THE MEN WHO REALLY BROUGHT NIXON DOWN
New York Post
June 2, 2005
No sooner had The Washington Post confirmed that Mark Felt, the FBI's former No. 2, was its secret Water gate informant nicknamed "Deep Throat" than the frenzy began. Now it's time for everyone — Felt and his family included — to start cashing in.
Bob Woodward just so happens to have been working on a book about Deep Throat — which is now going to be rushed into print, it was announced yesterday. (Last year, he and Carl Bernstein sold their Watergate papers to the University of Texas-Austin for $5 million.)
And the Felt family admits that the road to their father's decision to come clean about his role — after years of denials — began with their thought that there was money to be made.
According to Vanity Fair, which first disclosed his Watergate role, Felt's daughter Joan complained that "Bob Woodward's going to get all the glory from this, but we could make at least enough money to pay some bills."
So the decision to end the 30-year-old mystery appears to have less to do with history than with scoring quick cash.
Moreover, it turns out that Felt was motivated to help Woodward not so much by a sense of duty than a desire for payback — he'd hoped to succeed J. Edgar Hoover as FBI director and was incensed when he was passed over for L. Patrick Gray, whom he considered a White House pawn.
But then, the ironies abound in this story.
The same liberals who are now hailing Mark Felt as a principled citizen who did his duty at the risk of his career were far less charitable back in 1981, when Ronald Reagan — in the first such act of his presidency — pardoned Felt, who'd been convicted of approving illegal FBI break-ins during the hunt for radical Weather Underground fugitives.
Many compared the pardon to the controversial one that Gerald Ford had given to Richard Nixon. The New York Times declared that prosecuting Felt — the highest-ranking FBI man to be convicted of a crime — was "a potent deterrent to officials who may be tempted, even by patriotic zeal, to break the law."
Which is precisely what many said about the Nixon White House officials who went to jail for the Watergate break-in and coverup.
(And, as a matter of principle, what Felt did isn't a whole lot different than running the Watergate burglary itself; a break-in's a break-in, right?)
Actually, Felt's role in uncovering Watergate has almost surely been exaggerated. It's no accident that Woodward, in confirming his identity, made a point of mentioning all the other sources who helped him on the story.
And for all the cries now being heard that "Deep Throat" proves the need for anonymous sources — of the kind that have caused a number of journalistic embarrasments of late — it's important to remember that Woodward and Bernstein never quoted him directly or relied on him for specific information.
In fact, "Deep Throat" served mainly as a guide, pushing the reporters to different avenues of investigation and away from less-fruitful paths. Anything he told them had to be confirmed by multiple other sources.
"Deep Throat" was a great dramatic device that helped Woodward and Bernstein sell books and made for great scenes in the movie with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman.
But the coverup surely would have unraveled without him.
Indeed, far more significant roles were played by three men:
* James McCord, the Watergate burglar (and security director of the Nixon re-election campaign) who first spilled the beans in a pre-sentencing letter to Judge John Sirica, in which he said he and the others were under political pressure to plead guilty and close the case.
* Sirica himself, irate at the revelation, essentially took charge of the case and began investigating further. His promise of extraordinarily long jail terms caused others among the burglars to begin cooperating with prosecutors.
* Alexander Butterfield, the White House aide who almost casually disclosed that President Nixon had installed a secret taping system. It was those tapes, more than anything, that undid Richard Nixon's presidency, providing the smoking gun that forced his resignation.
In fact, the tapes also show that the identity of "Deep Throat" — long hailed as "Watergate's last secret" — was no mystery to the Nixon White House.
As early as September 1972, just three months after the break-in, Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman told Nixon that "we know who leaked" Watergate information to The Washington Post. "Somebody in the FBI?" asked Nixon. "Yes, sir," replied Haldeman, "Mark Felt."
Indeed, Haldeman even speculated that Felt was doing it because "he wants to be in the top spot" in the FBI, to which Nixon said: "That's a hell of a way for him to get to the top."
By his own admission, when confronted by his own boss about the White House's belief, Felt lied: "I haven't leaked to anybody. They are wrong," he insisted.
Five months later, White House Counsel John Dean also said that Felt was the leaker, but this time the president refused to believe that someone like Felt would risk his career to turn informer.
Which is doubtless why the reaction from surviving Nixon loyalists like Charles Colson, Pat Buchanan and Henry Kissinger has been so bitter.
Felt himself, when denying he was "Deep Throat," used to say that whoever leaked the information had been disloysal — and he was right.
If he was so disturbed by the direction the FBI had begun to take after the death of J. Edgar Hoover — and mindful that he'd been passed over as his successor — Mark Felt should have resigned. And then, if so motivated, he would have been justified in speaking out publicly.
But if he was aware of specific crimes being committed by top White House officials — as surely he was — then Felt had an obligation to share his information with prosecutors who were building the cases against them. Or even, like James McCord, with Judge Sirica.
Instead, he chose to confide only in Bob Woodward and The Washington Post.
That doesn't strike us as particularly courageous — or heroic.
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