Slashdot Mirror
Watergate "Deep Throat" Mark Felt Dead At 95
Hugh Pickens writes "W. Mark Felt Sr., 95, associate director of the FBI during the Watergate scandal, better known as 'Deep Throat,' the most famous anonymous source in American history, died at his home in Santa Rosa, California. Felt secretly guided Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to pursue the story of the 1972 break-in of the Democratic National Committee's headquarters at the Watergate office buildings, and later of the Nixon administration's campaign of spying and sabotage against its perceived political enemies. 'It's impossible to exaggerate how high the stakes were in Watergate,' wrote Felt in his 2006 book A G-Man's Life. 'We faced no simple burglary, but an assault on government institutions, an attack on the FBI's integrity, and unrelenting pressure to unravel one of the greatest political scandals in our nation's history.' No one knows exactly what prompted Felt to leak the information from the Watergate probe to the press. He was passed over for the post of FBI director after Hoover's death in 1972, a crushing career disappointment. 'People will debate for a long time whether I did the right thing by helping Woodward. The bottom line is that we did get the whole truth out, and isn't that what the FBI is supposed to do?'"
It's worth bearing in mind that Nixon's predecessor was objectively far worse than him, namely LBJ.
Starting and then fighting the Vietnam war badly, deliberately falsifying the Gulf of Tonkin incident (whatever about Bush, I think he genuinely believed his pretext, that Iraqi WMDs existed), ordering the USS Liberty to not be defended when it was under attack and then falsifying details of the attack later (probably the most spineless act in US military history).
Aside from that, there's the personal - forcing aides to talk to him while he was talking a dump, laughing at the dead body of JFK, etc..
A truly odious and terrible president.
Sure, those are terrible things.
Breaking the oath of office and using the power of the Presidency illegally in order to retain power is far more cancerous and treasonous. That was Nixon's big crime.
To portray Felt as some heroic whistle-blower is nonsense. For one, Felt hid in the shadows for 30 years, until he was senile and his daughter pulled him into the daylight to capitalize on his fame. Heroes put themselves at personal risk for a higher cause. Felt hid to protect his reputation among his FBI cronies (think cigarette-smoking man types).
More importantly, he was J. Edgar Hoover's #2 at a time when the FBI was wiretapping MLK and John Lennon - and presidents. Yes, there is a reason that Hoover stayed as FBI director, a huge plum appointment for any president, for 48 friggin years. Hoover blackmailed presidents, and everyone else he could wiretap and burglarize. You think his #2 wasn't in on that?
When Hoover died, Nixon did the right thing, what any of the 44 presidents would have done, cleaned house and got the Hoover cronies the hell out of there. And what did Felt do once he didn't get the director job? He did exactly what every president for 48 years was afraid of about Hoover - Felt released dirt on Nixon.
Say what you want about Nixon, but Hoover was the antithesis of a democracy, an unelected guy who abused his power and blackmailed presidents to stay in office for half a century. Appointing Felt to replace him would have been, in retrospect, politically expedient. Felt thought he was entitled to the job and brought Nixon down for it. To suggest that Felt, the ultimate black-bag guy, was appalled at Nixon's shenanigans, when Hoover freaking invented it, is like saying Linsday Lohan is offended by Paris Hilton's public tramp behavior. Ludicrous!
It is interesting that most news reports do not talk about Felt's illegal wiretapping of the Weather Underground (not that I have sympathy for that domestic terror group, but I am not running around claiming to be some civil liberties hero), or they mention it at the very end of the story like AP did.
God knows all of the shit Hoover pulled. Maybe someday it will all come to light. It would make a great movie, but would probably have to be a mini-series or TV show on HBO, as it would likely be impossible to chronicle in 2 hours.
And they named the FBI building after the sumbitch.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Only if we are going back to a Roman Citizen type culture where freedom and democracy is important for people who are in, but absolutely forbidden for people that are 'out' (in this case, the Vietnamese).
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WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
Yeah, maybe the 60,000 Americans who died pointlessly because of LBJ would disagree.
I'd wager the 1.5 million Vietnamese who did likewise would, also.
And maybe congress would think that being deliberately misled about a false enemy attack in order to start said war would constitute the president "breaking the seal of office".
Azural - instrumentals
I can't stand Bush and think his presidency has been among the most dangerous in modern history, but there's no credible evidence he "let" 9/11" happen. There's evidence he treated the threat too lightly, but no real reason to believe he had specific knowledge of what would happen and chose to look the other way. What not-so-credible evidence has been presented by conspiracy theorists has been debunked to high heaven.
Hate him on the indisputable merits. It's easier.