The New York Post took some jabs at Mark Felt, the newest hero of the left who is doing a wonderful job in his mere outing of returning the leftwing media to their glory days of taking down a corrupt Republican president.
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.
No real suprises there. The idea that they could cash in is possibly one reason why felt didn’t go to the authorities or investigate himself what went on at the Watergate Hotel, and instead went to the press. Everyone cashes in.
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.”
.jpg)
Well, it’s funny the Post should mention that. A quick search on Google turns up this rant about Bill Cinton pardoning everyone under the sun. In it, Felt, specifically, is mentioned. Mind you, this is the same heroic Felt they’re talking about today. The only difference is that today he took down Nixon:
W. Mark Felt and Edward Miller by the Great Freaking Communicator, Ronald Reagan, 1981; clemency for authorizing FBI agents to break into Vietnam protesters’ offices without warrants. This was under J. Edgar Hoover’s 48 year reign where little things like the rights of the accused — and anyone else for that matter — did not mean a thing.
That’s typical of the people who hated Mark Felt previously and who love him now… He was a criminal who operated outside the law according to them. He overstepped his bounds and his authority according to them. I had never heard of Mark Felt up until two days ago, and Googling his name has been an amazingly enlightening experience, namely in the contrasting opinions before they knew he took down Nixon and after… Anyway, back to the story at hand:
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.
Felt’s actions do not ring true to anyone who believes in standing up for anything. I’ve said before and I’ll say again it took no courage to run to the press as an anonymous source. Anyone could have done that. It took no risk. No courage. Nothing. In fact, it was a weasly way out. He waited until most of the people involved were dead, decided he could cash in without consequence, and then came out.
Now, let’s roll back a few months.
Remember “the Whistleblowers?” The darlings of the american media for months on end? The two analysts from the FBI who continuously tried to blow the doors off the american intelligence system? The ones who Time wrote article after article about telling us how wonderful and patriotic they were for what they were doing? Surely you do.
Well, it’s no secret that I wasn’t exactly on their side because after reading their stories, I didn’t see anything in it that was more than hindsight. However, what they did was courageous, honorable, and even in some minds heroic.
They risked everything coming out in public. They risked their careers, their pensions, going to jail, everything. Why? Because they felt they had a need to get the story out. They believed their superiors, who they went to first, weren’t listening to them.
The contrast between the two approaches couldn’t be more stark. On one hand you have the FBI’s number two, who felt he had his hands tied on what he could do so he worked in the shadows to save his own skin, coming out only when there was a buck to be made. On the other hand you have two lowly analysts who were able to bring a scandalous story to the front of the american consciousness, become posterchildren for intelligence reform, and did so at great personal risk to themselves.
The whistleblower ladies were courageous. Mark Felt is an opportunist of the highest order, who despite being a “law and order” guy did nothing to further law and order.
Pardon me if I don’t get in line to kiss Saint Mark’s feet.