I thought it was a given that what Nixon did was indefensible. That Watergate despite it all was a positive step overall against wrongdoing. Yet it seems some conservatives of that era are taking swings at Mr. Deep Throat. Naturally the crooks of the past trying to imply Felt was wrong is amusing in a way. No one likes a snitch… but without them how do you avoid abuse ?
Do people actually think Nixon wasn’t wrong ?
That Deep Throat is a “traitor” ? (Pat Buchanan’s words)
Could he in fact have done better by using proper law enforcement channels ?
I was all set to see a bunch of whiners whining that their man got caught, but G. Gordon Liddy may have a point when he said “If he possessed evidence of wrongdoing, he was honor-bound to take that to a grand jury and secure an indictment, not to selectively leak it to a single news source.”
Is Liddy right about this? What would have been the advatnages/disadvantages of taking the grand jury route? Was this impossible or difficult for some reason?
Could Deep Throat have been Al Haig? Could it have been Bush the Elder? Is there in fact a Deep Throat at all? Why are people in this thread doing nothing but asking questions?
It wasn’t impossible or difficult at all, and in fact was done in exactly this way. For the most part, prosecutors in the case were ahead of revelations in the papers.
His motives may not have been entirely selfless – he was, apparently, pissed at being passed over in favor of Pat Gray for the top spot.
But his motives were not completely self-serving, either… he was pushing back against the Nixon administration’s blatantly illegal attempt to use the power of the White House to stifle a criminal investigation… an investigation they KNEW was grounded in actual fact of wrongdoing.
I agree with Liddy: he had a duty to deliver his information to a grand jury. As a government official, he had no business feeding his friend a scoop that made his career. There were any number of journalists that would have loved to have such a friend. We scream bloody murder if there’s the slightest perception that “Bush’s ‘friends’” profit from the decisions that Bush makes; it’s interesting that no one peeps when the friend is a journalist and the profit is a career-enhancing series of leaks.
In the pantheon of wrong-doing, of course, these are minor crimes, mitigated in great degree because the motive was not personal profit, but exposure of wrong-doing.
You’re probably right from a legal point of view but which method would have served the greater good? (This assumes that getting Nixon out of office is, indeed, the greater good.)
The newspaper articles galvanized the public against Nixon’s administration which gave more politcal will to those in charge of the investigation. It made it sure that it couldn’t be swept under the rug.
Actually, there’s no indication DT gave Woodward anything beyond the one “follow the money” clue. He just indicated if the information they had already gathered from other sources was correct and headed in the right direction.
The reaction of Pat Buchanan is more proof that old Pat is a taco short of a combo plate.
Come now. Vietnam fell because of Deep Throat? The Cambodian genocide is Deep Throat’s fault? Wasn’t there somebody named Gerry Ford who was in command when the war was finally lost?
The trouble with the idea that he should go to his superiors was that they were part of the problem. To report what he knew to his boss would very possibly have endangered his life. He did what he had to do.
Let’s put the blame for Nixon’s downfall where it belongs- on Nixon. He was a very capable man, but he had a flaw that brought him down.
You’re not seriously suggesting that the only reason Deep Throat dropped the dime on Nixon was because he wanted to help Woodward and Bernstein retire young and wealthy, do you?
Well, he said he’d pull out, but you can’t trust Nixon.
Heh. American military forces were removed in Nixon’s time, in 1973 under the auspices of a cease-fire negotiated in Paris. Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho of North Vietnam were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, though Tho declined, saying (correctly, it turned out) that peace had not yet been established in Vietnam. The war started up again in 1974 and the North soundly won, taking Saigon in April, 1975. U.S. embassy staff and various Vietnamese collaborators (that’s not really the word I want to use, but I can’t think of a better one) who rightly fear execution at communist hands flee by helicopter from the embassy roof, to be famously photographed. President Ford calls the war, as far as America is concerned, “finished”.
Was he good friends w/ Woodward and Bernstien? My local paper mentioned that Felt was a common suspect for Deep Throat, but that he was discounted because he’d only met one of the reporters once (that people knew about at the time, anyway). That doesn’t sound like they were buddies.
Not only that, but Nixon agreed to a peace treaty with North Vietnam in January 1973, before the Watergate story had made any noticeable dent in Nixon’s popularity. When McCord started spilling the beans in March of that year, we were already bringing our troops home. Watergate didn’t affect the Asian war in the least. Buchanan is apparently in some alternate universe.
