I pretty much recall what happened back then, and now that the mystery is solved, Felt's motives for leaking can, in one major sense, be explained like this:
JE Hoover died in 1972. Nixon named a submarine captain named L. Patrick Gray as the second FBI Director. Prior to his dying, Hoover denied Nixon's request that FBI agents conduct clandestine (illegal) operations against Daniel Ellsberg. Hoover also strongly advised Nixon not to form a group to carry that out. Nixon did anyway, establishing "the Plumbers".
The Plumbers broke in to the DC Dem campaign headquarters, (Watergate) looking for evidence that the Dems had been using illegal tactics to campaign against Nixon. (Ponder that absurdity for a moment.)
Now the FBI was legitimately and jurisdictionally tasked to investigate the criminal and civil rights violations of the Watergate break-in, and thousands of loose ends began to be tied up into a logical and substantial mountain of evidence.
However, L. Patrick Gray was just too loyal to Nixon. As Director of the FBI, he was privy, and probably demanded, that all investigative reports to be referred for prosecution be given to him before offical dissemination.
In the usual case, the FBI report(s) would have been sent to the Office of the Attorney General of the United States. Which was impossible, since the AG was none other than John Mitchell, himself involved in the Watergate cover-up.
As far as I know, Gray, instead of personally hand-carrying the reports to the AG (or Nixon), decided to take them home, where he hid them on a closet shelf.
When this was discovered, Gray lost his job in disgrace.
But he really was in a very peculiar position: Nixon was a close friend; Nixon was a subject of the investigation; the AG's Office was completely compromised, and the AG himself involved.
What was he supposed to do? He was damned either way.
When all this was happening, I had a great dislike for Gray, for corrupting the FBI, and I was happy to see him get canned. Looking back today, I now have a sense of his dilemma, and, I still think he did the wrong thing. The advice he got from his FBI cadre, including Felt, was to just turn the reports over to the AG, per protocol, keep the FBI out of the politics of the mess, and let the Nixon folks see just exactly what they were up against and decide their next course of action. Lying against the report's results by the Nixon folks would have indicated dissemination to the judiciary or some other branch of gov't would be appropriate.
Since Gray didn't take that advice, and there was no way to get the information to the right place, Felt took it upon himself to leak it to the press, and let the press drive Nixon from office by exposing to the people what a bunch of half-A'd crooks Nixon and his cronies were.
And Felt broke the law by leaking the information, maybe a felony or maybe a misdemeanor, depending on the classification of the report.
Felt may have had some personal reasons also, in that he had not been selected to replace Hoover. The FBI itself never figured the next Director would come from "outside".
But I think Felt had the higher purpose, and has there ever been a deed so important, successful, and so right, for our nation?
But I think Felt had the higher purpose, and has there ever been a deed so important, successful, and so right, for our nation?That all makes a certain amount of sense. But there's another factor. Nixon and Gray were purging all the old Hoover loyalists at the same time. These guys had resources beyond imagination, and many of them felt that Nixon was giving them the shaft.
Hoover had the infamous files for a reason, to protect himself. With Hoover dead, Nixon wasn't intimidated. Perhaps he should have been, or perhaps the agents just said "hell with this guy".
What Felt did is exactly what Hoover would have done if threatened, leak information from his files to the press. As head of the investigative division, Felt had access to everything. As an old Hoover crony, he probably had access to the secret files. These could be used both directly and indirectly, to blackmail information from others. Or even make them come forward. Why exactly did John Dean roll over like Michael Jackson in prison? Conscience? Yeah right, that weasel never had one.
It's all conjecture, but it adds up. The best part is what it does to Woodward and Bernstein's historical role. The Great Heros Of The Media become nothing more than the stalking horses for the Revenge of the Hoover Gang. It's like finding out Lewis and Clark got satellite maps from a time traveler.
-Eric