The Ambivalence of Deep Throat
When writing college letters of recommendation for my high school students, I often employ the somewhat pretentious phrase that the student displays a sophisticated appreciation for the role played by paradox and ambiguity in historical causation. The saga of former FBI official Mark Felt provides yet another example of history’s ambivalence. And with the death of Mark Felt and the acclaimed cinematic adaptation of Broadway’s Frost/Nixon by filmmaker Ron Howard, it seems that this holiday season will not escape references to the shadow which Richard Nixon continues to cast upon American politics.
Felt confirmed that he was the “deep throat” source who provided essential information to Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein during the Watergate scandal which toppled the Nixon Presidency. Felt is perceived by many as a hero whose whistle blowing exposed the threat posed to American democracy by the Nixon administration. On the other hand, former Nixon loyalists such as Charles Colson criticized Felt for betraying the President and his government position. Others censured the Felt family for attempting to cash in on the informant’s new found notoriety. But who can blame the family? After all, plenty of others, including Woodward and Bernstein, profited from their Watergate allegations.
If one accepts former Presidential counselor John Dean’s conclusion that a cancer was growing in the Nixon White House, then Felt emerges as a hero. The isolated Nixon Presidency was a threat to American democracy as exemplified by the Watergate cover up, the break-in at the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, and the so-called “dirty” tricks campaign directed against such Democratic candidates as Ed Muskie.
Yet, Felt’s own actions as the number two man at the FBI during the 1970s raise some questions regarding the agent’s motivations. Was Felt primarily concerned about issues of democracy and civil liberties or was he more afraid that the White House might intrude upon the national security prerogatives of the FBI?
For what has been termed the Watergate scandal was about a great deal more than the break-in at the Democratic National Headquarters in the Watergate Hotel. The newspaper and Congressional investigations which evolved from the initial Watergate burglary and cover-up revealed widespread governmental abuse of power. The Internal Revenue System was used to harass enemies of the Nixon administration, and Senator Frank Church labeled the CIA “a rogue elephant” for its lack of Congressional oversight and illegal covert operations.
In addition, the FBI fashioned the COINTELPRO program, administered by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover’s top assistant Mark Felt, to infiltrate and discredit such groups as the Black Panthers and Weather Underground faction of the Students for a Democratic Society. Citing national security threats, the FBI carried out a systematic campaign of harassment and intimidation which resulted in the deaths of several Black Panther leaders. The FBI also authorized burglaries at the homes of Weather Underground family members, attempting to locate the fugitives implicated in a bombing campaign directed against the government and war in Vietnam. The tactics of Felt and his associates led to many of the charges being dismissed against former members of the Weather Underground such as Mark Rudd, Bill Ayers, and Bernardine Dohrn. In fact, the overzealous actions of Felt allowed Ayers to assume his career as a college professor and stay out of prison. Without Felt’s violation of constitutional guarantees granted the Weather underground, it would have been difficult for Barack Obama, in the grandiose rhetoric of Sarah Palin, to “pal around” with an alleged terrorist such as Ayers. For his role in orchestrating these illegal activities, Mark Felt was convicted and sentenced to prison in 1980 (President Reagan granted him a pardon.)
The ambivalent legacy of Mark Felt, who exposed corruption in the White House but was willing to violate the civil liberties of American citizens, should provide ample discussion material for my classes and students as we struggle with the complexity of American history. All Americans, however, should consider the broader implications of Felt’s career and the Watergate scandal. The greatest danger to our democracy and civil liberties may come from a President, as well as government bureaucrats, who are isolated from the American people and engage in secretive policies, employing the rationale of national security to deprive us of our precious liberties. In recent years, the Bush administration has endangered American troops and national security by pursuing policies of torture and domestic surveillance. Such affronts to civil liberties, whether at the highest levels of the executive branch or law enforcement, merit the full investigative powers of the new administration without the pardons which were bestowed upon Nixon and his nemesis Felt.