Deep Throat's other secret: Wife's death was suicide

WASHINGTON — W. Mark Felt, who for nearly 33 years denied he was Deep Throat, also held a tragic secret from most of his family: It was suicide, not a heart attack, that felled his wife after years of strain from Felt's FBI career and ensuing legal troubles.

In his new book, "A G-Man's Life: The FBI, Being 'Deep Throat' and the Struggle for Honor in Washington," Felt reveals for the first time that Audrey Robinson Felt, his wife of 46 years, shot herself in 1984 with his .38-caliber service revolver.

The book, co-authored with John O'Connor, the lawyer whose Vanity Fair article last year revealed Felt as Deep Throat, also reveals Felt's discomfort with the famous moniker given him by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, The Washington Post reporters who broke the Watergate story and brought down President Nixon.

The book also tells of Felt's anger at what he believed was Woodward's violation of their source-reporter relationship. Felt did not want to be described in any way in print, but Woodward described him and called him "Deep Throat" in 1974 in "All the President's Men."

In "The Secret Man," Woodward's 2005 book on Felt's outing as Deep Throat, Woodward also describes Felt's anger at "All the President's Men." Felt had wanted their agreement to be "inviolate," Woodward wrote. But Woodward wrote that he thought he had "some leeway" because Felt had not previously objected to Woodward's other published references to the secret source.

Felt, 92, who has dementia, had been reluctant to publish a book on his secret identity. But his daughter, Joan Felt, convinced him by saying a book could potentially make enough money to pay off some of his grandsons' school bills.

The new book is based on his 1979 memoir, "The FBI Pyramid From the Inside," and a manuscript he prepared in the 1980s with his son, W. Mark Felt Jr., before he publicly revealed himself as Deep Throat. It also is based on FBI memos, recollections and interviews conducted by his family.

O'Connor, a former U.S. attorney now in private practice, adds to Felt's writings and recollections. In an introduction and epilogue, O'Connor puts into context Felt's many secrets and how he kept them.

"In the FBI, agents learned to keep secrets and compartmentalize, and nobody built more compartments than Mark Felt," O'Connor writes.

Scandal engulfed him and his family when, after Watergate, he was prosecuted for ordering "black-bag jobs," or secret, warrantless break-ins that in 1972 and 1973 targeted friends and relatives of members of the leftist group Weather Underground. His wife could not bear the trial. Even after Felt's 1980 conviction and his subsequent pardon by President Reagan, her health and stability continued to decline.

She endured years of stress: moving the two Felt children from city to city to keep up with their father's career, being estranged from her daughter, Joan, who lived a countercultural lifestyle. Alcohol also played a role in her decline, the book says.

Upon finding his wife's body in the guest bath of their Washington-area apartment, Felt phoned his son.

But as he had done for most of his life, O'Connor writes, Felt "immediately compartmentalized the family tragedy. Sitting with his son at a table for hours, the father decreed the suicide would be kept a strict secret, even from Joan. ... The cover story would be that Audrey died of a sudden heart attack."