Posted on 06/03/2005 3:49:11 AM PDT by billorites
WASHINGTON - "Deep Throat," the anonymous source who helped expose corruption at the highest levels of American government, chose to step forward when journalists are under relentless attack for using anonymous sources.
W. Mark Felt's role in guiding The Washington Post's Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein toward a massive criminal conspiracy involving the president of the United States is a reminder of the healthy role that confidential sources can play in shining a cleansing light on wrongdoing.
It is hard to appreciate, even in today's polarized Washington, how poisonous and intimidating the atmosphere became as the Post kept digging into the multiple scandals that first surfaced on June 17, 1972, when a security guard at the Watergate office building found a piece of tape placed over a door latch so that five burglars in the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee could make a fast getaway.
By the time President Richard Nixon resigned on Aug. 9, 1974, driven from office for his role in an attempted criminal cover-up of the Watergate break-in, Woodward and Bernstein were heroes. When Hollywood made the movie, Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman played them.
But for much of two years, Woodward and Bernstein, their executive editor Ben Bradlee, their publisher Katharine Graham and The Washington Post were virtually alone in a sea of hostility. They took comfort in the fact that the No. 2 man in the FBI, Felt, was telling them they were on the right course.
Former Attorney General John Mitchell, who was managing Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign, said "Katie Graham's gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer" if the Post published one Watergate story. Graham later said the licenses of two Washington Post-owned television stations were threatened.
On Capitol Hill, the criticism was venomous. The same week in 1973 that the Post won a Pulitzer Prize for its Watergate coverage, Sen. William Proxmire, a liberal Democrat from Wisconsin, denounced "the McCarthyistic destruction of President Nixon that is now going on with increasing vehemence daily in the press."
Watergate players who went to prison for their crimes are today making the rounds of television talk shows and blasting Felt as disloyal and unethical. G. Gordon Liddy, who masterminded the Watergate break-in and served 4 { years in jail for it, said on CNN that if Felt "possessed evidence of wrongdoing, he was honor-bound to take that to a grand jury and secure an indictment, not to selectively leak it to a single news source."
Liddy conveniently ignores the fact that the White House was trying to obstruct the FBI's investigation. Felt's boss, the FBI director, would later be forced to resign for destroying evidence. Even before the Watergate burglary, the White House was running a vast, secret political spying operation outside the law.
Going to the press was one way to get around a corrupted system, expose the corruption and force corrective action.
One can only speculate on Felt's motives. He's 91 and is said to be failing, mentally and physically.
Conservatives are highlighting his disappointment in 1972 at being passed over when Nixon chose an FBI director to replace the legendary J. Edgar Hoover, who died six weeks before the Watergate break-in. Felt's family says he was tortured by his decision to go outside channels but felt it was the only way to protect the FBI from being misused in a political cover-up.
He may have been motivated by both considerations, and he may not have known fully himself why he did it. In the end, his motives are irrelevant. His information was solid.
The lessons of Deep Throat are important for today's journalists and the public. Anonymous sources are in ill repute these days, partly because journalists have overused them, allowed them to launch partisan attacks and even, tragically, invented them. But even the solidest anonymous sources, who decline to be identified out of genuine fear of reprisal, are often under attack, not because the information they provide is wrong but because it doesn't support a particular political agenda.
News organizations, including Knight Ridder, are tightening the rules under which they grant anonymity to sources. For example, like Woodward and Bernstein, who always had at least two independent sources for their Watergate stories and found ways to confirm what Felt told them, we require multiple sources, except in extraordinary circumstances.
We're tightening the rules, but we know there will always be an important role for sources such as Mark Felt who can't be named.
"Journalism using anonymous sources can bring about great good and can have positive results, even while when it's going on, it's painful," said Lucy Dalglish, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
Clark Hoyt is the Washington Editor of Knight Ridder. He was Washington correspondent for The Miami Herald when the Watergate break-in occurred in 1972 and covered the subsequent trials, Senate hearings and the swearing-in of Gerald Ford after Richard Nixon's resignation.
Project: Revive Newsweak rolls forward
Oh, Ok. To all newspeople, so let's meet in the middle on this one. You guys use anonymous sources all you want to (the way you always have ), and if the information produced from the sources is valid, we'll live with it. However, if you're wrong by quoting all these bogus liars, axe grinders and back stabbing anonymous sources, we'll hold you accountable for it. Fair is fair.
Infinite capacity for self-decption ping.
Right. Down with Nixon, and up with the worst administration in American history: Jimmy Carter.
Rivive Newsweak is right. After reading through all of the crap of this article, you arrive at the main point. This is nothing more than an apologist piece defending anonymous sources. Talk about terrible journalism. This article stunk. Do they teach them to write this way at Columbia's School of Journalism?
Linda Tripp is my heroine!
Conservatives are highlighting his disappointment in 1972 at being passed over when Nixon chose an FBI director to replace the legendary J. Edgar Hoover....
Conservatives? Steaming piles of pungent BS !
It's the MSM who have been highlighting this.
They obviously don't want anything to detract from the warm and self bestowed aura of sainthood that envelops the WP and Woodward & Bernstein.
As usual, these guys still insist that THEY are the story.
Ok,fair enough,go to the press and expose all.
Skulking around in parking garages,selectively dribbling out information,putting the country through the torture of Watergate for 2 years at the time we were trying to figure an end to the Vietnam war is not the way to expose wrongdoing.
Woodstein had the desire to string this along for political as well as professional reasons and along with Felt they clearly wanted to impose the maximum pain to all in their sights.
Oh well, I'm sure it's just an error on my part.
He's defending anonymous sources so his zombie reporters can continue spinning fairy tales. Unless a source is under threat of death, no anonymous source should be used. Most anonymous source stories are nothing more than political hacks with an attack agenda. Everyone knows that.
Hoyt is a typical left wing weasel puking in a bowl and trying to pass it off as delicious chicken soup.
"Even before the Watergate burglary, the White House was running a vast, secret political spying operation outside the law."
The writer puts forth an unsupported assertion to bolster his weak argument. Felt is a stool pigeon, a leaker, who committed criminal acts while drawing his pay from the Federal government, and later his pension. Like other democrats with mental disorders he wants it both ways. Indeed there is a vast left wing conspiracy to destroy our country, nothing more. ...more specious, warped reasoning from the left.
Today, as we saw with Newsleak, the chain of events is: a) Get information from anonymous source. b) Publish information. c) CYA!!!
Mark
Conveniently omitted is the fact that W. Mark Felt was a sworn law enforcement official. As such Mr. Felt had an obligation to bring any information he had about any criminal activities he may have had knowledge about to the proper authorities. In the very least, should Felt have had the suspicion that those facts would be ignored, [by giving them to the proper authorities] he had both the ethical and moral obligation to resign his sworn office prior to "selling" this information to reporters.
To make Felt out to be a man of moral and ethical judgement is to make a mockery of morality and ethical behavior.
But then I know of no one who accuses the Left of being either moral, or ethical.
deep throat show that on ereally PO'ed FBI Agent can do stuff as a willing accomplice for the ambitious press-that
would land anyone right of center behind bars. chuck Colson went to prison for having a single FBI file,yet Linda Lovelace threw how many into the river?I have Zero respect for the source-or for those who profitted by his destructive acts.I greater respect for the porn queen he
represented himself as.when dealing with politicians it is
all Porn and corruption I suppose.For they have removed the
political house form its foundaitons and erected a wall to
divide the house form God--and the nation .
They lie at their own peril......and they know it too!
Dear Mark Felt
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
I hope I am over wary; but if I am not, there is, even now, something of ill-omen, amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of Courts; and the worse than savage mobs, for the executive ministers of justice. . . . I know the American People are much attached to their Government;--I know they would suffer much for its sake;--I know they would endure evils long and patiently, before they would ever think of exchanging it for another. Yet, notwithstanding all this, if the laws be continually despised and disregarded, if their rights to be secure in their persons and property, are held by no better tenure than the caprice of a mob, the alienation of their affections from the Government is the natural consequence; and to that, sooner or later, it must come.
Here then, is one point at which danger may be expected.
The question recurs, "how shall we fortify against it?" The answer is simple. Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others. As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and Laws, let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor;--let every man remember that to violate the law, is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the character of his own, and his children's liberty. Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap--let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs;--let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars.
Abraham Lincoln
As I read that, I was trying to think of who the author would have been. I wasn't close. ;)
That is most relevant.
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