To everyone in the media trying to pain Felt as a villain: Screw you!

[CalebHayes]

What are you trying to tell us? That what the Nixon admin did was right? I don't care what his motovations were, he did the right thing.

Mark Felt your a great guy. To bad we don't have more people like you today.

(Had to get it off my chest)

[OldLeftieLawyer]

1. I agree

One way you can be certain he did the right thing is watching assholes like Buchanan and those other paragons of virtue, Liddy and Colson et al., try to discredit him, and fail utterly.

Whatever his motivations - I don't really care - he got the job done.

I just feel very sad that his daughter outed him for money when I think he probably planned to die without revealing what he had done. It's a sordid and tacky addendum to an honorable and significant chapter in American history.

[Pool Hall Ace]

4. I wasn't aware of that tidbit about the daughter.

My mother was big into Watergate, and I remember her saying that 'Deep Throat' did not want his identity revealed until after his death.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

9. I'm of your Mother's generation,

and the deal was that Woodward and Bernstein would keep Deep Throat's identity secret until one of two things happened:

1. he went public on his own, or
2. he died.

Now, Felt's no longer mentally competent, given his age, the stroke he suffered a few years ago, and even Woodward, in his last visit to see Felt, believed he was no longer able to remember anything, and certainly was in no shape to reveal his secret to the world.

So, the daughter and her son have set this whole thing in motion, in hopes of making some money. But, Woodward had already written the Deep Throat book, had the manuscript on the shelf, and the book went into production the day after the news came out and will be in the bookstores on or about July 1.

When you consider that it normally takes a book one year - at least - to go from manuscript to a book in the stores, that's pretty amazing.

And, without Felt being able to have a rational conversation, I'm not sure what the daughter has to sell - I read that she's offering old family photos, but I just don't know.

[jedr]

2. The sad part is that this crew makes Nixon look like;

the Easter Bunny..... Never saw such revisionist history! Propaganda that would have made Provda proud!

[cornermouse]

3. Felt did the right thing as far as Nixon.

But before you go giving out a medal, you should check out the last little bit of NOW in which Brancaccio shows that Felt also was convicted for allowing or authorizing break-ins into private residences 9 times. Brancaccio then showed what would have happened to Felt had he done the break-ins under the Patriot Act, which is pretty much nothing.

[peekaloo]

5. Amy Goodman did a piece on this yesterday, also.

Felt authorized FBI break-ins of members of the Weather Underground which he was convicted and subsequently pardoned by Raygun.

[cornermouse]

8. Exactly.

He did the right thing about Watergate, but he's not really someone you'd feel comfortable around.

[OldLeftieLawyer]

10. Here's a tidbit from the VF article:

his daughter Joan was involved peripherally with protest groups in the sixties, and even though she refused to have anything to do with her parents during that time - and for years later - Felt got in touch with her and warned her off the Weather Underground.

That's because he was running the black bag operation.

Yeah, he was no hero in that caper. And the pardon was just shameful, as bad as Ford's pardoning Nixon and Poppy Bush pardoning Weinberger et al. in the Iran-Contra matter.

But that doesn't negate what he did as Deep Throat.

[Gothmog]

6. Who is going to give Ben Stein any credibility

The most ridiculous charge is that but for Watergate, Nixon would have kept South Vietnam and Cambodia from falling. That claim is so stupid that it is funny. Nixon has already started pulling troops out of Vietnam before the break-in. There is no way that even an undamaged Nixon had the stroke to send US troops back into Vietnam or into Cambodia.

[Elidor]

7. Peggy Noonan is a loon

If she had lived at the right time and place, she'd have written love letters to Vlad the Impaler. And Pat Buchanan is just an arrogant thug. Ben Stein? Has-been game-show host and serious loser.

However, Felt admired J. Edgar Hoover and the tight-fisted way he ran the FBI and has been in trouble with the law himself. He's not lily-white, but he is on the right side in the Watergate matter. It took tremendous courage to take the risks he did.

[applegrove]

11. The truth would have not come out. Any other way. How many people

got convicted in the end?

[La Coliniere]

12. Troubling...

Black is white, up is down, I'm astounded by the level of attempted historical revisionism going on by the right wing, enabled by the corporate media. Nixon obstructed a federal investigation of a break in at Democratic Headquarters. He was guilty of obstructing justice. He committed a crime. He WAS a crook. Felt was a brave man, a national hero in my books.

[JanMichael]

13. I agree that exposing the corrupt Nixon fuckwits was great.

However he is not a great man, nor an honorable man, he was your typical "do whatever it takes" fed.

No one is perfect especially those like him.

Let's try to see the whole situation, not just the crap we like.