Day By Day© by Chris Muir.
Friday, June 03, 2005
No Hero of Mine
Choice 1--Mark Felt -- "Deep Throat" -- is a hero: Bill Clinton, John Conyers, Ben Bradlee, Bob Woodward, Richard Ben-Veniste, Richard Cohen, John Kass, Felt's family and neighbors.
Choice 2--Mark Felt leaked information obtained while conducting an FBI investigation, possibly poisoning prosecutions: James Pinkerton, William F. Buckley, Peggy Noonan, Jonah Goldberg, David Frum, Timothy Noah, Charles Colson and Patrick Buchanan, Gordon Liddy, Ben Stein, Rush Limbaugh, Robert Novak, Tom Carter, Hatless in Hattiesburg, Bill Quick, InstaPunk, The Maryhunter, Don Suber, Gary Abernathy, Mustang, Ex-Donkey Blog, Kris--and NOfP.
Note: I'm also glad the heat's off one of my bosses, Fred Fielding.
More:
I don't know how I overlooked Michele Agnew's post.
(via SC&A)
Still More:
Blogger Barking Dingo disagrees in comments below:
So, then you would be all for Novak releasing the name of the traitor informant in the Bush administration right?There's much more text where Dingo cuts and pastes a blogpost supplying evidence that Rush Limbaugh overlooked press coverage he critiqued.
As for the rest. Great, you got the Noonan nut who blames Felt for everything bad that has happened in the past 30 years, Liddy who did jail time for his criminal activities exposed by Felt, Stein who lost a job, Limbaugh who is a felon in his own right and would condemn mother Theresa if he felt it would push his agenda, etc, etc.
My response: Whatever, Dingo. I'm no defender of Nixon (anyone enacting wage-price controls isn't conservative) or Rush; and Ben Stein's piece was well over the top. And don't you think there's a reason Novak wasn't indicted? (I will stand by Peggy Noonan who is neither a "nut" nor one "who blames Felt for everything.") Still, perhaps my understanding of your acres of prose is imperfect, because otherwise I think you're saying the ends justify the means. You've hinted the same about Constitutional interpretation (doesn't matter privacy isn't mentioned; privacy's good; so judges should amend the Constitution by inserting privacy via decisional law).
The self-congratulatory media coverage of Felt reflects, as David Frum says, the fact that "liberal journalists can now understand that Watergate represented the very zenith of their cultural influence. For one shining, shimmering moment, they decided who were cultural heroes and who were villains." That explains the disparity in treatment of similarly situated leakers, quoting Frum again:
Didn't Clinton defenders rave against Ken Starr and his team for allegedly doing so? Isn't that the justification, to the extent that there is any justification, for Senate Democrats' unreasoning rancor against Bush judicial pick Brett Kavanaugh, a former Starr counsel?Felt already served time, as you note, for confusing ends (shutting down Weatherman terrorists) with means (unlawful wiretapping). Now you're praising him for similarly motivated and equally unlawful actions. You're inconsistent--except in so far as you consistently support extra-legal activities to accomplish liberal ends.
And yet when the #2 of the FBI admits that he does so against Richard Nixon, it becomes time to pull out the block of marble and the chisels.
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3 Comments:
So, then you would be all for Novak releasing the name of the traitor informant in the Bush administration right?
As for the rest. Great, you got the Noonan nut who blames Felt for everything bad that has happened in the past 30 years, Liddy who did jail time for his criminal activities exposed by Felt, Stein who lost a job, Limbaugh who is a felon in his own right and would condemn mother Theresa if he felt it would push his agenda, etc, etc.
It would be nice if Limbaugh tried telling the truth for once - June 1 broadcast of The Rush Limbaugh Show:
LIMBAUGH: We had the news on the program yesterday that Felt had been pardoned, and I found it interesting that for most of yesterday and last night, no major media outlet or even cable news show mentioned his conviction for ordering illegal break-ins.
NBC
ANDREA MITCHELL (NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent): In 1980, Felt was convicted of illegal FBI break-ins against antiwar radicals and later pardoned by Ronald Reagan. Admirers say Felt was trying to protect the FBI. Writing about Watergate in a 1979 memoir, Felt wrote, "The reputation of the FBI is at stake." [Nightly News, 5/31/05]
MSNBC
PAT BUCHANAN (MSNBC analyst and former Nixon speechwriter): He [Felt] was later indicted and convicted of a matter which I thought he shouldn't have been. He was pardoned by Ronald Reagan. [Hardball with Chris Matthews, 5/31/05]
ABC
CHRIS BURY (Nightline correspondent): Ironically enough, Mark Felt shares one unusual connection with the president he helped bring down. Like Richard Nixon, Felt received a presidential pardon -- in his case, for a 1980 conspiracy conviction on illegal FBI break-ins against friends and relatives of the militant organization Weather Underground. In coming forward now, in the twilight of his life, Mark Felt and his family clearly felt that he had one final opportunity to define his Watergate legacy in his terms. That the mystery man known for all these years as Deep Throat be remembered not as a snitch, but a hero. [Nightline, 5/31/05]
PBS
DAVID GERGEN (former presidential adviser): I mean, Mark Felt, people say, well, he was a man of honor, but listen, Charlie, this was a fellow who was -- Mark Felt was a fellow who was pardoned -- pardoned -- by Ronald Reagan in 1981 for his part in burglaries undertaken by the FBI against the Weathermen and apparently against -- possibly against others. [The Charlie Rose Show, 5/31/05]
CNN
JUDY WOODRUFF (CNN host): In 1978, the former agent was indicted for approving other Nixon-era break-ins, raids on leftist antiwar groups. He was convicted and later pardoned by Ronald Reagan. And then, Mark Felt slipped into obscurity, until now. [Prerecorded segment shown on Anderson Cooper 360, 5/31/05, and Paula Zahn Now, 5/31/05]
BRIAN TODD (CNN correspondent): So Mark Felt may always be associated with a certain contradiction and irony. In the late '70s, he was charged with violating the constitutional rights of American citizens by authorizing government agents to break into the homes of bombing suspects. That case dated back to the early '70s, when he was still with the FBI. Felt was convicted on that charge, but later pardoned by President Ronald Reagan. [Wolf Blitzer Reports, 5/31/05]
CNN Headline News
A.J. HAMMER (co-host): So who is W. Mark Felt? We know that Felt was indicted in 1978 for approving some other break-ins during Nixon's administration. President Reagan later pardoned him for the 1978 indictment, and in 1999, Felt told The Hartford Courant he was not Deep Throat. [Showbiz Tonight, 5/31/05]
The Washington Post
In 1980, Felt and another senior FBI veteran were convicted of conspiring nearly a decade earlier to violate the civil rights of domestic dissidents in the Weather Underground movement; President Ronald Reagan then issued a pardon. [David Von Drehle, "FBI's No. 2 Was 'Deep Throat,'" published 6/1/05, before Limbaugh's broadcast]
The New York Times
But much of the most serious and informed speculation has long centered on the F.B.I., and on Mr. Felt, who was convicted in 1980 on unrelated charges of authorizing government agents to break into homes secretly, without search warrants, in a search for anti-Vietnam-War bombing suspects from the radical Weather Underground in 1972 and 1973. Five months later, President Ronald Reagan pardoned him on the grounds that he had "acted on high principle to bring an end to the terrorism that was threatening our nation." [Todd S. Purdum, "F.B.I. Official Revealed He Was Watergate Source in Interview," 5/31/05]
Los Angeles Times
In November 1980, Felt and Edward S. Miller, then head of the FBI's intelligence division, were convicted of authorizing break-ins without warrants into the homes of members of the Weathermen in the 1970s, a radical antiwar group. ... Although President Ronald Reagan later granted the two men full pardons, O'Connor, the attorney and author of the article, noted that Felt blamed the prosecution for contributing to the death of his wife in 1984. [Richard B. Schmitt, "Washington Post Confirms W. Mark Felt at FBI Was Watergate's 'Deep Throat," 5/31/05]
Once again, you have read something into my post that I did not write. I did not praise or condemn Felt. I commented on the people you chose to condemn him. For many of them, it is like having the inmates critique the warden. Liddy? He's a good one for talking about ethics. Also, Novak is complicit in his own national security leak. Limbaugh,who is not only hypocritical, but couldn't tell the straigt truth to save his life. And do you really believe, like Noonan does, that Felt was the cause of us losing Viet Nam? Please say no. I have more respect for you than that.
Dingo:
1) What was the purpose of this comment of yours, if not to suggest that Felt did the right thing? "So, then you would be all for Novak releasing the name of the traitor informant in the Bush administration right?"
2) I don't listen to Rush, so never defend him.
3) Ben Stein's article blaming Felt for Vietnam was stupid, as I previously said. But Noonan's more elliptical connection is accurate--she said Felt "helped produce" rebalancing Executive vs. Congressional power, and that shift did doom millions of South-East Asians. So, yes, I support an indirect connection, since it's consistent with my broader point--Felt and others violated law instead of relying on process.
4) Further, it was outrageous for Felt to rely--when prosecuted and convicted--on other FBI agents and Nixon and--when pardoned--on Reagan. They supported Felt because he said he would never violate his FBI oath. He lied, knowingly. See an article called "Don't swallow the Deep Throat hype!" on a wacky, leftist, website, now posted here.
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