Felt's Family Follows The Money

The family of W. Mark Felt, the ex-FBI official whose alter-ego "Deep Throat" remained in hiding for 30 years after bringing down a president, appears ready to cash in on his newfound fame.

As news broke that Felt was the source who guided two Washington Post reporters as they uncovered the Watergate scandal, Felt's family offered to sell family photographs — the first in an apparent flood of moneymaking opportunities.

Felt's role in the scandal, which forced the resignation of then-President Nixon, surfaced in an article written for Vanity Fair by a family friend, San Francisco attorney John O'Connor.

However, questions remain about what kind of a story Felt can tell today. He suffered a stroke in 2001 and has been in declining health since.

CBS News Correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports that The Washington Post was scooped on its own secret in part because reporter Bob Woodward was concerned that Felt lacked the mental capacity to reveal his own identity.

Felt appeared frail when he shuffled to the doorway of his daughter's house Tuesday to give photographers a brief opportunity to take his picture. His family refused all questions, fueling speculation about how his age has affected his awareness and memory.

The New York Times reports that Felt's family apparently grew eager to share the truth with the world after he began to suffer signs of dementia.

"It's doing me good," the Times also reports Felt as saying outside his home in Santa Rosa, Calif., when asked how he was reacting to the publicity. "I'll arrange to write a book or something, and collect all the money I can."

O'Connor wrote that Felt's daughter Joan, who persuaded her 91-year-old father to go public as "Deep Throat," lamented that the Post's Bob Woodward would get all the credit — and profit — if Felt went to the grave with his secret.

"We could make at least enough money to pay some bills like the debt I've run up for the kids' education," she told Felt, according to the article. "Let's do it for the family."

If money is what they want, Felt's family stands to reap a huge financial windfall, according to literary agents, who estimated Wednesday that a book deal could be worth up to $1 million.

"That is assuming he has a compelling story to tell," said Glen Hartley, president of Writer's Representatives LLC, based out of New York. "A book could easily be valued in the six figures."

Vanity Fair said the Felts were not paid for the article, and Felt's grandson, Nick Jones, said Tuesday that the family has yet to decide how to proceed. Nobody answered the phone Wednesday at Joan Felt's home, where she cares for her father.

Clearly, interest in Felt's story is white-hot.

"All The President's Men," the 1974 book by Woodward and Carl Bernstein about the scandal, ranked as the 43rd best-selling title Wednesday afternoon on Amazon.com, up from about 400th the night before. Requests for the movie jumped twelvefold on Netflix, the online DVD rental service.

O'Connor didn't respond Wednesday to a request from The Associated Press for comment, but he told The Wall Street Journal that he's fielding numerous book and movie offers.

Before Felt's story can be sold, the family must show publishers or filmmakers that he has a compelling and accurate story to tell, said Peter Osnos, chief executive of the publishing company PublicAffairs and a former Post reporter.

"The big issue is, did Felt keep notes or a diary?" Osnos said. "If there is no written record, what you may have is the family scrambling around looking for something to say."

Felt's family will also have to compete with Woodward, whose own Deep Throat book is being rushed into print by Simon & Schuster.

Without Woodward and Bernstein's cooperation, Felt's family won't likely have access to their notes, which the pair sold for $5 million to the University of Texas two years ago.

Bernstein and Woodward said Felt wrestled with whether he was doing right by secretly helping reporters unearth Watergate crimes as "Deep Throat." Three decades later, they said his motives remain fuzzy even to them.

Bernstein dismissed critics, many of them former Nixon administration officials, who say it would have been more honorable for Felt to resign from his post as the FBI's deputy director.

"Clearly this person wanted to effect some kind of end to the criminality and unconstitutionality of what was occurring," Bernstein said on ABC's "Good Morning America. "And given the stories we were writing, we're only speculating here, this might have been the one reliable avenue. All the other institutions were corrupted."

Bob Woodward, speaking on NBC's "Today" show, described Felt as "a very reluctant person in the turmoil of, 'Am I doing the right thing, how do I get this out'."

Felt has acknowledged over the years that he felt passed over when Nixon appointed an FBI outsider and one of his own loyalists, L. Patrick Gray, to lead the FBI. Gray was later implicated in Watergate abuses himself.

A chance meeting at the White House in 1970 between Woodward, then a young Navy courier, and Felt forged the friendship and trust that were critical to The Washington Post's coverage of the Watergate scandal.

Two years later, Woodward and Bernstein were upstart reporters covering the Watergate scandal for the Post — and Felt became the secretive source their editor dubbed "Deep Throat."

Their first conversation about Watergate took place within days of the June 1972 break-in when the reporter called Felt, Woodward wrote in an article for the Post's Thursday editions.

Why did Felt leak information — likely an illegal act — in spite of the risk? Woodward surmised that Felt was protecting the FBI's integrity and independence as well as making Nixon and his aides answer for their actions.

"There is little doubt that Felt thought of the Nixon team as Nazis," Woodward wrote. "He had nothing but contempt for the Nixon White House and their efforts to manipulate the bureau for political reasons."

Simon & Schuster and CBSNews.com are both owned by Viacom.