Brendan Miniter: Hero or Not, Mark Felt Did America a Great Service

Brendan Miniter, in the WSJ Opinion Journal (6-7-05)

[Brendan Miniter is an assistant editor at OpinionJournal.com.]

This is an open memo to those on the right who've spent the past week chastising their counterparts on the left for calling Mark Felt, a k a "Deep Throat," a hero. It's true that the recently outed Watergate supersource might have acted for his own interests, and that real heroes pay the price for their heroism instead of hiding in the shadows of a parking garage. It is therefore difficult to laud his personal character or portray him as someone young people should emulate.

But if Mr. Felt isn't personally a hero, his actions look a lot more heroic than the actions of those who've had the most biting words for the now 91-year-old man who at the time was the No. 2 official at the FBI. Pat Buchanan, a former speechwriter for Richard Nixon, called Mr. Felt a "snake." Charles Colson, another Nixon aide, who served seven months in prison for obstruction of justice, said Mr. Felt was "violating his oath to keep this nation's secrets." Watergate conspirator turned radio personality G. Gordon Liddy, who also served time, is quoted as saying bluntly that Mr. Felt "violated the ethics of the law enforcement profession."

These are valid points, though they ring rather hollow coming from the defenders of a corrupt administration, two of whom spent time behind bars for their crimes. And in any case, even if Mr. Felt acted for the wrong reasons, his actions helped pull the nation out of a moral downward spiral...

Three decades ago it would have also been impossible to foresee how long the road back would be for the nation. That road, however, had to begin with the repudiation of President Nixon, the highest officer implicated in the scandals. In Nixon's wake came Jimmy Carter and then Ronald Reagan. Mr. Carter, by all accounts a good man at heart, proved ineffective. But by shifting foreign policy toward an emphasis on human rights, he helped lay the groundwork to make the moral stand that eventually brought down the Soviet empire.

It would have been impossible for Reagan to make that stand if the nation hadn't first repudiated the corruption of the 1970s. Nixon was given a chance in 1968 to provide the nation with moral leadership along with the right domestic and foreign policies. That he chose to undermine his own administration with what was at heart a petty break-in, reveals how nonchalant he was about moral leadership. That, of course, is what made it possible for Mr. Felt's leaks to Mr. Woodward in a deserted parking garage to bring down the most powerful man in the free world.