Posted on 06/05/2005 6:34:50 PM PDT by wagglebee
Joan Felt, who played a pivotal role in unraveling the 30-year secret that her father was the mysterious "Deep Throat" source, says he is lucid and feels reassured that he made the right decision.
He is "relieved to get the secret off his chest," Felt said in the first comments by a family member since the revelation last week that W. Mark Felt, then the No. 2 person in the FBI, was the key source in the Washington Post's Watergate investigation that helped bring down President Richard M. Nixon.
As both praise and criticism of Joan Felt and her family swirled last week in the national media, she disclosed the family's motivations for coming forward now, why money was a family consideration and how her father remains a "sensible and wise" participant.
Felt, who has lived with her father in a two-story home in northwest Santa Rosa for the past 13 years, said her 91-year-old father deserved to be released from the secret he had held so long.
"I think it's so important for a person getting into elder years, when death is somewhere around the corner, to be unburdened," Felt said. "At that time of your life, you (shouldn't) be holding up appearances or have something troubling your heart and have to keep it a secret."
Her comments came two days after a media frenzy that included reporters and camera crews camped on her front lawn. Joan Felt, 61, took a quiet moment in her car on the way home from Rohnert Park for an exclusive cell phone interview with The Press Democrat.
While she wouldn't talk about her father's decision to go public, and while the family has refused to make him available for interviews, she was frank about her own motives.
"There were many reasons why we decided to do it. I won't deny that to make money is one of them," Felt said. "My son, Nick, is in law school and he'll owe $100,000 by the time he graduates. I'm still a single mom, still supporting them to one degree or another, and I am not ashamed of this," Felt said.
In the past week, Washington Post Editor Bob Woodward, who closely guarded Felt's identity as the source in many of the key Watergate stories, as well as his partner Carl Bernstein and former Washington Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee, has each publicly questioned Mark Felt's competency and his ability to withstand family pressure to reveal the secret.
Joan Felt said she understands the concern, but the news articles portraying her father as mentally incapacitated are simply wrong. She confirmed that her father has struggled. He suffered a stroke in 2001 and has had a series of surgeries to battle heart problems and repair a broken hip.
Mental capacity defended
"His health is frail, yes, but he's very present and cogent and capable of making decisions," she said.
If the family is successful in reaching a book deal, which some agents have said could be worth more than $1 million, they would be in good company. Woodward and Bernstein wrote a best-selling book on the Watergate scandal, "All the President's Men," which was made into a movie. And Woodward's publisher is rushing into print a book on Mark Felt, "The Secret Man," due out in July.
The story of the unmasking of Deep Throat is inseparable from the story of the Felt family, from a father and daughter estranged following the social revolution of the 1960s to the eventual reconciliation that last week brought the world to a Santa Rosa doorstep.
Mark Felt's formative years were spent in modest circumstances in post-World War I Idaho. He worked his way through the University of Idaho and George Washington University law school. He waited tables, stoked furnaces and worked for an Idaho senator as a clerk.
Fellow University of Idaho student Audrey Robinson caught his eye and the two were married in 1938 by the House chaplain, ready to begin their life in Washington, D.C., together.
Drawn to the FBI in 1942, Felt developed a deep and unwavering commitment to the Bureau that would shape the rest of his life.
"I am willing to stake my loyalty and dedication to my country against that of anyone," he wrote in his memoir, penned in 1979.
While he was wrestling with Watergate, his daughter Joan was raising a family. She gave birth to three children after embracing a counterculture lifestyle that did not include marriage. As Nixon was winning a landslide election in 1972, she was stepping away from an elite education that included two language degrees from Stanford University and traveling to Chile on a Fulbright scholarship to study Spanish.
Her father strongly disapproved, straining their relationship. With the birth of her first child in 1974, Joan Felt became the breadwinner of her young family, working a variety of low-paying jobs and living in small rentals in Guerneville and Santa Rosa.
Around the time of the birth of her youngest son, Nick, she and her father began rebuilding their relationship. Mark and Audrey Felt made trips from Alexandria, Va., to visit the family in Sonoma County.
Audrey Felt's death in 1984 would bring father and daughter even closer, and he made the annual trips to Santa Rosa alone, staying at the Flamingo Hotel.
"When my mother died, my father decided to move out here. My dad has always been the most supportive and beyond-the-call-of-duty father," Joan Felt said.
In 1990, at age 77, the former FBI man severed the last of his Washington ties and moved to Santa Rosa. He rented an apartment for a time, and in 1992 purchased a split-level, five-bedroom home on Redford Place for about $200,000. The lower part of the split-level was remodeled into an apartment for him, with a bedroom-living room, kitchenette and bathroom.
House bought for family
"Dad bought the house for us because I was a single mom. I've been the breadwinner, and I was living in this little, tiny two-bedroom duplex with these three kids," Joan Felt said.
The family settled in -- Mark Felt, Joan Felt and the boys -- Will Felt, then 18; Robbie Jones, then 13; and Nick Jones, then 11. Joan Felt began teaching Spanish at Sonoma State University and at Santa Rosa Junior College.
Mark Felt became a familiar sight going to the store and driving around in his 1989 Buick. Joan Felt took him to meetings of the retired FBI agents association in his wheelchair.
Joan Felt had heard the rumors about her father as published accounts named him, and others, as the man Woodward called Deep Throat. But when Woodward showed up on her doorstep in 1999, she didn't immediately recognize him. Over the course of the visit, however, she began to wonder what a conservative career FBI man had in common with a famous Washington reporter.
Not everything revealed
Joan Felt said her attorney has told her not to reveal when she first knew for sure that her father was Deep Throat. The attorney, John D. O'Connor of Marin County, wrote the Vanity Fair article identifying Felt as Deep Throat and is trying to strike a lucrative book deal for the family.
She did say it took time to persuade her father that he hadn't betrayed the Bureau and that enough time had passed for people to understand that what he did was right.
"We had to help him see that most of the world now considers what he did heroic. At the time it was happening, he wouldn't have gotten that percentage of support, but history has shown it was so important what he did," Joan Felt said.
Her belief helped unify a family in its efforts since at least 1999 to convince the family patriarch that he had not betrayed the FBI's culture of confidentiality.
"One of the things I feel is most precious and special about our family is this relationship with my dad and having him in the intimate circle of the family all these years," Felt said. "I want the world to know how wonderful he is and how wonderful it is to live with him."
"That's the main reason I wanted his story to come forth -- to say what a joy it is to have our elders with us," Felt said.
Friends of the family dispute media accounts that Joan Felt is exploiting her father in some way.
"It's ridiculous," said Elizabeth Martinez, Joan Felt's supervisor at Sonoma State University.
"I have known her for 10 years, and Joan and I have been quite close. She has always seen her father as a hero. I don't mean in terms of what he did in the '70s, but in the sense that he is her father and she loves him very much," Martinez said.
Following the cell phone interview, Joan Felt continued home, to be greeted by a security guard outside her door and media requests stacked high on her kitchen table. She would forgo grading Spanish papers to listen to a CNN interview with Woodward, who detailed the relationship he had with her father.
"We're so proud of him, not for being Deep Throat, but because he's got such a perspective on life. That's the heroic part about him," she said.
"I thought it pretty strange Colson's book was ready for release just as the Felt story was unfolding."
Part of me wonders just what G. Gordon Liddy had to say about all this. I wish I could have gotten THAT on the web. Wonder if he has transcripts posted talking about it.
Adjusting his shorts.
They should be made to forfeit the ill gotten gains under existing Son of Sam laws.
Still trying to figure out how she thinks she's going to make any money off this.
She just did wonders for her son's career. DNC is about the only place he can work. FBI is probably out. But, what Attorney can't pay school loans? Doesn't say much for her assessment of his abilities.
I thought it was all about the O.
I'm shocked I tell you ;)
LOL!
All about money?
Gosh, Golly; Gee Whiz. Who woulda thunk it?
Pax on all their houses!
She won't get one cent from us.
The truth is more like he was waiting for his confederates to expire.
This is quite common because in many cases, if the relative is quite old, is in a wheel chair or needs a walker, he/she can't do stairs. Being closer to ground level is the answer.
Leni
Joan Felt, the "counter-culture" mother had Nick at the age of 37, in the 1980's, long after "counter-culture" was in vogue.
"Felt said. "My son, Nick, is in law school and he'll owe $100,000 by the time he graduates. I'm still a single mom, still supporting them to one degree or another, and I am not ashamed of this," Felt said"
Isn't that her son's problem? I wouldn't dare ask my grandparents (if they were still alive) to admit to something like this just so I could have my grad school paid for.
Besides, he's in LAW SCHOOL. He'll make enough to pay off that loan. How greedy. I almost feel kinda sorry for this 91 year old man.
I heard that Bernstein and Woodward got $5 million for their watergate notes.
From Rush - he is reading an article here:
We're getting close to the thing about this that somewhat irritates me, because we got checkbook journalism going on here. The media is out there talking about how high and mighty and ethical everything was in this story, and we ultimately got checkbook journalism going on here. But that's only half of the thing, if even that, that irritates me. "J. Todd Foster, managing editor of The News-Virginian of Waynesboro, said that in 2003, after being frustrated in their efforts to persuade Mr. Woodward to cooperate, the Felt family had come to him."
So the Felt family is trying to get Woodward, hey, you know, you wouldn't be a millionaire if it weren't for our dad. Nobody would know who you are if it weren't for our dad. Can you give us a dime? And Woodward said screw you. So the Felt family is out there, well, gee whiz, our guy is the real "hero" here, and so they're shopping their book story around, and people won't give them any money, Vanity Fair won't give them any money, I mean, a hundred grand.
But they want money to pay off the bills. I mean, they want a million dollars or some such thing, and still no mention of Bernstein in this story and I'm halfway through it. So anyway, J. Todd Foster said the Felt family had come to him, "about six months after he had approached them on his own hunch that Mr. Felt was Deep Throat - to propose a collaboration. At the time, Mr. Foster was a contributor to People, which he said considered but rejected an article because the Felts wanted payment." So everything is screwing this Felt guy.
They're hoisting him up here as a giant hero but they're watching his family starve at the same time. While everybody else is making millions on this, the Felt family is practically homeless. It's a good thing they don't live in Laguna Beach or they would be homeless. Mr. Foster, managing editor of The News-Virginian, said, "This was always about the money, and they were very up front with me." Oh, no, no, no. This guy is a hero, his family is interested in the historical record. Deep Throat himself said, "Follow the money."
"Mr. Foster and the Felt family then took the project to ReganBooks, an imprint of HarperCollins. But Judith Regan, said that a possible book had collapsed because of serious concerns that Mr. Felt was no longer of sound mind. She probably told him, "The guy is nuts, I can't trust what he's going to write."
I agree. Just what we need anyhow, more lawyers! (rolling eyes)
Yeah well, these days those grandmothers are "sexy senior citizens", so I guess we have to just get used to it/sarcasm off
"He is not anyone any of us should even think of pitying."
You have described the situation well.
That speaks volumes.
Let's see, Felt is 91. Daughter is 61. The youngest "child" is 26. He's either on a slow learning curve or dropped out for awhile. In any event, he isn't very productive. She got a free ride on the house and continues to look for the gravy train.
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