Feh!
Comic/writer/pundit Will Durst did this nice take-off on all the odd reactions to the Deep Throat guy.
DEEP THROATED WHINING
by Will Durst“Speaking with us today is one of the men who spent some time at the eye of the Watergate storm. The man responsible for installing the electrical tape to cover the door latches during the break-in. Thanks for joining us. As you know, Washington DC is mourning the loss of its favorite 30 year old guessing game, as the whole country now knows the identity of Deep Throat. Being right there where it all began, what are your thoughts?”
“Disgust mostly. Call me an old fashioned felon, but I’m revolted by how the liberal media machine is determined to convince a gullible public what a swell guy this Deep Throat character is. Trying to make him out to be a national hero, when he really was nothing but a lousy rat. Skulking around in darkened garages not breaking into any cars. Deserves the mark of the stupid squealer.”
“So you disagree with the notion that Deep Throat provided a great service to the nation?”
“A monumental disservice is more like it. This guy is nothing but a stone hypocrite. Claims he had evidence of corruption. Well, if he was so damned sure, he should have taken it straight to his superiors.”
“But isn’t it true that L. Patrick Gray, his immediate and only superior at the FBI, was also indicted in the very same coverup?”
“So what? The way Felt handled it was contemptible. Going to outside agencies is unethical. There are proper Christian ways to go about these sort of things, and at every juncture, the choice he made was shameful and dishonorable. Something a terrorist would do. Now, I’m not saying W. Mark Felt was an advance scout for Al Qaeda, but.”
“Say he had gone to the authorities with this information, what do you think would have happened?”
“That’s easy. The focus would have shifted to him and the moral considerations of his whistle blowing, and Nixon would have scurried under a rock to wait for the glare to go away.”
“Like what happened with Dan Rather and Bush’s National Guard duty?”
“Exactly. Nobody bothered to find out if the information was correct or not once it became clear the documents weren’t. If Karl Rove were running things, Nixon might still be President.”
“Weren’t you convicted of burglary of the Watergate offices and subsequently charged with extortion, money laundering and illegal pony insemination?”
“I acted under the direct orders of our Commander-in-Chief for whom I considered it an honor to lie, cheat, steal and pony inseminate.”
“Illegal orders.”
“I was a good soldier.”
“So were the Nazis.”
“And your point is?”
“In a prepared statement, Mark Felt’s grandson sees his grandfather’s legacy as that of a Great American Hero. Do you take issue with that assessment?”
“Hero? The guy’s a schmuck. He totally ruined his legacy. Instead of being known as a former deputy director of the FBI with the highest esteem of his colleagues, now he’ll always be known as Deep Throat, the guy who ratted out a President.”
“And you’ll be known as a criminal sleazebag who broke the law, tried to cover it up and spent five years in federal prison.”
“Yes, but I still have the esteem of my colleagues.”
“Which are mostly career criminals.”
“Point taken.”
“Well, thanks again for talking to us. Next up, a Catholic Priest gives us a stern talking to on the Michael Jackson verdict.” Political Comic Will Durst believes Conservatives are unclear on the concept of “irony.”
Catch Durst at a special guest at DC’s Funniest Celebrity Contest this week on C-SPAN. Durst goes for the big audiences sometimes!
I don’t see that he did anything good. Nixon was using the CIA to interfere with the FBI investigation by claiming it was a national security issue. Did Felt know this wasn’t true? If not, then he was acting against national security for his own petty interests.
In his memoirs, Nixon essentially apologizes for Watergate, but in regards to other, he defends it as the way the game is played. It’s one thing to claim innocence, but here he is saying the behavior itself is OK. Nixon wasn’t impeached, he resigned, and future presidents didn’t get the right message. That’s what led to Clinton also using the IRS and the FBI against political opponents, and probably Bush too. If Felt hadn’t acted, they might have done a proper impeachment over legitimate charges that matter.
AB CD
Felt did a service to this country. Maybe his own career wasn’t the most honorable, but the gentleman did have some ethics. He knew that Nixon would never face the music unless he came forward with some of the information he had. It was that information which opened the door that led to Nixon’s downfall.
While it is true that Nixon was not impeached, he did resign instead of fight the forthcoming impeachment trial. The Articles of Impeachment had already been prepared.
Nixon claimed, “He was not a crook”. I disagree. He stole the democratic process.
Nixon could have had a legacy of getting us out of Vietnam. Instead he will always be known as the President that quit.
Criminal doings should not be protected in the name of “National Security. So, what National Security secrets did Felt pass on to the Post?
Pat, you missed my point. At the time, Nixon had the CIA telling the FBI to back off on grounds of national security. Someone in the White House like Kissinger or Haldmena would have known this story was false, so for one of them to leak is different. How did Felt know that the national security cover was false? Also while the articles of impeachment were prepared, the main story in the resignation was Watergate. Read through the articles of impeachment. Virtually everyone of those articles could have been used against Clinton. All Felt did was make the story Watergate, so future presidents learned not to break into political headquarters. A different impeachment over the items in the articles would have given us less corruption today. Instead we have the IRS auditing Bill O’Reilly every year Clinton was president.
As for Vietnam, because of the weakness over Watergate, Ford wasn’t able to protect the South when the communists overran there and in Cambodia. I imagine Mark Felt isn’t very popular in Vietnamese restaurants right now.
So should the FBI have backed off as requested by the CIA? As I pointed out in my earlier post, calling something “National Security” can not excuse criminal behavior. Felt was the chief operating officer of the FBI. He knew everything that the FBI was doing. He would easily know that the cloak of “National Security” would be a crock of crap.
As for the fall of Vietnam, Nixon deserves much of the blame. He bombed Cambodia (a neutral country) further enflaming the anti-war movement. He persecuted the NY Times and Washington Post as well as Dr Ellsberg, for leaking / publishing the Pentagon Papers alienating the liberals. Then with the country torn apart, Vietnam needed help the most but we were too distracted to see it.
This was not a case of BIG Government, it was a case of a corrupt leader who deservedly fell from grace.
Yes the FBI should have backed off. Felt knew what the FBI was doing, that doesn’t mean he knew everything. Did Felt actually know for a fact what was happening at the time? For that matter, even now at least one writer who went through the tapes reached the conclusion that Nixon thought he was covering up a Kennedy plot to assassinate Castro. I’m not familiar with Cambodia, but I doubt they were truly neutral, much like Syria and Iran are havens for Iraqi fighters. Nevertheless, Nixon’s fall allowed the Khmer Rouge to take power there, causing millions of deaths, dwarfing the Vietnam problem.