Ex-head of FBI’s LV office recalls talks with Felt

Wednesday, June 1, 2005 | 8:59 a.m.

Dean Elson, former FBI special agent in charge of the Las Vegas office, said he knew from the beginning that W. Mark Felt was "Deep Throat," the anonymous source that helped link an office burglary to the Nixon White House.

"From the very beginning, I told my wife 'It's Mark Felt,' way back then, whenever Watergate was," Elson said in a telephone interview Tuesday night.

Elson, who was in Las Vegas from 1961 to 1969 with the FBI and then went to work for Bob Maheu, who was chief of operations for billionaire Howard Hughes, said he never told anybody about his suspicion in the 33 years since the Watergate scandal led to President Richard Nixon's resignation.

Elson said he met Felt at a joint law enforcement meeting in Utah and the two spoke at length.

Felt appeared to be personable and cared deeply for the FBI, Elson said. Under the circumstances that unfolded in Watergate, Elson said he believed that Felt would have acted on his principles and risen above the bureaucracy.

"I was right all along" about Felt's role in Watergate, said Elson, who has retired in San Antonio.

Unlike some former public officials and former Nixon staffers interviewed over the last two days, Elson believes Deep Throat did the right thing.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer interviewed a race and sports book manager, Joe Lupo of Las Vegas, to set odds on who Deep Throat was for the 30th anniversary of the Watergate break-in. Former FBI director L. Patrick Gray was the favorite at 2-1 with Felt in fifth place at 10-1.

Others suspected included Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, and even actor Hal Holbrook, who played a chain-smoking Deep Throat in the film "All the President's Men."

John Hambrick said he saw Felt in action from inside the White House when he served as part of Nixon's Secret Service detail. Hambrick, who retired and moved to Las Vegas, said he never knew Felt personally.

"You knew of these people," Hambrick said Tuesday after Vanity Fair magazine released a story from its July edition identifying Felt. At the time Felt was second in command under FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover.

He said in the 1970s there was a natural rivalry between the Treasury Department and the Justice Department. Treasury managed the Secret Service and Justice the FBI.

Who Felt met with or if he met directly with the president at the White House is unknown to Hambrick.

There was plenty of interaction between the FBI and the Nixon White House during hunts for anti-Vietnam War protesters and criminal mobster investigations, Hambrick said.

"You never knew why he was there. Once you're inside the complex, behind closed doors, you'd never know," Hambrick said of Felt's visits to the White House.

Hambrick said those still in federal law enforcement with top secret clearances will be surprised at Felt's revelation.

"We take an oath," Hambrick said. "He (Felt) violated his oath (by talking to Woodward)."