Now that Mr. Felt has passed away, some critics have come out of the woodwork to speculate that his motives may have been selfish and not as honorable as previously assumed. They speculate that he spoke out of anger of not getting the FBI top job after J. Edgar Hoover, or that he was placing the FBI ahead of, and somehow above, the President (as if that would be a bad thing!).
I say the critics have it wrong. Back in 1973, the FBI clearly had gathered substantial information about the break-in at the democratic campaign headquarters at the Watergate hotel. Just as clearly Nixon and his staff were pressing hard behind the scenes to keep that information from congress and the public.
Under normal circumstances, the FBI would have pursued the leads, but with the President's pressure play stifling this option, there was really only one alternative. So off to that DC garage in a trench coat went Mark Felt, passing information to reporters who would do what the FBI couldn't.
I choose to view the man as a patriot and frustrated law enforcement lifer who couldn't bear to allow anyone, even the President, to break the law and manipulate the FBI to cover it up. He should get equal credit with Woodward, Bernstein, and the Washington Post, for stopping Nixon's machine and giving us at least a couple of extra decades of relatively corruption-free executive government. Too bad there haven't been any like-minded individuals around (in the FBI or the press) to keep Bush-Cheney in line.
No, the few critics popping up now are wrong. Mr. Mark 'Deep Throat' Felt will go down in history as a hero - perhaps even as the patron saint of whistle-blowers. Rest easy, sir.
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Check out the link between the attempt to destroy and send to prison Harry Reems (a star of DEEP THROAT) as a decoy to divert the public's attention away from Watergate and Beebe Reebozo (spelling - relative of Bozo the Clown?) and onto - gosh forbid - PORN!
Per an interview at this link:
http://www.moviesonline.ca/movienews_5529.html
"There was a memo from Nixon to prosecute pornography to the fullest extent and shop it into Memphis, Tennessee, and that's why the District Attorney in Memphis was a Nixon appointee and so was the Judge... he was trying to get attention away from Watergate. I become the fall guy."
Why they used the Deep Throat moniker?
Hmm, could be a coincidence, but Woodward and Bernstein certainly must have taken that phrase from the then-infamous (and popular) movie of the same name. It's possible the very connection you mention gave the moniker extra zest for the reporters.
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