The tale of Deep Throat

WASHINGTON - In 1970, when I was serving as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy and assigned to Adm. Thomas Moorer, the chief of naval operations, I sometimes acted as a courier, taking documents to the White House.

One evening I was dispatched with a package to the lower level of the West Wing of the White House, where there was a little waiting area near the Situation Room. It could be a long wait for the right person to come out and sign for the material, sometimes an hour or more, and after I had been waiting for a while a tall man with perfectly combed gray hair came in and sat down near me. His suit was dark, his shirt white, and his necktie subdued. He was probably 25 to 30 years older and was carrying what looked like a file case or briefcase. He was very distinguished looking and had a studied air of confidence, the posture and calm of someone used to giving orders and having them obeyed instantly.

I could tell he was watching the situation very carefully. There was nothing overbearing in his attentiveness, but his eyes were darting about in a kind of gentlemanly surveillance. After several minutes, I introduced myself. "Lieutenant Bob Woodward," I said, carefully appending a deferential "sir."

"Mark Felt," he said.

I began telling him about myself, that this was my last year in the Navy and I was bringing documents from Admiral Moorer's office. Felt was in no hurry to explain anything about himself or why he was there.

This was a time in my life of considerable anxiety, even consternation, about my future. I had graduated in 1965 from Yale where I had a Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps scholarship that required that I go into the Navy after getting my degree. After four years of service, I had been involuntarily extended an additional year because of the Vietnam War.

During that year in Washington, I expended a great deal of energy trying to find things or people who were interesting. I had a college classmate who was going to clerk for Chief Justice Warren Burger, and I made an effort to develop a friendship with him. To quell my angst and sense of drift, I was taking graduate courses at George Washington University in Shakespeare and another in international relations.

When I mentioned the graduate work to Felt, he perked up immediately, saying he had gone to night law school at GW in the 1930s before joining - and this is the first time he mentioned it - the FBI. While in law school, he said, he had worked full time for a senator - his home-state senator from Idaho. I said that I had been doing some volunteer work at the office of my congressman, John Erlenborn, a Republican, from Wheaton, Ill., where I had been raised.

So we had two connections -graduate work at GW and work with elected representatives from our home states.

Felt and I were like two passengers sitting next to each other on a long airline flight. He showed no interest in striking up a long conversation, but I was intent on it. I finally extracted from him the information that he was an assistant director of the FBI in charge of the inspection division, an important post under Director J. Edgar Hoover. That meant he led teams of agents who went around to FBI field offices to make sure they were adhering to procedures and carrying out Hoover's orders. I later learned this was called the "goon squad."

Here was someone at the center of the secret world I was only glimpsing in my Navy assignment, so I peppered him with questions. As I think back on this accidental but crucial encounter I see that my patter probably verged on the adolescent. Since he wasn't saying much about himself, I turned it into a career counseling session.

I was deferential, but I must have seemed very needy. He was friendly and his interest in me seemed somehow paternal. Still, the most vivid impression I have is that of his distant but formal manner, in most ways a product of Hoover's FBI. I asked Felt for his phone number and he gave me the direct line to his office. (next page »)