The story behind 'Deep Throat'

Bob Woodward began to cultivate the most famous anonymous source in history before he was even a reporter. It was 1970. Woodward was finishing a tour in the U.S. Navy. He was delivering classified documents to the Nixon White House.

As Woodward sat in a small waiting area outside the situation room, a tall, distinguished-looking older man sat down beside him. Woodward started to talk... and talk. He tells the story in his new book, “The Secret Man.” It was a chance encounter that would change history. Because Woodward's captive listener turned out to be W. Mark Felt — one of the top men at the FBI.

Brokaw: You pour your heart out to him. You're a needy young man.

Woodward: I was adrift. I had no idea what the the future was. And here was a moment — like two passengers on this airplane — kind of condemned to be together. 'Cause he was waiting to see somebody.

Brokaw:  He was this kind of flamboyant character, a “G Man” through and through. Did that appeal to you at that time?

Woodward: Well, it was his reserve. And that sense of here's somebody who's on the inside of the secrets. 

Brokaw: You write in your book, “The hook was set.” That sounds like you were using him.

Woodward: Yes. And—I was. Kind of—as career counselor I called him my friend. But he was 25, 30 years older. He was kind of like an extra father.

Brokaw: The extra father notion. That's a pretty strong relationship.

Woodward: It is. Yeah.

Brokaw: You know that the real and amateur psychologists out there watching all of this are going to be intrigued by how that relationship developed.

Woodward: Yes. And I share the intrigue.

Woodward must have made a very good impression —at the end of the meeting Felt gave him his direct telephone number at the FBI. When Woodward left the Navy and became a newspaper reporter, the FBI man helped him on some stories. Mark Felt didn't have much use for the press. But he trusted the young Bob Woodward.

Brokaw: Do you think he saw you as a bright, upstanding young man just out of the Navy? And that was maybe part of the reason for the bond that he quickly established?

Woodward: There's a tendency to remember people in the role they have when you meet them. And I was wearing that Navy uniform. I was as buttoned down as he was.

As Woodward's career was just beginning to take off, Mark Felt was going through a career crisis. His mentor and his idol, the powerful and controversial J. Edgar Hoover died — the man who built the FBI. Felt thought he deserved to be named Hoover's successor, but Nixon wanted his own man, his own pipeline into the FBI. He named L. Patrick Gray, a little known Nixon loyalist without many distinguishing credentials. 

"Here was a guy who had no law enforcement experience whatsoever," says FBI historian Ron Kestrel. "And turned out to be so malleable that he would actually involve himself in the cover-up." In the middle of the Watergate investigation, Patrick Gray actually took incriminating documents to his home and burned them.

By now Felt was the number two man at the FBI, but he was plainly unhappy with the turn of events. He kept Woodward on course in the Watergate investigation.

While Patrick Gray himself believes that Mark Felt leaked because he was angry he didn't get the top job at the FBI, Ben Bradlee, who at the time was executive editor of the Washington Post, thinks that wasn't the motivation at all.

"Obviously he wanted that story out or he wouldn't have talked to Woodward. He wanted to shine a light into that dark corner," says Bradlee.

Brokaw: Psychologically, the relationship changed a little bit here, didn't it? There's very little time to talk about your career or how he's doing...

Woodward: That's for sure. No career discussion at this point. We are in the big casino.

The White House was going ballistic about the leaks. And at one point Nixon's chief of staff, Bob Haldeman, told the president he thought he knew who was talking — W. Mark Felt. But they were reluctant to go after Felt, because he knew too much.

Even as the White House suspected that Felt was talking, Felt was involved in his own cover-up of his role as "Deep Throat." FBI memos from the Watergate era show that when Nixon's men demanded that the FBI find out who was leaking to the newspapers, Felt himself ran the investigation.

Brokaw: He was the ultimate agent.

Bernstein: Yeah. He was really good at it. 

Brokaw: And you had no idea this was going on while you were talking with him?

Woodward: No, of course not.

By the spring of 1973, thanks in part to Woodward and Bernstein's reporting, the Watergate investigation was exploding. The president's men were beginning to turn on each other. The Senate was about to begin hearings. And down in the garage, “Deep Throat” told Woodward something genuinely frightening.

Woodward: He was really wrought up. He was tighter than a drum. And this is when he said: "The stakes are so high everyone's life is in danger. There's wiretapping going on. You have no idea what these people will do." It really scared the bejesus out of me.

MORE FROM 'THE SECRET MAN'

'The Secret Man' Section Front

Behind 'Deep Throat' Woodward interview excerpts Watergate figure L. Patrick Gray dies 'The Secret Man' Section Front   Add 'The Secret Man' headlines to your news reader: