02 June 2005

The Legacy of “Deep Throat”

Although Washington Post reporters Woodward and Bernstein vowed not to divulge the identity of their inside source in what would become the Watergate scandal until that person had died, the man in question has gone public himself. What is particularly unseemly about the situation is that the man, former FBI deputy director Mark Felt, is in his nineties and has failing health and, apparently, diminished mental capacities. As a result, society’s discussion of his original motives in the Watergate scandal, is taking place while the man in question is not fully able to defend himself, though unfortunately still around to hear other people’s confused accounts.

This week Charles Colson, a former Nixon advisor who pleaded guilty in a case related to the Watergate scandal, issued a statement that there is no justification for any government official to leak classified information. Colson implied that the standards he himself failed to adhere to, for which he has done penance, applied equally to Mr Felt. In other words, if Mr Colson had to admit he broke the law, so should Mr Felt. On the whole, Christian and conservative commentators tend to be negative of Mr Felt’s actions. Many think that instead of the hero many in the liberal media have made him out to be, Mr Felt is nothing but a traitor and a criminal.

I do not agree with this assessment. Naturally, it is true to maintain that laws are there to be upheld and there is no arguing that Mr Felt broke the law when he talked to reporters about matters he was not allowed to share with the media. But at the same time we cannot dismiss the comments by Mr Woodward and Mr Bernstein that, at the time, corruption within the various government agencies was running amok. Mr Colson sternly reproved Mark Felt for not taking the evidence of the president’s wrongdoings to his boss or even to the president himself. Other commentators have suggested that the proper course of action would have led him to a grand jury where charges could have been filed against those involved in Watergate.

But in effect, these routes were not available. Mr Felt’s critics fail to appreciate the fact that he chose to inform the media because he considered the proper channels unsafe and unworkable. The whole reason for Mr Felt’s comparatively minor nudging of Woodward and Bernstein in the right direction was that the Nixon administration was corrupt.

We do not need to beatify Mr Felt. He himself was involved in certain improper FBI actions and was even convicted of authorizing unlawful searches—a crime for which president Reagan pardoned him. It is simplistic to hammer on moral absolutes in a case where there were only shades of evil. Mr Felt realized that the greater evil was the administration’s attempts to keep the matter under wraps. This secrecy was doing harm to the country. In my view, it would have done more harm than any actions by Mr Felt.

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