I was going to write a long post about Mark Felt and how I think his fame is highly overrated and based on the fact that he took down a piece of garbage president that wasn’t a popular guy, not because anything he did was particularly courageous.
Then I remembered, I did that already: June 26, 2005, when he first came out as being Deep Throat.
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.
Yep. I pretty much nailed it.