Deep Throat: Far From A Man With A Conscience

I know, I know. This is old news. But I still want to comment on it.

W. Mark Felt, the #2 guy in the FBI at the time of the Watergate break-in and Nixon cover-up, was Deep Throat. Big deal. He was no American hero. He was no man of conscience. He was only a disgruntled bureaucrat.

In an article written for the American Journalism Review's August/September 2004 edition there were a few candidates listed as being possibly Deep Throat. One of them was Felt.

W. Mark Felt: A longtime top FBI official, he also had access to secret information that Throat passed on to Woodward. Felt also had a motive: Nixon passed him over for the FBI's top job. By one account, reporter Carl Bernstein's young son once spilled the beans that Felt was indeed Throat, but both Bernstein and Felt denied it.

Nixon did not want the crony-ism of the Hoover FBI to continue. So he passed over people from Hoover's FBI in order to fill the FBI Director spot.

OK, not necessarily an indictment. So let's keep moving.

Felt was not a saint. He was convicted in the 1970s for authorizing illegal break-ins at homes of people associated with the radical Weather Underground. He was pardoned by President Reagan in 1981. Ah, but there is an extra twist. According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

Felt's decision to keep quiet, however, made possible another moment that linked him to Nixon, Barrett said. When Felt was on trial for authorizing illegal break-ins during the 1970s at homes of people associated with the radical Weather Underground, Nixon testified on his behalf.

The picture of this guy is coming clear.

And the fact that he likely broke many federal laws in his role as Deep Throat (leaking Grand Jury information, providing or corroborating names of people not yet charged, improper disclosure of Confidential material) is also a mark against him. There were other ways to handle his concerns including going to Congress.

So one of the last remaining possibilities in figuring out what motivated Felt is that he was an FBI-loyalist who did not like the way the FBI was being used.

Think about that for a moment. He had to be pardoned for illegal activities by the FBI and he didn't say squat. In order to leak the information that he did he had to break all kinds of rules and policies that the FBI holds dear. I think the same evidence can be entered to dismantle the notion that Felt was a patriot of any sort.

This leads back to the last logical conclusion: revenge. He did what the Hoover Administration did. He collected the goods on someone and when the need arose he used the "goods" to either blackmail or ruin that person. In this case it was Nixon.

This brings us to an age-old question: Is it OK to the right thing (blow the whistle on Nixon) for the wrong reasons (revenge)?

The last thing that needs to be realized is why this is coming out now. This little tidbit makes me think even less of the family as a whole.

His family members...persuaded [Felt] to talk about his role in the Watergate scandal, saying he deserves to receive accolades before his death. His daughter, Joan, argued that he could "make enough money to pay some bills, like the debt I've run up for the children's education."

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Let me give the accolades that Felt deserves: a swift kick in the self-serving ass.
Let me give the accolades that Joan deserves: a harder kick in the self-serving money-grubbing ass.