Dylan Matthews
I write things on the Internet
Posted on May 31, 2005 by dylanmatthews
I finally know my political hero's name:
Vanity Fair magazine said on Tuesday that Mark Felt, a former FBI official, had revealed himself to be "Deep Throat," the legendary source who leaked Watergate scandal secrets to the Washington Post and brought down President Richard Nixon.
Via basically everyone in the blogosphere. This is really no surprise; as James Mann has written, the Washington Post coverage of Watergate, as led by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, closely mirrored the FBI's internal investigation into the affair, suggesting someone inside the bureau. Felt, who is famously gregarious with the press corps, seemed a natural candidate. Moreover, both Richard Nixon and Nora Ephron, Bernstein's ex-wife, thought it was Felt. He was the CW choice, and in this case the CW was right.
There's no overemphasizing the heroism of Felt's actions. The Nixon administration was an abomination; Nixon thought of himself as a dictator and acted accordingly, setting up his own secret police, the White House Plumbers, planning such actions as firebombing the Brookings Institution and carrying out such abuses of power as the Watergate break-in and the Saturday Night Massacre. Nixon knew that the war in Vietnam was unwinnable from the minute it took office, and yet he expanded it, killing millions in the process. He, along with his deputy, Henry Kissinger, aided and abetted the military coup in Chile that overthrew a democratically elected government in favor of Augusto Pinochet, perhaps the worst dictator Latin America has ever seen. It was the worst presidency in this nation's history, and it was going virtually unchallenged. Until, that is, Felt exposed it for what it was, risking his career, and, judging as G. Gordon Liddy, Howard Hunt, and Charles Colson were in the White House at that point, life in the process. That's not just heroic; that's greatness on a whole other level, the level of Mandela and Gandhi. Felt should receive the greatest accolades the world can offer; it's a sad statement about our country that he won't.
P.S. Woodward and editor Ben Bradlee both confirm it.
P.P.S. As does Bernstein. It's all over, folks.
P.P.P.S. It seems that while Felt's actions in Watergate were noble, they weren't always that way:
In 1980, Felt was convicted of conspiracy to violate civil rights for his admitted role in arranging illegal break-ins, burglaries and other measures against friends and relatives of fugitive members of the Weather Underground, a leftist domestic terrorist organization.
President Reagan pardoned him in 1981, along with Edward S. Miller, former chief of the FBI's intelligence division.
A little too much like the plumbers for comfort.
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