When Egil "Bud" Krogh learned from the Vanity Fair article yesterday that his former acquaintance was Deep Throat, he understood why W. Mark Felt disclosed what he did to The Washington Post some 30 years ago.

Krogh, 65, is an energy attorney in Seattle who turned his back on the Nixon administration by admitting that, in 1971 — a year before the Watergate break-in — he coordinated the burglary of a psychiatrist's office in an attempt to discredit the man whose Pentagon Papers shamed the White House.

Krogh set up the plan to burglarize Lewis Fielding's Southern California office to obtain Daniel Ellsberg's confidential medical records. Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers, which critiqued the United States' Vietnam War operations, to The New York Times.

When the Democratic National Headquarters in Washington, D.C.'s Watergate complex was burglarized in June 1972, Krogh was working as Nixon's deputy assistant for domestic affairs. He recalls "suspicion, finger-pointing and paranoia" among White House staffers about the identity of the Post leak.

"I knew there was discussion at the time that it was Mark Felt. ... I never suspected him of anything," Krogh said last night.

In 1972, Krogh lied to a Watergate investigator who asked about the activities of other Nixon henchmen. The following year he pleaded guilty to conspiracy and was sentenced to six months in jail. He was the first member of the Nixon White House to be locked up.

"The principal lesson is, if you proceed without integrity, you will have a meltdown of terrible proportions," Krogh said. "That started in 1971 with the Pentagon Papers. That led to the kind of thinking that ended up with Watergate. That led to the downfall of the Nixon White House."

Felt was "doing the highest right that he could see to do in those circumstances. It had to have been hard for him — he was the senior guy at the FBI while he was talking to a reporter."

For the past 25 years, Krogh has lived in Seattle; he grew up here, attended the Lakeside School and the University of Washington Law School. Though convicted felons lose their right to practice law, he got his law license back in 1980.

Jennifer Sullivan: 206-464-8294 or jensullivan@seattletimes.com