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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?'"
I think I'd feel dead at 95 too, if I were not in really good health.
The FBI is supposed to get the whole truth out. Unfortunately, there are people who want to bring politics into enforcing the law, so we need checks and balances on the entire government. That's where the media comes in. Mark Felt did do the right thing, even though it was incredibly difficult for him at the time. RIP, Mark. (now, whether we'd have the balls to do that today, or the attention span to see it through, is another question entirely. I don't think we do, quite honestly, judging by the multiple scandals that have gone seemingly unpunished during the Bush administration.)
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I was JUST about to sit down and watch Thursday's breaking news that I had on TiVo, and now you've just ruined it for me.
For whatever reason he chose, he did the right thing. If more folks did that maybe Presidents wouldn't run the Whitehouse as their supermarket for all their cronies.
Yet Felt was not strictly against "black bag jobs" like the Watergate break-in:
While Watergate was seething, Mr. Felt authorized nine illegal break-ins at the homes of friends and relatives of members of the Weather Underground, a violent left-wing splinter group. The people he chose as targets had committed no crimes. The F.B.I. had no search warrants. He later said he ordered the break-ins because national security required it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/washington/19felt.html?scp=1&sq=mark%20felt&st=cse
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
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Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
I guess this weekend, seeing as I'm literally snowed into my apartment, I'll fire up All the President's Men on the TV........and Deep Throat....
If you don't know much about Watergate, I suggest hitting up Watergate on Wikipedia, then considering acquiring a copy of Woodward and Bernstein's All the President's Men. Those two reporters were the ones two interacted with Deep Throat, named for a 70s porn.
The 1976 Redford/Hoffman movie version of the book All the President's Men is the definitive story in video format.
Emery's Watergate is another arguably excellent book on the matter.
Avoid the new "Frost/Nixon" film--it's history ambiguous and largely inaccurate; it's a Hollywood version of the story with excellent acting. Instead, watch the original interviews.
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From the SVN ChangeLog...
2008-11-05 08:35 cabal_hacker
* Media/src/com/murdock/ruppert/policy/Spin.java: Thank god we don't
have to fellate that warmongering dunce anymore. Reversing parties.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
Yes, Jefferson chose free speech over a regulated media, and we reap the benefits of that in spite of the pain it can cause. Still, it seems the media falls into two camps:
- Illuminate, Educate, and Illustrate
- Titillate, Castigate, and Prevaricate
One pays better than the other, but one is much better for society in the long run.
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Obviously you thought you knew all about the Watergate scandal. But if you are just now hearing about "Deep Throat" I don't think you knew much at all.
Mark Felt disclosed to Woodward and Bernstein what he thought would hurt Nixon, because Nixon had passed over Felt (#2 at FBI when Hoover finally died) in favor of a Nixon crony, an "outsider", to run the FBI instead of promoting Felt.
I'm glad he did. But I don't admire or respect Felt for it. Because Felt could have disclosed any of that stuff (or more that he surely knew) to Woodward and Bernstein, or many other journalists, well before he had reasons of personal revenge. Which might have prevented Nixon from being reelected in 1972, instead of a landslide followed by an aborted impeachment that has left this country in Constitutional crisis through today, worse every time around the cycle.
I'm not glad he's dead, either. I wish he had spilled more, about other Nixon cronies (like Rumsfeld and Cheney), and he might have done so once the Bush era was finally safely over, and those other criminals were as "retired" as he was. But evidently there wasn't enough personal gain in that kind of disclosure, so Felt never gave it. And now he never will.
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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
This may be okay if you have a media that's actually motivated by some kind of ethics. In my area (and I suspect many others), the economy isn't really large enough to support much more than a commercially sponsored media primarily interested in turning news into entertainment, and presenting whatever news in whatever form and bias it takes to get as many viewers/readers as possible to sell advertising.
The local media around here tends to be full of people who seem more interested in having themselves seen than in accurately portraying something. It makes sense, too, because in the entertainment industry one of the most important things for future employment is to be seen.
You want to read about Watergate, read G. Gordon Liddy's biography, since he planned and executed Watergate. Then Read Stephen Ambrose's Nixon biography (the third one). Ambrose is the only one who gives a reason why Nixon would want to wiretap Larry O'Brien, not that I am convinced Nixon knew in advance (none of the principles involved have ever claimed this). Silent Coup is an incredibly detailed chronicle of Watergate, but I disagree with its conclusions, other than John Dean was a little rat (Dean was the president's lawyer while working as an FBI informant). Never trust a word that comes out of Dean's mouth.
You'd also want to read Bob Haldeman's and John Erlichman's biographies.
ATPM gets a lot wrong. The bottom line is Nixon wasn't brought down by Woodward and Bernstein, they just kept up the heat.
Nixon was brought down by a guy named Alexander Butterfield announcing to the Senate Watergate Committee that Nixon taped his conversations, which led to the smoking gun tape about Nixon telling the FBI that Watergate was a CIA operation, back-off. Nixon scuttled that idea the next day, but that tape is what brought him down, not W&B. Once Nixon finally released the tapes, that particular tape is what turned Barry Goldwater to support impeachment, and Nixon's goose was cooked. After Nixon heard he lost Goldwater, he turned to his SecState Al Haig and said, "Well, there goes the presidency, Al."
BTW, when Haig dies, I'm betting he was a Woodward source too. Haig, when NSA for Nixon, was given his military briefings by a young Naval Intelligence officer named Bob Woodward. To this day, Woodward will not talk about those briefings.
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I'm not glad he's dead, either. I wish he had spilled more, about other Nixon cronies (like Rumsfeld and Cheney), and he might have done so once the Bush era was finally safely over, and those other criminals were as "retired" as he was. But evidently there wasn't enough personal gain in that kind of disclosure, so Felt never gave it. And now he never will.
I heard Woodward interviewed on Fresh Air on NPR the other day (I think it was a rerun) and according to him, the last time he visited Mark Felt at Felt's home in California, Felt was in poor health. Specifically, he suffered from some form of dementia. According to Woodward, at that time he could barely remember why Nixon had to leave office. He knew who Woodward was, and he told Woodward that he and Bernstein "had done the right thing," but specific details of their past dealings were already lost to him. So as far as spilling any more beans, that door was closed.
Breakfast served all day!
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.
I believe the 9/11 attack would have happened with any president. The way it would be dealt with would have been completely different. Others would not have raped peoples rights so much.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
His motivation was nothing to do with protecting the Constitution or citizens of the US. He worked at the FBI and participated in operations that violated the Constitution and law far more egregiously than Nixon and his horde. Mark Felt took this action because the system did not believe he was competent enough to rise up the ladder. The promotion would have moved him up the food chain, satisfying his ego and Woodward would never have met Felt.
Woodward had connections in the intelligence community and was not the eager young reporter so often portrayed. Interestingly enough, whenever his record comes under analysis he has a swarm of lawyers on hand to silence his critics. Felt wasn't the only informant Woodward had, and it is pretty straight forward to figure out whom he knew that had access to the Whitehouse.
Watergate left us with a self-aggrandizing press, led to the Carter malaise and mainstreamed Reagan in the backlash. Hmmm, probably better off if Felt had accepted his own limitations rather than pretending he was outraged.