Posted on 12/19/2008 10:38:33 AM PST by Publius804
Watergate 'Deep Throat' W. Mark Felt Dies at 95
SAN FRANCISCO — W. Mark Felt, the former FBI second-in-command who revealed himself as "Deep Throat" 30 years after he tipped off reporters to the Watergate scandal that toppled a president, has died. He was 95.
Felt died Thursday in Santa Rosa after suffering from congestive heart failure for several months, said family friend John D. O'Connor, who wrote the 2005 Vanity Fair article uncovering Felt's secret.
The shadowy central figure in one of the most gripping political dramas of the 20th century, Felt insisted his alter ego be kept secret when he leaked damaging information about President Richard Nixon and his aides to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward.
While some — including Nixon and his aides — speculated that Felt was the source who connected the White House to the June 1972 break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, he steadfastly denied the accusations until finally coming forward in May 2005.
"I'm the guy they used to call Deep Throat," Felt told O'Connor for the Vanity Fair article, creating a whirlwind of media attention. The man who had kept his secret for decades, weakened by a stroke, did not do much talking — he merely waved to the media from the front door of his daughter's Santa Rosa home.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
AFAIC this man is a rat on a par with Joe Valachi or Salvatore Gravano.
If their souls end up in the same place now Nixon and Hoover can kick his traitorious ass around.
Adios, fink.
GG Liddy and others have claimed this man could not alone be “Deep Throat” as they claim he wasn’t privileged to all of the information that W&B attribute to Deep Throat.
I thought he died within months after the article was published.
Wasn’t he in a movie with Linda Lovelace?
The left will dance on Nixon’s grave forever, while lifting the likes of Barney Frank and Ted Kennedy up as examples of “good government.”
This traitorous clown helped them get Nixon. You got your eulogy there, Felty. Bye bye.
Any citizen who brings the illegal activities of his government to light is a hero in my book.
But I have a different reason to dislike Felt. He was one of the people who went overboard in the investigation of the Weather Underground. Misconduct such as that is what led to Ayers getting off the hook and not still being in jail (that is if Clinton hadn’t pardoned him).
Continue the alternate timeline, Obama wouldn’t be president elect right now if Ayers had been in jail as he should have been.
Nah. Linda Lovelace had standards.
He was an incompetent agent who blew the strong case against Weathermen Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, thus allowing them to go free. Just a few years later they link up with Barry Obama, and the rest is history.
“Adios, fink.”
Yeah, I just hate it when somebody exposes corruption and illegal activities.
“This traitorous clown helped them get Nixon.”
And this a bad thing because....?
I imagine it would be difficult to find a President before Nixon who didn’t get away with the same or worse.
I wouldn’t call this man a traitor, that is what Bill Ayers was. A traitor has to serve a foreign power, like the press did. In wartime.
The media wanted to get Nixon, regardless of the circumstances.
I’m still of the mind that if there was such abuse, that even without this break in that served no function to the campaign, the press would have seized upon something in 4 years time.
The public has been lied to for 40 years. They believe that Nixon’s own habit of taping set him up for prosecution. It was JFK who installed the taping system and LBJ who expanded it. Their tapes come out in drips and drabbles.
The public at large doesn’t even know about them.
There clearly is a double standard of our system that prosecutes Republicans and congratulates democrat Presidents such as Johnson and Kennedy, who did far more evil than Nixon.
Ditto's. If this guy truly had courage, he would have publicly blown the whistle rather than hiding behind the WA Post and their ilk. Instead he was a coward and it took his dementia and his liberal children to push him out in front of the cameras...
“I imagine it would be difficult to find a President before Nixon who didn’t get away with the same or worse.”
Why specify “before”? Clinton got away with the exact same thing. Actually, Clinton’s was probably worse, because Nixon covered up for someone else’s misdeeds, deeds which barely even had a victim, whereas Clinton covered up for himself.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
When he came forward a couple of years ago he was already suffering from Alzheimer’s. I doubt if he acted alone and I also suspect a lot of the ‘evidence’ was bullship created by the woodward and bernstein.
I would imagine that Woodward & Berstein might have been tempted to attribute certain ‘facts’ to “Deep Throat” in order to get them past their editor & into print.
There are those on the right to dance on Nixon’s grave as well.
Pathetic.
I like how Woodward cried foul when this guy’s family talked to the press instead of taking his secret to the grave.
Woodward treats “Watergate History” like it’s his own private turf. OTOH, he kept Felt’s secret partly on the condition that Woodward would be the one to release Felt’s identity upon his death (or permission). Felt did sorta scr3w him over. Imagine the multi-million-dollar book advance that Woody lost on that deal?
The media just loves it when the sheeple buy their BS
I know I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but burn Felt burn.
“There clearly is a double standard of our system that prosecutes Republicans and congratulates democrat Presidents such as Johnson and Kennedy, who did far more evil than Nixon.”
Well there it is then — Nixon and buddies should have gotten away with it. What great logic.
“If this guy truly had courage, he would have publicly blown the whistle rather than hiding behind the WA Post and their ilk.”
I guess he valued keeping his FBI career but didn’t care for Nixon and his scumbags.
Only the good die young.
I have to agree with this, and I'll go one further. Richard Nixon, the president he helped topple, was a RINO who made George W. Bush look like a rigid adherent to conservative principles. But I have a different reason to dislike Felt. He was one of the people who went overboard in the investigation of the Weather Underground. Misconduct such as that is what led to Ayers getting off the hook and not still being in jail (that is if Clinton hadn’t pardoned him). Continue the alternate timeline, Obama wouldn’t be president elect right now if Ayers had been in jail as he should have been.
Interesting points. Didn't Felt actually face criminal charges because of things he did in his investigation?
Only the “good” die young?
See what Ben Stein has to say:
http://spectator.org/archives/2005/06/01/deep-throat-and-genocide
He did the right thing for the wrong reasons. His reason for turning on Nixon was revenge for being passed over for a promotion. How many Vietnamese and Cambodians paid with their lives for his bruised ego?
The Carter administration, pandering to the Left, decided to prosecute the FBI leadership. Felt was convicted in November 1980 of conspiracy to violate the civil rights of the Weathermen, their friends and family. Many or most FBI agents supported him. Ronald Reagan pardoned Felt shortly after taking office.
Felt is the prototype of those who run to the media, who leak anonymously, rather than report to the proper legal authorities. That has become a plague on our government, and a threat to democracy. He can go to hell.
It is your logic that is flawed, as instead of prosecuting murderers and reckless corruption you would rather see the prosecution of relatively minor crimes.
“Don’t be stupid. He should have gone to the proper legal authorities, not the media, and he should have done it in the open. He set the precedent for anonymous leaks to the press by anyone who has a beef with official policy. He undermined democracy by setting the foundation for coup d’etat via leaks and media/bureaucracy collaboration.”
Isn’t it amazing how this never happened before him and even more incredible that it most certainly never would have happened in the future if he hadn’t done what he did?
“It is your logic that is flawed, as instead of prosecuting murderers and reckless corruption you would rather see the prosecution of relatively minor crimes.”
Umm, murders? Sure.
You can argue all day whether Nixon and his minions’ crimes were “minor,” but the crap they did was destructive, particularly the coverup effort. Was revealing it more destructive than the act itself? Who knows? But to argue that Nixon’s crimes shouldn’t have been exposed is silly.
BTW, you’ll note that a number of Clinton’s “crimes” were exposed and he was impeached. He was then acquitted. Like it or not, that’s how our system works. Nixon, on the other hand, didn’t have a prayer of beating impeachment and he knew it. He deserved what he got.
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