Black Mark

We've established that Mark Felt was disgruntled about getting passed over for the top job at the FBI when J. Edgar Hoover died, and that his disgust at the Nixon White House stemmed less from a distaste about "black bag" break-ins without search warrants than with Nixon's desire to run such operations out of the White House. Now the guy who prosecuted Felt for approving such break-ins against friends and relatives of people associated with the militant leftist group the Weathermen in 1972 and 1973 says Felt did so even though Hoover himself had put a halt to the practice in 1966. "No government official higher than Felt knew about the bag jobs," John W. Nields wrote in the Post yesterday.