Show Me the Money

Joan Felt, with her son Nick Jones at the family home in Santa Rosa

Joan Felt is not trying to dodge the money angle. She has no qualms about saying her family encouraged patriarch Mark Felt to come out of the parking garage shadows and tell the world that he is Deep Throat.

From an exclusive "cell phone interview" with the Press Democrat:

"There were many reasons why we decided to do it. I won't deny that to make money is one of them," Felt said. "My son, Nick, is in law school and he'll owe $100,000 by the time he graduates. I'm still a single mom, still supporting them to one degree or another, and I am not ashamed of this," Felt said.

In the past week, Washington Post Editor Bob Woodward, who closely guarded Felt's identity as the source in many of the key Watergate stories, as well as his partner Carl Bernstein and former Washington Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee, has each publicly questioned Mark Felt's competency and his ability to withstand family pressure to reveal the secret.

Joan Felt said she understands the concern, but the news articles portraying her father as mentally incapacitated are simply wrong.

...If the family is successful in reaching a book deal, which some agents have said could be worth more than $1 million, they would be in good company. Woodward and Bernstein wrote a best-selling book on the Watergate scandal, "All the President's Men," which was made into a movie. And Woodward's publisher is rushing into print a book on Mark Felt, "The Secret Man," due out in July.

...Joan Felt said her attorney has told her not to reveal when she first knew for sure that her father was Deep Throat. The attorney, John D. O'Connor of Marin County, wrote the Vanity Fair article identifying Felt as Deep Throat and is trying to strike a lucrative book deal for the family.

She did say it took time to persuade her father that he hadn't betrayed the Bureau and that enough time had passed for people to understand that what he did was right.

...Friends of the family dispute media accounts that Joan Felt is exploiting her father in some way.

"It's ridiculous," said Elizabeth Martinez, Joan Felt's supervisor at Sonoma State University.

"I have known her for 10 years, and Joan and I have been quite close. She has always seen her father as a hero. I don't mean in terms of what he did in the '70s, but in the sense that he is her father and she loves him very much," Martinez said.

It's plausible that she loves her father. I buy that.

It's completely implausible to suggest that Joan Felt is not exploiting her father, particularly because SHE SAID THAT SHE PERSUADED HER FATHER TO COME CLEAN IN ORDER TO MAKE MONEY.

If Mark Felt is as mentally sharp as she claims, why did she need to brainwash him into coming forth? He had resisted for decades. The man was ashamed of what he did. Now that he's having difficulties, as she acknowledges, his daughter pounces on the chance to cash in.

Woodward and Bernstein could be insisting that Mark Felt was mentally incompetent for their own financial benefit, so they could reap the rewards of revealing Deep Throat's identity. It's also possible that old age really has diminished Mark Felt's mental capacity.

I would think if Mark Felt was still capable of expressing himself lucidly, Joan Felt would be lining up as many television and print interviews as she could.

Simply put, I believe Joan Felt is exploiting her father. When he was fully cognizant, he believed he had shamed himself. That's on the record. His daughter's efforts to cash in on his shame, by convincing the old man he's heroic, is a sad display.