Republican anger at Deep Throat

I never knew that Deep Throat was the object of such hatred. See the vituperation being poured on former FBI honcho Mark Felt, now revealed as Deep Throat, by the L-dotters (the link will only be active for two days). To me this seems like pure partisanship. I always thought that the person who helped reveal the criminal activities of the Nixon White House had done a good thing. Aren’t FBI men supposed to help catch criminals? Of course, Republicans are enraged at the double standard whereby someone who snitches on a Republican is a hero, while someone who snitches on a Democrat is a rat. That’s a fair point. But the answer is to insist on applying the same standards to both parties, not to dismiss standards altogether. The L-dotters are too far gone in partisan passion to see this. Thus they say over and over that Felt was motivated by greed and revenge. That view is apparently based on the following passage in a Washington Post article:

Wounded that he was passed over for the top job, furious at Nixon’s choice of an outsider, Assistant Attorney General L. Patrick Gray III, as acting FBI director, and determined that the White House not be allowed to steer and stall the bureau’s Watergate investigation, Mark Felt slipped into the role that would forever alter his life.

But according to another Washington Post story, Felt was not driven by selfish motives but by genuine alarm over the criminal nature of the administration and over the acting FBI director’s capitulation to it.

David Frum has a different view of the matter:

There is something disturbing is there not about a law-enforcement official becoming convinced of the guilt of his target, and leaking information against him to the media?

But this is not an accurate picture. Far from going overboard against the Nixon administration, the FBI was to a certain degree cooperating in the cover-up. Mark Felt sought to counteract the cover-up by leaking true leads about the case to Woodward and Bernstein.


Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 01, 2005 09:40 AM | Send