William Mark Felt, Sr. was an
agentSpecial agent is usually the title for a detective or investigator for a state, county, municipal, federal or tribal government. An agent is a worker for any federal agency, and a secret agent is one who works for an intelligence agency....
of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
, who retired in 1973 as the Bureau's
Associate DirectorThe Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is a senior United States government position in the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The office is second in command to the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and takes over responsibilities as Director should his/her...
. After denying his involvement with reporters
Bob WoodwardRobert Upshur Woodward is an American investigative journalist and non-fiction author. He has worked for The Washington Post since 1971 as a reporter, and is currently an associate editor of the Post....
and
Carl BernsteinCarl Bernstein is an American investigative journalist who, at The Washington Post, teamed up with Bob Woodward; the two did the majority of the most important news reporting on the Watergate scandal. These scandals led to numerous government investigations, the indictment of a vast number of...
for 30 years, Felt revealed himself on May 31, 2005, to be the
Watergate scandalThe Watergate scandal was a political scandal during the 1970s in the United States resulting from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement...
's
whistleblowerA whistleblower is a person who tells the public or someone in authority about alleged dishonest or illegal activities occurring in a government department, a public or private organization, or a company...
, "
Deep ThroatDeep Throat is the pseudonym given to the secret informant who provided information to Bob Woodward of The Washington Post in 1972 about the involvement of United States President Richard Nixon's administration in what came to be known as the Watergate scandal...
".
Felt worked in several FBI field offices prior to his promotion to the Bureau's
headquartersThe J. Edgar Hoover Building is located in Washington, D.C. It is the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation . The building, named for former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, is located at 935 Pennsylvania Avenue NW. The building received its official name, the J. Edgar Hoover F.B.I...
in
Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
During the early investigation of the Watergate scandal (1972–1974), and shortly after the death of longtime FBI Director
J. Edgar HooverJohn Edgar Hoover was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States. Appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation—predecessor to the FBI—in 1924, he was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director until his death in 1972...
on May 2, 1972, Felt was the Bureau's Associate Director, the second-ranking post in the FBI.
