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On the Death of Deep Throat
Human Events ^ | 12/23/2008 | Patrick J. Buchanan

Posted on 12/23/2008 12:45:13 PM PST by donna

"De mortuis nil nisi bonum."

Of the dead, nothing but good.

So said Dean Acheson of Sen. Joe McCarthy on his death in 1957. "Tailgunner Joe" had bedeviled the secretary of state for his lassitude toward communist penetration of State in President Truman's time.

But the passing of Mark Felt, associate director of the FBI in the later Nixon years, lately exposed as "Deep Throat," the source for the Woodward-Bernstein stories, calls forth some rebuttal to the tributes lavished upon Felt as the honest lawman who saved our republic.

When the Watergate break-in was traced to the Committee to Reelect the President, Felt was put in charge of the FBI investigation. Almost immediately, he began to leak to Woodward.

Felt, it is said, was justified, as the White House was interfering with his investigation. False.

This is a moral cloak belatedly cast over more base motives.

The truth: Felt was a bitter man. Having risen through the ranks under J. Edgar Hoover, whose black-bag jobs he had overseen, Felt expected to be rewarded by being named director on Hoover's death. Nixon had passed him over for an outsider, L. Patrick Grey.

By secretly colluding with the Post, Felt was ingratiating himself with an establishment that loathed Nixon, even as he exacted revenge for having being denied by Nixon the post he had coveted.

Had Nixon or aides restricted Felt, the Post would have had an explosive story. But the Post never charged the White House with interfering with the FBI investigation that summer or fall, because it was not interfering.

What Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein ran with were such shockers as that Nixon's men had hired a trickster to ape the Democrats' Dick Tuck, and said trickster had sent dozens of pizzas to a Muskie rally.

The FBI had ferreted out the Artful Dodger, and the Post led with the atrocity. "FBI Finds Nixon Aides Sabotaged Democrats," screamed the four-column headline at the top of page one.

Indeed, if what Felt did was honorable, why did he lie and deny it repeatedly when asked if he was leaking to the Post? Why did he lie in his memoir in 1979, when, well into retirement, he emphatically denied he was Deep Throat? Was Felt so noble he could save our republic, yet refuse, to the point of lying in his memoirs, to take any credit?

Answer: Felt knew what he did was dishonorable, corrupt -- and unnecessary. For honest FBI agents were steadily making progress toward proving that higher-ups at CREEP were involved in aiding those caught in the Watergate break-in.

Felt had another reason for lying about his role as snitch for the Post. Former colleagues would be disgusted, for his was not only a breach of law, but of faith and trust, a dishonoring of his oath as an FBI agent.

One wonders what went through the mind of Felt, when, on trial in Manhattan in 1980 for those FBI black-bag jobs against the Weather Underground that had bombed the Pentagon and Capitol, ex-President Nixon walked into the courtroom to testify in Felt's defense?

When Felt was convicted, Ronald Reagan pardoned him, declaring that if the Carter amnesty was proper for those who had defected to Canada rather than serve in Vietnam, it was right to pardon those who risked their careers to protect the nation.

After exposure as Deep Throat, Felt wrote in a 2006 memoir, "The bottom line is that we did get the whole truth out, but isn't that what the FBI is suppose to do?"

No, Mr. Felt, that is not what the FBI is supposed to do.

Do we really want, here in America, our premier investigative and police agency to get the truth out that it decides to get out?

Would it have been right for Hoover to get the "whole truth out" on JFK's liaisons with suspected German spies, Mafia molls and Marilyn Monroe, and destroy his presidency? Would it have been right for the FBI to get the "whole truth out" of Hoover's secret files, and ruin all the public careers the FBI could have destroyed?

Isn't that what the old KGB did to its enemies?

In the early '60s, Robert Kennedy authorized Hoover to bug and tap Dr. Martin Luther King. When the FBI turned up film of King with loose women, LBJ's White House moved the photos to the Washington press.

Felt knew of this. The Post knew of this. The Washington press corps knew of this. Why didn't Felt and the Post blow the whistle on this squalid deed? Was it not so egregious as sending pizzas to Muskie's rally?

In that Scoundrel Time, the liberal establishment -- the press, the politicians and the police bureaucrats -- colluded to destroy Nixon, even as they covered for JFK and LBJ.

Nixon, you see, was not one of them. Is it not always thus?


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Editorial; Government
KEYWORDS: bernstein; billayers; botchedcase; buchanan; deepthroat; enemedia; fbi; markfelt; nixon; ohdonna; patbuchanan; wapo; watergate; weatherunderground; woodward
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1 posted on 12/23/2008 12:45:13 PM PST by donna
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To: donna
All animals are created equal but some animals are more equal than others....
It seems that this also applies to political animals.
2 posted on 12/23/2008 12:52:57 PM PST by AreaMan
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To: donna

The man who gave us Bill Ayers, terrorist, communist, traitor, as a free man and educator.

That’s a rotten legacy for a hypocrite.


3 posted on 12/23/2008 12:53:39 PM PST by weegee ("Let Me Just Cut You Off, Because I Don't Want You To Waste Your Question" - B.Obama Dec 16, 2008)
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To: donna

The evil that men do lives after them.
The good is oft interred with their bones.

W Shakespeare
Julius Caesar
Act III, Scene 2


4 posted on 12/23/2008 12:54:11 PM PST by sono (What happens when the Kool Aid wears off?)
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To: donna

Felt was slime. He tried to cash in on Woodward’s work later in life and deservedly failed.


5 posted on 12/23/2008 12:54:51 PM PST by Anti-Bubba182
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To: donna
One does imagine that Herr Felt came out from behind the curtains only because Warren Buffett had finally achieved a commanding financial position in the Washington Post.

This pretty cut Warren off at the legs. It was obvious that it wasn't because his reporters were excellent at crafting their trade; rather, it was obvious the Post wouldn't have gotten anywhere without the assistance of a top guy at the FBI.

It's been pretty much downhill financially ever since for the Post, and it wins fewer awards than ever now that the MSM "peer group" knows (or thinks it knows) that the Posties were phonies.

Alternatively we can believe that Felt lied about his role ~ and that would be that he lied to the grave that he was even significant in it.

My money's on Felt throwing himself on his sword on behalf of his old friends and supervisors J. Edgar Hoover and Richard M. Nixon!

Kind of a last horselaugh at a building full of perverts, dopers and wastrals ~ owned by a bloated plutocrat.

6 posted on 12/23/2008 12:56:36 PM PST by muawiyah
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To: donna

“Deep throat”, got Nixon impeached and Ford took over. All this paved the way for jimmy carter.
Nixon was a superstar compared to this bastard Carter.


7 posted on 12/23/2008 12:57:30 PM PST by Joe Boucher (An enemy of Islam)
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To: Anti-Bubba182

I encourage everyone to read Silent Coup. I think you’ll see that the accepted storyline of Watergate is pretty far from the truth, and that Woodward’s previous participation in the Admiral Moorer scandal seems like an odd coincidence.


8 posted on 12/23/2008 12:58:28 PM PST by Der_Hirnfänger
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To: donna
This reminds me of the words from an old blues song:

I'll be glad when you're dead, you rascal, you!

9 posted on 12/23/2008 1:01:06 PM PST by WayneS (Respect the 2nd Amendment; Repeal the 16th)
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To: donna

I have never understood the media and far left’s absolute hatred of Nixon. I simply can’t explain it.

I was a conservative and didn’t care for Nixon because he was fairly liberal in most ways.

About the only things which make sense are he was indeed anti-communist and was effective against them in his early days. Maybe it was just their chance to get even. Also it could have just been that he was a Republican and someone they could take their vengeance on.

still can’t completely comprehend that pure hatred.


10 posted on 12/23/2008 1:06:54 PM PST by yarddog
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To: muawiyah
My money's on Felt throwing himself on his sword on behalf of his old friends and supervisors J. Edgar Hoover and Richard M. Nixon!

I can't figure out how that would be useful.

11 posted on 12/23/2008 1:14:38 PM PST by donna (Equal justice for U.S. citizens!)
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To: Joe Boucher

Nixon got more liberal stuff done, LOL.


12 posted on 12/23/2008 1:15:20 PM PST by donna (Equal justice for U.S. citizens!)
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To: donna

Felt willingly committed multiple felonies while a sworn Officer of the United States. What a $hitbird. The perfect Dem hero.


13 posted on 12/23/2008 1:16:27 PM PST by pabianice
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To: yarddog

Nixon was a Quaker - that may have done it, LOL.

Nixon was a real setback for Communism - it’s taken all these years to get Obama elected...


14 posted on 12/23/2008 1:17:19 PM PST by donna (Equal justice for U.S. citizens!)
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To: donna

Ooopps... I misunderstood the title ;-)


15 posted on 12/23/2008 1:17:50 PM PST by Vassar1989 (Feeling alone in New York; My professors lied; Sarah Palin equals Wonder Woman)
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To: donna

Mark Felt was a self-ingratiating jerk who only sought to take down the Richard Nixon because he was passed over for promotion at the FBI. He didn’t do what he did to “save the republic.” Nor did Woodward and Bernstein do what they did to “save the republic.” It was all about getting Richard Nixon and nothing more. Republic be damned.


16 posted on 12/23/2008 1:27:12 PM PST by pnh102 (Save America - Ban Ethanol Now!)
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To: justiceseeker93

*ping*


17 posted on 12/23/2008 1:29:00 PM PST by fieldmarshaldj (~"This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps !"~~)
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To: yarddog
About the only things which make sense are he was indeed anti-communist and was effective against them in his early days. Maybe it was just their chance to get even.

I agree. Considering the terrible legislation he signed (EPA,OSHA, and paving the way for federal affirmative action programs,etc.) he should be a hero of modern liberalism. But it was indeed his early anti-Communist work (specifically nailing Alger Hiss, still the icon of American Communists) that forever made Nixon a must-destroy liberal target.

18 posted on 12/23/2008 1:29:25 PM PST by Bernard Marx
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To: donna

And the most amazing thing is, Bob Woodward got a deathbed interview with him. Look for it in the Post after New Year’s.

:-D )))


19 posted on 12/23/2008 1:31:43 PM PST by RichInOC (No! BAD Rich! (What'd I say?))
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To: donna

Vengence need not be utilitarian in nature. Obvious Felt didn’t get paid off.


20 posted on 12/23/2008 1:32:46 PM PST by muawiyah
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