Deep Throat

"We can't have people go around leaking stuff for their own reasons. It ain't legal. And worse than that, by God, it ain't right."
- James A. Wells, Assistant U.S. Attorney General (Wilford Brimley) - Absence Of Malice

So "Deep Throat" has finally been outed.

I've had mixed feelings all along about Watergate. I was 11 when Nixon resigned so I didn't really know what went on, I just remember the headlines being in the papers every day. When I was in college, I saw G. Gordon Liddy speak, and started to understand a little more, and went through a period when I read most of the literature on the topic. I've read "Will" and "Blind Ambition" and "All the President's Men" and "The Final Days" and "The Wars Of Watergate." I haven't in several years, though, and many of the details are fuzzy to me now. These are the things that I'm fairly confident about:

• Richard Nixon technically violated the law. He talked about using the CIA to keep the FBI from investigating the break-in, he participated in the cover-up. You can't do that as President. It was wrong.


• I believe that other President's have participated in cover-ups just as illegal as what Nixon did. But none of them ever had the tapes come out while they were in office.


• He knew nothing about the break-in before it happened.


• There were people in the administration that were absolutely out-of-control. They felt that it was vitally important to re-elect Nixon, and went over the line in pursuit of that goal.


• In some regards, this is understandable. The press loathed Nixon, would do anything to hound him out of office if they could. The Democrats in Congress loathed Nixon and would do anything to bring him down if they could.


• Had "Watergate" never been broken as a story, Nixon would have left office in 1976, and the country would have been no worse off. The press kept telling us that Clinton/Lewinsky was "only about sex". Well, Watergate was "only about dirty campaign tricks." Were Nixon's men the only ones ever to perform dirty tricks? Or the last ones? I rather suspect not...

"Deep Throat", as I recall the portrayal, was a Nixon administration official, someone who saw what was going on and helped the press in order to stop the wrong-doing inside the government. This always seemed a bit self-aggrandizing. People leak in Washington, constantly, for good reasons and bad. While anonymous, it always seemed to be the default position that "Deep Throat" leaked for bad reasons.

Now it looks like they were bad. This wasn't an "administration official". Technically, the FBI is part of the Treasury Department, and thus part of the administration. But this isn't someone that Nixon appointed, someone in the White House. No, this was the FBI, someone with access to all of the investigate reports leaking them to the press, at least plausibly in retaliation for not being named director when Hoover died. His family can consider him a "hero" all that they want. I don't. I had mixed feelings about "Deep Throat" before I knew who he was. Now I don't. FBI investigations and FBI files ought not be fodder for the press. W. Mark Felt was wrong. What he did was wrong.


Update:
Ben Stein put it stronger than I did (H/T to A Large Regular). Don't miss it. A couple of the highlights:

Can anyone even remember now what Nixon did that was so terrible? ...Oh, now I remember. He lied. He was a politician who lied. How remarkable. He lied to protect his subordinates who were covering up a ridiculous burglary that no one to this date has any clue about its purpose. He lied so he could stay in office and keep his agenda of peace going. That was his crime. He was a peacemaker and he wanted to make a world where there was a generation of peace. And he succeeded.

That is his legacy. He was a peacemaker. He was a lying, conniving, covering up peacemaker. He was not a lying, conniving drug addict like JFK, a lying, conniving war starter like LBJ, a lying conniving seducer like Clinton -- a lying conniving peacemaker. That is Nixon's kharma.

...

So, this is the great boast of the enemies of Richard Nixon, including Mark Felt: they made the conditions necessary for the Cambodian genocide. If there is such a thing as kharma, if there is such a thing as justice in this life of the next, Mark Felt has bought himself the worst future of any man on this earth. And Bob Woodward is right behind him, with Ben Bradlee bringing up the rear. Out of their smug arrogance and contempt, they hatched the worst nightmare imaginable: genocide.