July 1, 1971: Felt Becomes #3 FBI Official

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover promotes W. Mark Felt to be the #3 official in the bureau. Though Hoover’s longtime assistant and confidante Clyde Tolson is putatively the #2 man at the bureau, Tolson is seriously ill and does not often come to work, so Felt essentially becomes the FBI’s deputy director, in charge of day-to-day operations. Felt has access to virtually every piece of information the FBI possesses. Felt will become the celebrated “Deep Throat,” Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward’s inside source for the Watergate investigations (see May 31, 2005). [Woodward, 2005, pp. 35]