked information for moral or patriotic reasons. G. Gordon Liddy, an attorney and former FBI agent who was convicted of burglary in the Watergate scandal, said Felt should have gone to the grand jury rather than leak.
Speculation about Felt's motives for leaking has also varied widely. Some suggested that it was revenge for Nixon's choosing Gray over Felt to replace Hoover as FBI Director. Others suggest Felt acted out of institutional loyalty to the FBI.
Death
Felt died at home, in his sleep, on December 18, 2008. He was 95 years old and his death was attributed to heart failure.
See also
In Spanish: W. Mark Felt para niños
