Mark Felt

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Mark Felt : biography

17 August 1913 – 18 December 2008

Family and early career

William Mark Felt was born on August 17, 1913, in Twin Falls, Idaho, the son of carpenter and building contractor Mark Earl Felt and his wife, the former Rose R. Dygert. His paternal grandfather was a Free Will Baptist minister. His maternal grandparents were born in Canada and Scotland, respectively; through his maternal grandfather, Felt was a relative of American Revolutionary War General Nicholas Herkimer. After graduating from Twin Falls High School in 1931, he received a BA from the University of Idaho in 1935, and was a member and president of the Gamma Gamma chapter of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity.

He went to Washington, D.C., to work in the office of U.S. Senator James P. Pope (D-Idaho). In 1938, Felt married Audrey Robinson of Gooding, Idaho, whom he had known when they were both students at the University of Idaho. She had come to Washington to work at the Bureau of Internal Revenue, and they were wed by the chaplain of the United States House of Representatives, the Rev. Sheara Montgomery. Audrey, who died in 1984, and Felt had two children, Joan and Mark.

Felt stayed on with Pope’s successor in the Senate, David Worth Clark (D-Idaho). Felt attended The George Washington University Law School at night, earning his law 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 the work. His workload was very light. He was assigned a case to investigate whether a toilet paper brand called "Red Cross" was misleading consumers into thinking it was endorsed by the American Red Cross. Felt wrote in his memoir:

My research, which required days of travel and hundreds of interviews, produced two definite conclusions:
1. Most people did use toilet tissue.
2. Most people did not appreciate being asked about it.
That was when I started looking for other employment.

He applied for a job with the FBI in November 1941 and was accepted. His first day at the Bureau was January 26, 1942.

Pardon

On February 17, 1973, Nixon nominated Gray as Hoover’s permanent replacement as Director. Until then, Gray had been in limbo as Acting Director. In another taped conversation on February 28, Nixon spoke to Dean about Felt’s acting as an informant, and mentioned that he had never met him. Gray was forced to resign on April 27, after it was revealed Gray had destroyed a file that had been in the White House safe of E. Howard Hunt. Gray told his superiors that Felt should be named as his successor.

The day Gray resigned, Kleindienst spoke to Nixon, urging him to appoint Felt as Gray’s replacement, but Nixon instead appointed William Ruckelshaus. Stanley Kutler reported that Nixon said, "I don’t want him. I can’t have him. I just talked to Bill Ruckelshaus and Bill is a Mr. Clean and I want a fellow in there that is not part of the old guard and that is not part of that infighting in there." On another White House tape, from May 11, 1973, Nixon and White House Chief of Staff, Alexander M. Haig, spoke of Felt leaking material to The New York Times. Nixon said, "he’s a bad guy, you see," and that William Sullivan had told him Felt’s ambition was to be Director of the Bureau.

Felt called his relationship with Ruckelshaus "stormy." He said in his memoir Ruckelshaus was a "security guard sent to see that the FBI did nothing which would displease Mr. Nixon." Felt retired from the Bureau on June 22, 1973, ending a thirty-one-year career.

Trial and conviction

In the early 1970s, Felt oversaw operation COINTELPRO during a controversial period in the FBI’s history. The FBI was pursuing peaceful protesters such as The Camden 28, as well as radicals, such as the Weather Underground who had planted bombs at the Capitol, the Pentagon, and the State Department. Felt, along with Edward S. Miller, authorized FBI agents to break into homes secretly in 1972 and 1973, without a search warrant, on nine separate occasions. These kinds of FBI burglaries 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, and did not lead 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).