52 Comments

1. jvon:

I’m not sure you can QUITE equate break-ins (illegal or not) investigating what was basically a domestic terrorist group and break-ins investigating political opponents. I also think guesses at his motives at this point are just that — guesses. But I think you’ve nailed exactly why his identity as Deep Throat was kept secret for so long.

Dec 20, 2008 - 10:46 am 2. David Thomson:

I highly recommend Victor Lasky’s It Didn’t Start with Watergate. Geoff Shepard’s The Secret plot to make Ted Kennedy President (Inside the Real Watergate Conspiracy) should also be added to the list. I remain convinced that the morally flawed Richard Nixon would not have been forced out of office he were a Democrat. His number one crime was that he was a Republican. The left-wing establishment merely saw a golden opportunity to stick to the GOP. John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson would have been allowed to throw a few scapegoats under the bus—and everything would have mostly gone back to normal.

Dec 20, 2008 - 11:53 am 3. NCBob:

I know Felt is beloved of the ultra-left wing including the media, but is there any reason to believe that he was on Moscow’s payroll?
Felt was a traitor and just because Nixon was his target makes him no less of a traitor. May Felt swim in a lake of molten sulpher for all eternity, he deserves it.

Dec 20, 2008 - 12:38 pm 4. fred:

I think Felt did the right thing by doing surveillance against The Weathermen, who were murderers, domestic terrorists, and thieves. And I don’t care if his acts were construed as “illegal.” His moral instincts in that regard were refined, even if some people do not quite see it that way. Not all things legal are moral and not all things moral are legal. To those using less sophisticated moral reasoning, Felt’s apparent inconsistency seems to indict his character. But his instincts were to protect the innocent.

I’m not on the side of the Leftists who wanted to bring President Nixon down. And I’m not a Nixon hater. But the activities directed against the DNC office in the Watergate were without any moral merit. Felt was correct to judge them thus.

I have no way of knowing Mr. Felt’s motives. I can only judge this from a distance. I’m trying to be fair to the man and weight these things as I would reason them out. The Weathermen were scoundrels who deserved more than they got. I find it a monstrous miscarriage of justice that Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn are not in prison for the rest of their lives.

Dec 20, 2008 - 1:39 pm 5. Someone75:

Wow – I never thought I’d see Nixon defenders. NCBob: are you serious? Really? You’re so defensive of the GOP that you can’t admit Nixon was a dirtbag and Felt was a hero? That’s so petty and sad.

Dec 20, 2008 - 6:03 pm 6. Barry Dauphin:

It’s interesting that he remained silent for so long and waited until almost everyone involved had died. After Watergate was over, he could have said he was deep throat and let the debates begin. Instead of Frost/Nixon, it would have been interesting to have a multi-part Firing Line hosted by WFB with Nixon and Felt as guests and let them “talk it out”.

Dec 20, 2008 - 6:18 pm 7. BadNewsBarnes666:

Imagine the how great the world would be if the Watergate burglars had found enough information to destroy the demonicRAT party for ever. It is a shame that people intent on the destruction of this nation sleep safely within its walls.

The demonicRats condemned millions to die in the communist death camps of South East Asia, but point out Nixion as a “dirt bag”.

Dec 20, 2008 - 7:16 pm 8. njcommuter:

Our legal system couldn’t deal with terrorists then. Then we didn’t have any experience with the threat. Now we do. What is our excuse?

Dec 20, 2008 - 7:35 pm 9. EdGi:

Actually, the FBI deputy who directed the Weatherman ops was Sullivan, who was convicted and pardoned along with Felt, who was more the IG deputy in function. The mystery to me has always been why Sullivan/Felt did not simply get an intel authorization from the Atty Gen and Nixon, as they would, I think, gotten almost carte blank, and, prior to FISA, totally legal. When Nixon authorized the plumbers in the Pentagon Papers case, the plumbers ops against Ellsburg and others could not get Atty Gen or intel related approval because of Nixons problems with the Justice dept, but why didn’t the FBI get authorization?

Dec 20, 2008 - 7:49 pm 10. fred:

BadNewsBarnes666,

I supported the war then and I still think it was the right thing to do. The wrong thing to do was what the Demonrats did in 1974: pull the plug on the South Vietnamese. It was disgraceful. Yes, I supported Nixon’s conduct of the war. I think it was right. But I don’t think it was right to break into the DNC at Watergate. Bad, stupid move if you ask me. The cover up is what did in Nixon, who I still think was a pretty good president compared with what’s coming at us for the next four years.

Felt made the right call on that one. Just as I think he made the right call on the Weathermen. F*****g terrorists who should have been given the death penalty.

Dec 20, 2008 - 8:07 pm 11. David Thomson:

“But I don’t think it was right to break into the DNC at Watergate.”

It wasn’t the right to do. However, both LBJ and JFK did similar things! As I said previously, Richard Nixon was a flawed human being. But his number one sin was being a Republican.

Dec 20, 2008 - 10:32 pm 12. JFM:

Someone75

Given that people on your side have defended or helped Stalin, Pol Pot, Ho chi Minh, Che Guevara, Mao and genocioder-facilitator Jane Fonda I see no reason one whose sins were comparatively so in insigfinicant as Nixon’s (when compared to the above people or even when compared to Billy Ayers) couldn’t be defended.

Dec 21, 2008 - 6:47 am 13. Joe Bison:

Nixon wanted to know if the McGovern camp
was getting funding from enemies like Cuba.
The election itself was not affected.

Dec 21, 2008 - 7:05 am 14. Maggie:

#2 and #11 David T – Thanks for the book recommendations. I just ordered both. Maybe PJ media should start a book list.

Dec 21, 2008 - 8:00 am 15. Brian Richard Allen:

“” Calling it in to the …. Washington (com-Post’s wildly over-rated stenographers, Bernstein and Woodward) as did Felt, (was) more (the) act of a wounded ego or spite, than something designed to improve government operations. “”

Having, like every other of his bloody ilk, sat on his hands and seen no evil during the mobbed-up years of lying, looting, thieving, mass-murdering cryptofascistic Kennedy/Johnson years — during most of which the Bill Moyers’ plumbers made the Nixon era team Boy Scouts by comparison — Mr Felt was only one of the hundreds of thousands of “Democratic”-party-activist bureaucrats who own operate and control the deadly dangerous machinery of the feral gummint. And whose individual and collective(ist) loyalties to America, to Americans, to the administration of the day, to the United States Constitution and to Law are, like those of their uniformly Goebbelsesque driveby media maties, all subordinate to their loyalties to the vast organized criminal enterprises AKA the “Democratic” potty.

Of which they and their state and local government equivilents, every one of them on the taxpayers’ dole, are the gofors, bendovers, fetchits, footsoldiers, made men and consigliere.

Brian Richard Allen
Los Angeles – CalifUBAMAcated 90028 & the Far Abroad

Dec 21, 2008 - 8:11 am 16. Moultrie:

According to newly released docs, Felt most likely was a cutout to disquise the real traitors, Al Haig and the Joint Chiefs who used the iddiot left media tas a tool to attack the admin. From awhat I recently have read, this was a coup against a sitting President, maybe not the first or the last. See more: http://www.nixonera.com/welcome.asp

Dec 21, 2008 - 9:16 am 17. Edward A:

One has to smile…Nixon’s number one sin was not that he was a Republican. His number one sin was that he was a crook. To defend such a criminal is laughable.

Dec 21, 2008 - 9:47 am 18. pigpen:

Felt is a typical Washington insider.

Dec 21, 2008 - 10:48 am 19. Shef Rogers:

Aw c’mon, people, this article is spiteful and silly and the comments defending Nixon are simply deranged.

Dec 21, 2008 - 11:13 am 20. don:

Ah, the ironies of history. Because of “deep throat’s” actions, causing the subsequent events that forced Nixon to ultimately resign, the South Vietnamese and Cambodians were left to the tender mercies of French trained Marxists, the heroes of the American New Left. Like deep throat, even the New Left thought of themselves as heroic! In reality the New Left were “chicken hawks” who never joined up with their role models the Vietcong; as close as Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden ever got was doing agitprop in Hanoi while enjoying room service. And all those heroes who stayed home to enjoy the free love scene while having the cultural revolution thought of themselves as heroic, and some even got amnesties for dodging the draft. Sometimes it pays to be the children of the bourgeoise. It’s even better when those progressive children get to write there own self serving history, but, to paraphrase Marx, for Baby Boomers the ruling ideas of history are invariably the ideas of the ruling class children who don’t do “wars of choice.”

Dec 21, 2008 - 1:06 pm 21. katiejane:

An honorable man would have gone public with his information.

Dec 21, 2008 - 1:24 pm 22. fred:

don @20,

Everything you wrote is true. I consider the New Left, cultural Gramscian Marxists in our country to be UTTERLY DESPICABLE. Nixon’s a piker compared to them, and in fact I have yet to read anything from the Left that even acknowledges the awful crimes of the North Vietnamese Communists and the Kmer Rouge Communists. I used to be a Marxist on the Left back in the late Seventies on up to about 1987 when I made a break with Marxism. The ones who were older than I (I was born in 1955) who evaded service during the Vietnam War revolted me with their hedonistic amoral existence. I left Marxism based upon the strengths of the critiques of it that I eventually could not get around, but also the behavior and hypocrisy of the Marxists themselves certainly played a role.

This war among us Baby Boomers is not over. Those of you who worked to undermine your country will not escape the harsh judgment of history for your treason.

I am not against Pres. Nixon. Just because one doesn’t agree with the Watergate break-in does not mean that one was against Nixon and against defending South Vietnam. It does not mean taking sides with the Leftists and Democratic Party. And it does not mean that one is overlooking the shady actions of the Democrats. All it means is that one thinks what Nixon did was wrong and boneheaded. It gave his enemies something to use against him.

Defending Felt does not mean that one thinks he’s the most virtuous FBI man who came down the road. It just means that one recognizes that Felt understood SOMETHING about right and wrong. Wiretapping The Weathermen was morally right, if not legally questionable. Exposing the Watergate break-in and cover up was the right thing to do also.

The Weathermen were/are Communist swine who were a threat to innocent human lives. My God, these people actually had a meeting during which they discussed things like re-education camps for Americans and even liquidation of American citizens! Bernardine Dohrn swooned over the grotesque cruelty of Charlie Manson. These people were filth. Felt’s choice to spy on them was highly moral and very patriotic.

Dec 21, 2008 - 4:21 pm 23. B Dubya:

Felt is dead. Nixon is dead. About 5 million Vietnamese and Cambodians are dead.
All the new stalinists really have, have ever had, to offer is betrayal, murder (usually by proxy; like Himmler, they don’t really have the stomach for doing their own killing), and treason against the very Constitution and culture that makes their pitiable lives possible. In the end, they will deny it all, useful tools and fellow travelers.
If it were in my power, I would give them the treatment the Russians gave to the Pretender Dmitri. It was horrible, right up to the point where they loaded his ashes into a cannon and fired them back towards Poland. That part always makes me laugh.

Dec 21, 2008 - 7:16 pm 24. first history:

I love the re-writing of the Vietnam War, if anyone is to blame it’s the Republicans. First Eisenhower refused to use nuclear weapons to support the French at Dien Bien Phu. It was Nixon and Kissinger’s Vietnamization policy that signaled the end. The war was turned over to an inadequate and corrupt regime and army, more interested in acquiring wealth than defending their “country.” South Vietnam was an artifical construct as a result of deals made during World War II; in the end there was no way that North Vietnam could lose. It just wasn’t our fight.

Dec 21, 2008 - 7:16 pm 25. Terry Gain:

It’s bizarre to compare illegally investigating a criminal organization- a terrorist one at that – with illegslly investigating the other national political party.

Dec 21, 2008 - 7:20 pm 26. first history:

Terry:

Aren’t they one in the same?

/snark

Dec 21, 2008 - 7:39 pm 27. fred:

first history,

Please study a detailed history of the battles, campaigns, and tactics of our men in South Vietnam and tell me that the Communist victory was “inevitable.” In 1972, starting with their Spring Offensive, we bombed the bejesus out of them (Operation Linebacker I)and then the infrastructure of the North (Operation Linebacker II). We OBLITERATED them, and then they came crawling back to the table in Paris, like the little bitches they were, asking for a deal. They signed a deal. We got out. And then they broke the treaty they signed. We refused to back the South. The rest is history.

There is a lot more to that war and our military work there that is not covered in college history classes and the generalized myths that circulate throughout the country about what happened in that war. If more people dug into it, they would realize that the media and academia LIED about the war and our military in order to undermine support for the military and our support for a non-Communist ally. Yeah, the Saigon regime was corrupt, but the Hanoi regime was far worse – and exceedingly brutal.

I wish Carter never offered amnesty to the ex-pats who ran away. I met some of those people. Cowards, the lot of ‘em.

Dec 21, 2008 - 8:20 pm 28. Terry Gain:

fh

You could call Democrats treasonous crooks and you’d get no argument from me. But to suggest that it’s okay to break the law fighting them is nonsense. The normally reliable Ms Feldman dashed this off without thinking.

Dec 21, 2008 - 8:31 pm 29. Dave Surls:

Felt was an out an out traitor, and Nixon’s guys did the right thing (snooping on Ellsberg and Ellsberg’s friends in the Democrat Party). Everything that Nixon’s boys did, the Democrats also did, and usually with far less justification.

Watergate was a total joke.

I opposed the Vietnam War, and would so again, btw.

Dec 22, 2008 - 1:24 am 30. Elwood:

#25

What’s the difference? The Democrat Party IS a criminal organization.

Dec 22, 2008 - 4:28 am 31. RKV:

“Prosperum ac felix scelus virtus vocatur.”
Seneca, “Hercules Furens”

Dec 22, 2008 - 4:54 am 32. DWPittelli:

As I understand it, the reason Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn are not in prison is precisely because of those illegal actions by the FBI — the courts throwing out “fruit of the poisonous tree.” So while I wouldn’t condemn the FBI for doing unapproved surveillance of the Weathermen or other terrorist groups (foreign or domestic), I wouldn’t really approve of it either. Does anyone know why the FBI did this? (Why couldn’t they get warrants?)

Dec 22, 2008 - 5:10 am 33. Letalis Maximus, Esq.:

first history:

Yeah, that pussy Ike should have used nukes and put an end to the whole thing back in the 1950’s. Then, Kennedy would never have had to send Special Forces to South Viet Nam. Johnson would never have had to escalate in order to avoid losing the war on his watch. And Nixon would never have gotten the chance to listen to Henry and sell everyone out.

Geez.

Dec 22, 2008 - 5:49 am 34. History - Cross Eyed:

–First Eisenhower refused to use nuclear weapons to support the French at Dien Bien Phu.

Wow, a lefty advocates the use of nuclear weapons – to support non-US troops? That’s the kind of knots that lefties tie themselves into when trying to deny the truth. There is much South Vietnamese and Cambodian blood on Bill Ayers and all of his accolytes hands’. Ohh- its Eisenhower’s fault. What a maroon.

Dec 22, 2008 - 5:57 am 35. rp:

pigpen has it for me, Felt was a typical Washington insider.

Who did he work for? Hoover. Ended up being #2 at the FBI. The Weatherman investigation is probably just the tip of the iceberg for what Felt acted on, knew about, and never commented on to someone outside of the agency.

Nixon comes along with his personal baggage and names an outsider to run the FBI. Next thing its all over the press.

It all reeks of…politics.

Dec 22, 2008 - 6:14 am 36. tsj017:

The left hated, hated, HATED Nixon because he busted Alger Hiss. And because he was right about Communism in general. He saw the lefties for what they really were and called them by their true names. And THAT’s the worst possible crime to a true lefty.

That’s why they had to get Nixon.

The rest is just details.

Dec 22, 2008 - 6:40 am 37. HatlessHessian:

Jvon writes: “I’m not sure you can QUITE equate break-ins (illegal or not) investigating what was basically a domestic terrorist group and break-ins investigating political opponents”

In Barack Obama’s America, there is no difference.

So out of curiosity, were any of these residences Bill Ayers? No wonder he worked so hard to get one of their own elected. Now he can feel safer that the FBI won’t be raiding his house at night. I almost feel for the guy…

Dec 22, 2008 - 7:17 am 38. thedoctor:

If Felt had quit the FBI and blown the whistle, then maybe I’d have some respect for the guy. Adios.

Dec 22, 2008 - 7:24 am 39. Doug Reed:

The Elsberg “break-in” was the only Black bag job attributed to the Nixon White House and even the Impeachment Committee did not cite this operation because they deemed it was clearly a matter of national security. However, documented by Church Committee, the FBI under Hoover and Felt did thousands of black bag jobs including operations against LBJ’s anti-war political opponents. As for why Felt gave (mis)information to (only) Woodward about Jeb Magruder’s CREEP activities, I suggest you go to the National Archives Watergate Demonstrastion Task Force Documents and see what Mr. Felt failed to hide : the FBI’s list of Hoover funeral demonstration recruitment phone calls made BEFORE J. Edgar Hoover suddenly died.

Dec 22, 2008 - 7:31 am 40. Western Colorado:

Is there another layer to the irony in that Felt conducted black-bag operations on the Weathermen that ultimately resulted in Bill Ayers’ freedom?
Is it possible that the quotation should go, “Guilty as sin, free as abird. Thanks, Deep Throat?”

Dec 22, 2008 - 8:24 am 41. fred:

Would someone from the other side please explain to me why it was wrong to spy on The Weathermen? These guys were killers, bank robbers, and were plotting violent revolution all at the same time. Jaysus, they MURDERED people, and wanted to do a lot more! You tell me why Felt was wrong to insert spies into their organization and tap their phones! What is your moral justification. I want to hear it. None of this cowardly ducking and dodging the ethical question.

This country is getting sicker by the day and is sliding into the moral abyss.

Dec 22, 2008 - 9:45 am 42. Tex Taylor:

I’m pretty hard-core conservative, but even I find a hard time defending Nixon. He was a crook and a liar. He should be scorned for no other reason than the abomination of an appointment to the SCOTUS called Harry Blackman – a horrid man.

However, Felt was a crook, liar and coward for shilling for lowlifes Bernstein and Woodward – two Dim shills masquerading as journalists.

Felt should go down in the annuls of history as miserable wretch, too gutless to admit his own personal shortcomings.

Dec 22, 2008 - 10:53 am 43. Tex Taylor:

Damn, I ought to learn to proofread while I’m at it. Make that annals…

Dec 22, 2008 - 10:56 am 44. Dave Surls:

“the Impeachment Committee did not cite this operation because they deemed it was clearly a matter of national security.”

Baloney. It was because Democrats had conspired with Ellsberg to release classified information, which makes them spies and traitors.

Naturally, they aren’t going to bring that up in their phony impeachment proceedings.

“He was a crook and a liar.”

Yeah, that’s what the Democrats and their friends in the media and schools want everyone to believe. They’ve been propagandizing everyone for decades.

It’s worked pretty good too.

Dec 22, 2008 - 1:14 pm 45. roger:

I Felt a hero?I doubt it–an equally strong case he was a typical washington insider that got shuffled over in the FBI and he used his position for partisan gain

Were Felt a hero, could have done what others have suggested above: resigned and gone public.
He didnt and from that lack alone I suggest he was a craven, partisan coward–good riddance.

Dec 22, 2008 - 3:15 pm 46. John D:

I had friends that worked in the White House Communications Agency starting during the Johnson administration until Carter. What they tell me, and what I kind of figured out, is that Nixon got nailed for doing what was common practice during previous administrations.

But the Democrats and the news media had a vendetta against him that was as bad or worse than the onw they have against GWB.

I still think that the world would have been a much better place if Nixon had won the 1960 election. Bay of Pigs, Vienna Summit, Berlin Wall, Cuban Missile Crisis, and, of couse, Vietnam, all would have been handled differently if they had occurred at all. Kruschev didn’t think Nixon was some lightweight frat boy whose daddy bought him the election.

Dec 22, 2008 - 3:34 pm 47. Someone75:

JFM:

The trouble with morons like you is that you think anyone who disagrees with you, ipso facto, supports genocide. Don’t pretend to know my political leanings. Many MANY rational republicans have no problem admitting Nixon was a bad person. And, they aren’t so petty and defensive that they have to make wild, unfounded accusations.

Nice work exposing your ignorance though. Fools have a way to being unable to hide it.

Dec 22, 2008 - 9:36 pm 48. G Alston:

#4 Fred — “But the activities directed against the DNC office in the Watergate were without any moral merit.”

It was known that the democrats were cheating to the point of
usurping elections: stuffing ballot boxes, fake registrations, and so on. Nixon was trying to determine whether or not this was a “secret” (known) directive of the DNC or whether this was local problems (e.g. the Daly machine.) He “lost” to Kennedy in 1960 due to this. This is what Watergate was.

It was indeed moral for Nixon to investigate, and he knew for certain that the FBI wouldn’t be of any help. Had Kennedy flaked in the Cuban missile crisis and allowed us to get nuked as the result of an illegal election, I’m sure that the proper moral imperative should be obvious.

Dec 23, 2008 - 2:01 am 49. G Alston:

#24 first history — “I love the re-writing of the Vietnam War, if anyone is to blame it’s the Republicans.”

I think the party will be grateful to accept. Vietnam was a proxy war. The soviet regime pumped billions that they needed for developing their economy and growing food into war materiel that US forces destroyed, time and again. Their economic engine wasn’t up to the task. Ours was. (We capitalist pigs have an economic advantage by definition, apparently.)Vietnam helped take down the soviets via attrition.

You’re welcome.

Dec 23, 2008 - 2:13 am 50. bernie reeves:

Forgive my suspicions, but is it simply coincidental that Mark Felt’s actions caused Ayers and the Weathermen – who sought the overthrow of the United States – to avoid prosecution, and his role in Watergate brought down a government unpopular with the Left?

Sounds like a candidate for the Order of Lenin to me. As founder of the Raleigh Spy Conference (www.raleighspyconference.com)I feel qualified to espouse this view.

Dec 24, 2008 - 12:49 pm 51. narciso:

Another irony, is Mark Felt’s Hal Holbrook arguing in “all the President’s Men” that the Watergate burglars got caught “because they weren’t too smart” That was Felt’s problem in a nutshell.

Dec 26, 2008 - 4:26 pm 52. Al Fontaine:

# 2 David Thompson:

I thank you very much for the two book references, too.

This subject is fascinating and deserves in-depth study.

Although I´m a foreigner (Brazil), born in 1967, it gets more and more evident to me that the American Left has been undermining American Sovereignty since Alger Hiss, with the Democratic Party (and its media, academe and show business fellow travellers) doing it overtly (for those with eyes to see) since the Carter Administration.

For all those who rejoice at the fall of Nixon, I beg you to remember the millions of innocent lives snuffed out in its wake after the Democratic Congress unplugged South Vietnam in 1975.

Dec 26, 2008 - 5:32 pm