Doing the right thing (if, perhaps, for the wrong reasons?)

[saavedra77]

The Watergate scandal was my earliest introduction to politics: I watched the hearings every night at my grandparents' feet and absorbed a lot of lasting impressions about how power works and how the powerful can be challenged.  As of yesterday, we all know that it was former FBI Associate Director W. Mark Felt whose clandestine meetings with reporter Bob Woodward helped keep the story alive until it boiled over into a 1973 Senate investigation and the eventual unravelling of a presidency. 

Following this news, many senior Nixon Administration officials, including the likes of Pat Buchanon, Chuck Colson, John Dean, and David Gergen, cast aspersions on Felt, saying it was "dishonorable" to have leaked sensitive information to the press about the Watergate investigation and the inner workings of the Nixon White House.  Significant questions have also been raised about Felt's motives, about the real extent of his knowledge (particularly regarding Nixon White House and campaign activities), about the possible involvement of others, and about Woodward and fellow-reporter Carl Bernstein's use of this (then) anonymous source.

Personally, however, I'm glad that Felt wasn't constrained by the culture of unconditional "loyalty" that Buchanon, Colson, Dean, and Gergen still seem to speak for.  Dean has suggested that a more principled whistle-blower would have brought his concerns to the attention of his superiors in the executive branch before going to the press, and, if that had failed, would have openly resigned his post and called a press conference.  But Felt's FBI superior, new Nixon appointee L. Patrick Gray, was a willing participant in the coverup and Attorney General John Mitchell had been involved in both the coverup and approving of the break-in itself. And the Nixon Administration had demonstrated a real enthusiasm for using extreme tactics ("dirty tricks," in the parlance of the time) against its perceived "enemies," including not merely the kind of character assassination we're familiar with from contemporary politics, or break-ins and wiretapping as in the Pentagon Papers and Watergate cases, but official harrassment via the IRS and other agencies. Considering the kind of political harball that Nixon played, I don't see how anyone can blame Felt for wanting to stay in the shadows.

Mind you, I don't necessarily buy into the idea of Felt as a selfless hero who set out to save the Republic: there's ample reason to suspect that careerism and institutional motives played a role in his decision.  But whatever his motives, Felt blew the whistle on a lawless Administration. As disillusioning as the Watergate revelations were, I doubt that anything less than the light of day could have cured what John Dean famously called "a cancer on the presidency."

Comments

[uniquecrash5.livejournal.com]

Think there's any chance we could see somone doing something similiar from the current administration?

[saavedra77.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, I don't think that a modern "Deep Throat" could really damage this administration. I mean, information about the deceptions leading up to the war, the lack of any WMD, the torture photos and torture memos are all out there, already, and it doesn't make a difference. Every time that a Deep-Throat-like critic has come out--Paul O'Neil and Richard Clarke on the early decision to divert the "war on terror" to Iraq and Bush's overall cluelessness, Joe Wilson on the faulty uranium claims--they've attracted brief notoriety in the press, been accused of sour grapes and otherwise vilified, and then amnesiac news cycle has left them in the dust. The emperor has no clothes, but no one's going to do anything about it because his retainers have gotten really good at shouting down anyone who points this out, because the media lack the seriousness or attention span to keep the facts in view, and, finally, because the "emperor" effectively controls all three branches of government.

Nixon would have done the same, if he could. And his people did manage to keep Watergate from hurting them through the '72 election (which he won by a landslide). Maybe he could have kept it up, if the press had let the story die or his party had been in control of Congress and able to block an investigation. But the press weren't afraid of picking a fight with him and kept at it, until the other two branches of government--the Democrat-run Congress and the very independent judiciary--started closing in on the problem.