The FBI Pyramid from the Inside

by Mark Felt and Ralph de Toledano

The FBI Pyramid From the Inside by W. Mark Felt and Ralph De Toledano 1979 Hardcover This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0399119043
• ISBN13: 9780399119040
• Release Date: January 1979
• Publisher: Putnam Publishing Group
• Length: 351 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Casting a vote........

This is a vote for "The FBI Pyramid" to be re-printed. At the moment, let's see......ONE original copy available, $1995.00 -- No, I don't think so. :-) There is much that we can look for in this book. Besides possible clues about Mr. Felt's motivation for being "Deep Throat" and perhaps even unconscious hints that it was he, we will get a close view of the nature and structure of the FBI and of what he valued about it. I would look particularly for what he said about possible kinds of threats to the authority and functioning of the agency; it then may not be hard to read between the lines for hints of the threats that Mr. Felt had seen and sensed from the Nixon administration. But this is all speculation until we get the book ourselves. Please re-print it, and help this postscript of the Watergate story to unfold.

A review that is actually about the book

I was able to find this book in the library after it was discovered that Mark Felt was indeed Deep Throat. The book overall is a good, fast read, but don't expect to get any inside story about being Deep Throat (which he denies several times in the book). What the book is instead is a solid description of the FBI bureaucracy, especially in the 60s and early 70s. More importantly from a historical perspective is that this book is also an unapologetic defense of his mentor J. Edgar Hoover. For example, he characterizes Hoover as being more pro-civil rights than just about anyone else in Washington, such as being against the Japanese internment camps in World War II, refusing to bug offices of a President's opponents etc. Hoover apparently was more pro-civil liberties than Felt himself, as Hoover tried to pull the plug on certain illegal activities which Felt allowed to continue. He refutes many of the dark allegations made against Hoover, such as the investigation of Martin Luther King, although I don't have the background to know if his description of these issues is accurate. Still, it is very interesting to get an alternative point of view on the subject. Felt is very even-handed, as he complains almost as much about the Kennedy administration (especially the Attorney General RFK) as he does about Nixon. He complains that both Kennedy and Truman did not take the Red Menace seriously enough. The one organization to which he had unqualified loyalty was the FBI itself. Because of this, Felt resents the attempts by both the Kennedy and Nixon administrations to interfere with FBI investigations. The book is not perfect. True to his career as an adminstrator, he sometimes spends too much time describing bureaucratic minutiae that do not have much relevance to the story. That being said, the book gives a fascinating description of the late Hoover era at the FBI, and shows at least some of the motivation, if not the exact details, of why Felt became Deep Throat.

THIS BOOK EVEN MENTIONS DEEP THROAT ON THE INSIDE COVER!!!!!

This was a really good book, which I promptly started reading when it came out that Mark Felt was the mysterious "Deep Throat" of Watergate fame. I am amazed to see the inside cover, and read this blurb: "Mark Felt, who was rumored to be the famous informer Deep Throat, and whose name and face are known to millions of newspaper readers as the first top FBI executive......". I mean, my goodness, how much more blunt could it have been! ....and the book came out 25 years ago! I also find it ironic that Mr. Felt was actually sent to prison himself---and had former President Nixon testify on his behalf! He was even later pardoned by President Reagan, and got a congratulatory note from former President Nixon, that said, "Justice Always Prevails". Mr. Felt was definitely a brave man! You will definitely find this to be an interesting book.

Out of print? - my guess is, not for long!

2 Jun 05: Since Mark Felt has recently been identified as "Deep Throat", I predict that his obscure memoir, will not only come back into print...but that it also hits someone's best seller list. Watergate reporter, Bob Woodward, writes in today's Washington Post, "In his own memoir, "The FBI Pyramid: From the Inside," which received almost no attention when it was published in 1979, five years after President Richard M. Nixon's resignation, Felt angrily called this a "White House-Justice Department cabal."

Read about the Watergate scandal from 'Deep Throat' himself

Thirty years after President Nixon's resignation, the author is confirmed to be the source for Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's Washington Post reporting on the Watergate scandal. Yes, Mark Felt was and is 'Deep Throat'. This long-overlooked memoir is now being quoted in all the major media outlets about anything related to Watergate. Read it and judge for yourself.