Deep Throat:
Liberal Icon a Criminal? What a Surprise.
(Hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned.)
By N. Beaujon
June 1, 2005

Well, well, the man who brought down Richard Nixon has finally come forward to solve the decades-long mystery of “Who was Deep Throat?” It turns out that the mole who tipped off Washington Post columnists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to the burglary, and subsequent cover-up, at the Watergate Hotel was none other than W. Richard Felt, former deputy director under J. Edgar Hoover and second in command at the FBI. Are you processing that?

The second in command next to Hoover was a rat. What a kick. Liberal hero, creeping around in garages, betraying co-workers, elected officials, buddies and friends was, simply, a reprobate. He leaked it all: Classified government information and documents, by sending messages through clandestine... flower pots. It was so '60s. But, best of all, it turns out Felt's moral compass kicked in just about the time Richard Nixon passed him over for his expected position as Hoover's successor. Heroic? Indeed.

To quote former Nixon speech writer and Republican presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan (something I never do) "I think that Mark Felt was ashamed at what he did, that's why he lied about it for 30 years -- -- and he ought to have been,…'Deep Throat' [was] a snake." [1] And, that pretty much sums it up. He was ashamed. Until, that is, he was old and senile enough so that his proud daughters could trot him out, unveil the myth and the glory, and quickly try to make a book deal-before he dropped dead. As one daughter brayed: "The world deserves to hear my father's story... He was a national hero!" Or something like that.

What Felt did was illegal. An FBI agent is supposed to bring an indictment in front of a grand jury, not leak confidential documents to a national newspaper. No wonder he’s the liberals’ darling. He simply trashed the Constitution, never mind the rights of the accused... Republicans.

Felt, it seems, fancied himself to be Hooover’s heir apparent. Unfortunately, when Richard Nixon appointed L. Patrick Gray III, instead, Felt threw the mother of all hissy fits. Hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned. Liberals today are cheering as their guy turns out to be not a freedom fighter (ala the likes of, say, um, Harriet Tubman) or a brave, high-ranking turncoat in the Nixon administration but a scorned, putative, lawbreaker who divuldged secret FBI files that were under his control.... by way of a flower pot. I wonder if Woodward, Bernstein or Washington Post editor Ben Bradley ever stopped for a moment and said, “hmmm, you know what? I think we are breaking the law.”

As this column has mentioned so many times, Dick Nixon was a piker when you compare him to the Clintons or today's DNC. In fact, Nixon almost put crime to shame. Republicans certainly put impeachment to shame. We had the audacity to demand that our lawbreaker step down (as in “resign”) rather than embarrass our country or tarnish the office of the Presidency. How corny. How naive. How proud we should be. An act of honor in the face of a total act of deceit.

In this author's opinion, a Personal Best defilement of the White House occurred (literally) under William Jefferson Clinton who, as we all know, used his office (literally) to garner sexual favors, gather FBI files on his political enemies, launch phony wars, preside over the demise or mysterious deaths of about half of his staff, closest friends and advisers and was, finally, disbarred.

So, what were Richard Nixon’s crimes? He defeated communist-supported Democratic incumbent Jerry Voorhis in his 1946 senatorial campaign. He doggedly, and correctly, pursued leftist darling Alger Hiss and exposed him as the Commie in the State House that he actually was; although the left is still in denial about that. But the real Nixon legacy is more liberal than conservative. It was Nixon who played a pivotal role in space exploration, beginning with his 1957 suggestion to President Eisenhower that NASA be established. He was the first to index Social Security benefits to inflation. He started the Family Assistance Program, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA.) No wonder conservatives asked him to resign.

Nixon disgraced his office by encouraging the cover up of a crime and destroying evidence. No one will ever know what was erased in that “18 minute gap” but, as far as presidents go, Richard M. Nixon wasn't the worst. He got us out of Vietnam, that mess of a war that the liberals created and then screwed up even worse with each passing administration; he opened relations with China, and he stabalized the civil rights movement.

According to renowned political analyst Michael Barone in his book, Our Country: the Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan

Nixon’s biggest problem was that he never realized that the rules had changed, or more likely, the rules were different if you were a “red-baiting”, Conservative in a country ruled by nuts. Also known as the pampered, overindulged, liberal elite.

Today, every graduate of Columbia School of Journalism dreams of taking down a (Conservative) president and becoming the next Woodward or Bernstein. They all are in search of their own Deep Throat. The question is, will they ever meditate on the fact that their liberal icon was a petty, disgruntled employee who simply committed a crime...? And brought down the government ...with his flower pot.

Letters to the Editor

[1] http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=8670055, Deep Throat takes fire -- a hero or a snake? Wed Jun 1, 2005 04:02 PM ET

[2] http://www.nixoncenter.org/publications/Program%20Briefs/vol5no27barone.htm, "Nixon's America" A Presentation by Michael Barone, Senior Writer, U.S. News & World Report A Nixon Center Seminar November 2, 1999