Mark Felt is not a hero...

I find myself more and more at odds with Pat Buchanan these days, but he made an excellent point this morning on the "Imus in the Morning" radio program about the revelation of W. Mark Felt as the "Deep Throat" source for Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's Watergate stories.

Mark Felt was the number two man in the FBI when J. Edgar Hoover died. Felt was logically next in line to be Director but President Nixon put in his own guy - L. Patrick Gray - instead. Naturally, Felt - an ambitious career FBI guy - was bitter about being passed over. His payback to Nixon was to anonymously leak classified information to Woodward in a garage somewhere in Georgetown - an act made famous by Hal Holbrook in the film "All The President's Men".

I certainly don't defend Nixon's actions in the Watergate affair. The man's dishonesty to the American people was a violation of his Oath of Office and it is right that he should be held accountable for his lack of judgment. But Felt's actions were not honorable either. He broke an oath of his own to the FBI by doing what he did.

Buchanan - who was on Nixon's staff - points out what would have been honorable. Felt should have gone into Director Patrick Gray's office and shared his information and concerns about the goings-on in the White House and recommended that the Bureau pursue an investigation. If Gray refused, the honorable thing would have been to resign his position and make a public statement outlining his concerns, which would have created the necessary pressure to force an FBI investigation into the matter. In this way he would have been true to both his obligations to the Bureau and the American public.

The reason Felt never made a public statement about his involvement in the story until now is because he knew his actions would have been viewed as dishonorable by his colleagues.

But now, prepare for the Liberal media to praise Felt as a hero with a capital "H". The Post already has a glowing account of the man in it's coverage today:

He was the romantic truth teller half hidden in the shadows of a Washington area parking garage.

The MSM has always hated Nixon, ever since he doggedly outed State Department Official Alger Hiss as a Communist spy in 1948. They couldn't wait to be there when the President screwed up. What's really interesting about Felt's involvement in the story is that without him, there would not have been one. Woodward and Bernstein's crack investigations had led to a dead end until the former FBI man shared all his information. The reporters, for all intents and purposes, were nothing more than stenographers at that point.

The really sad part is the way that the Watergate story has poisoned American journalism by creating an "us v. them" mentality among those in the press who would always be on the look-out for the next "gotcha" story. If not for the legacy of Watergate, Bill Clinton might have even been spared Newsweek's Michael Isikoff's breaking of the Monica Lewinsky matter. And maybe after 9/11, the press' knee-jerk reaction would not have been "what did Bush know, and when did he know it?".

In any case, Mark Felt's contribution to journalism can best be remembered as the catalyst for an ever-escalating adversarial relationship between the press and the American government.

Posted by: Gary at 09:30 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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