Free Republic

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...

Mark Felt's emergence as Deep Throat has occasioned a prolonged Old Timer's Day of the American left, allowing various aging fakers to take one last, long victory lap. With relish they have renewed their intense moralizing about Richard Nixon even though their own ethics evaporated a long time ago. We overthrew a corrupt order, they in effect say by puffing themselves up -- an arrogance that would be more comprehensible if they hadn't proceeded to create a new corrupt order. The champions of Deep Throat built atop the ruins of Richard Nixon not a better culture but a base culture...

Deep Throat is Mark Felt, the former deputy associate director of the FBI — except for the parts of Deep Throat that clearly aren't Mark Felt, like all the stuff Throat supposedly confirmed after Felt left the FBI in June, 1973. Well, that's going to be something of a problem, isn't it? Dean analyzed the meetings Woodward describes in All The Presidents' Men and methodically analyzes what others have glossed over. For Woodward's version to be literally correct, his source had to be able to have access to specific information (and disinformation — Dean estimated last night that half of...