Mark Felt.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Felt
Trial and conviction
In the early 1970s, Felt had supervised Operation COINTELPRO, initiated by Hoover in the 1950s. This period of FBI history has generated great controversy for its abuses of private citizens’ rights. The FBI was spying on, infiltrating, and disrupting the Civil Rights Movement, Anti-War Movement, Black Panthers, and other New Left groups. By 1972 Felt was heading the investigation into the Weather Underground, which had planted bombs at the Capitol, the Pentagon, and the State Department building. Felt, along with Edward S. Miller, authorized FBI agents to break into homes secretly in 1972 and 1973, without a search warrant, on nine separate occasions. These kinds of FBI operations were known as “black bag jobs.” The break-ins occurred at five addresses in New York and New Jersey, at the homes of relatives and acquaintances of Weather Underground members. They did not contribute to the capture of any fugitives. The use of “black bag jobs” by the FBI was declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court in the Plamondon case, 407 U.S. 297 (1972).
The Church Committee of Congress revealed the FBI’s illegal activities, and many agents were investigated. In 1976, Felt publicly stated he had ordered break-ins, and recommended against punishment of individual agents who had carried out orders. Felt also stated that Patrick Gray had also authorized the break-ins, but Gray denied this. Felt said on the CBS television program Face the Nation he would probably be a “scapegoat” for the Bureau’s work.[55] “I think this is justified and I’d do it again tomorrow,” he said on the program. While admitting the break-ins were “extralegal”, he justified them as protecting the “greater good.” Felt said:
To not take action against these people and know of a bombing in advance would simply be to stick your fingers in your ears and protect your eardrums when the explosion went off and then start the investigation.
Griffin B. Bell, the Attorney General in the Jimmy Carter administration, directed investigation of these cases. On April 10, 1978, a federal grand jury charged Felt, Miller, and Gray with conspiracy to violate the constitutional rights of American citizens by searching their homes without warrants.
The indictment charged violations of Title 18, Section 241 of the United States Code and stated Felt and the others:
Did unlawfully, willfully, and knowingly combine, conspire, confederate, and agree together and with each other to injure and oppress citizens of the United States who were relatives and acquaintances of the Weatherman fugitives, in the free exercise and enjoyments of certain rights and privileges secured to them by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America.[56]
Felt told his biographer Ronald Kessler: I was shocked that I was indicted. You would be too, if you did what you thought was in the best interests of the country and someone on technical grounds indicted you.[57]
Felt, Gray, and Miller were arraigned in Washington, DC on April 20. Seven hundred current and former FBI agents were outside the courthouse applauding the “Washington Three”, as Felt referred to himself and his colleagues in his memoir.[58] Gray’s case did not go to trial and was dropped by the government for lack of evidence, on December 11, 1980.
Felt and Miller attempted to plea bargain with the government, willing to agree to a misdemeanor guilty plea to conducting searches without warrants—a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2236. The government rejected the offer in 1979. After eight postponements, the case against Felt and Miller went to trial in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on September 18, 1980.[59] On October 29, former President Richard M. Nixon appeared as a rebuttal witness for the defense. He testified that in authorizing the Bureau to conduct break-ins to gather foreign intelligence information “he was acting on precedents established by a number of Presidential directives dating to 1939.” It was Nixon’s first courtroom appearance since his resignation in 1974. Nixon also contributed money to Felt’s defense fund, since Felt’s legal expenses were running over $600,000 by then. Also testifying were former Attorneys General Mitchell, Kleindienst, Herbert Brownell Jr., Nicholas Katzenbach, and Ramsey Clark, all of whom said warrantless searches in national security matters were commonplace and understood not to be illegal. Mitchell and Kleindienst denied they had authorized any of the break-ins at issue in the trial. (The Bureau used a national security justification for the searches because it alleged the Weather Underground was in the employ of Cuba.[60])
The jury returned guilty verdicts on November 6, 1980. Although the charge carried a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, Felt was fined $5,000 and Miller was fined $3,500.[57] Writing an OpEd piece in The New York Times a week after the conviction, attorney Roy Cohn claimed that Felt and Miller were being used as scapegoats by the Carter administration and it was an unfair prosecution. Cohn wrote the break-ins were the “final dirty trick” of the Nixon administration, and there had been no “personal motive” to their actions.[61] The New York Times praised the convictions, saying “the case has established that zeal is no excuse for violating the Constitution.”[62]
Felt and Miller appealed their verdicts.[63]
Pardon
President Ronald Reagan pardoned Felt and Miller.
In a phone call on January 30, 1981, Edwin Meese encouraged President Ronald Reagan to issue a pardon. After further encouragement from Felt’s former colleagues, President Reagan pardoned Felt and Miller. The pardon was signed on March 26, but was not announced to the public until April 15, 1981.
In the pardon, Reagan wrote:
During their long careers, Mark Felt and Edward Miller served the Federal Bureau of Investigation and our nation with great distinction. To punish them further—after 3 years of criminal prosecution proceedings—would not serve the ends of justice.
Their convictions in the U.S. District Court, on appeal at the time I signed the pardons, grew out of their good-faith belief that their actions were necessary to preserve the security interests of our country. The record demonstrates that they acted not with criminal intent, but in the belief that they had grants of authority reaching to the highest levels of government.[64]
Nixon sent Felt and Miller bottles of champagne with the note “Justice ultimately prevails.”[65] The New York Times disapproved in an editorial, saying that the United States “deserved better than a gratuitous revision of the record by the President.”[66] Felt and Miller said they would seek repayment of their legal fees from the government.
The prosecutor at the trial, John W. Nields Jr., said, “I would warrant that whoever is responsible for the pardons did not read the record of the trial and did not know the facts of the case.” Nields also complained that the White House did not consult with the prosecutors in the case, which was contrary to the usual practice when a pardon was under consideration.[63]
Felt said,
I feel very excited and just so pleased that I can hardly contain myself. I am most grateful to the President. I don’t know how I’m ever going to be able to thank him. It’s just like having a heavy burden lifted off your back. This case has been dragging on for five years.
At a press conference the day of the announcement, Miller said, “I certainly owe the Gipper one.”[67] Carter Attorney General Griffin Bell said he did not object to the pardons, as the convictions had upheld constitutional principles.
Despite their pardons, Felt and Miller won permission from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to appeal their convictions so as to remove it from their record and to prevent it from being used in civil suits by victims of the break-ins they had ordered.[68] Ultimately, the court restored Felt’s law license in 1982, based on Reagan’s pardon. In June 1982, Felt and Miller testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s security and terrorism subcommittee. They said that the restrictions placed on the FBI by Attorney General Edward H. Levi were threatening the country’s safety.[69]
wiretapping and otherwise snooping email etc is the modern equivalent. Lying on a FISA warrant application is criminal.
lock them up.
Why is it only unpatriotic NOW to question the integrity of the FIB?