Whaddaya mean Linda Lovelace was not Deep Throat?

W. Mark Felt: Saint or Sinner
By Joseph Walther

For decades, I was perfectly happy knowing that Deep Throat was Linda Lovelace. You can imagine my dismay finding out that it was W. Mark Felt. “Who in the world”, I wondered, “is W. Mark Felt?” The fact that he was the number two man in the FBI did not mean very much to me. Then I remembered the bad blood between Felt and Richard Nixon. Mr. Felt was a bit peeved because “Tricky Dick” didn’t appoint him FBI Director when J. Edgar Hoover died in 1972. Talk about your paybacks!

The talk shows—television and radio—hit the airwaves foaming at the mouth. Whether people deemed his actions heroic or criminal depended on party spin. The brethren on the right generally felt that he should have acted within the law instead of going to the press. Those of a more left-leaning persuasion generally felt that he did the country a great service and we should make him the first person canonized prior to death, even ahead of the late Pope John Paul II.

For those on the right, how long do you think Mr. Felt would have lasted under the Nixon administration by “going through proper channels?” Richard Nixon didn’t like Mark Felt to begin with. Get real, for God’s sake. For those on the left, Felt was no saint. He was the number two man under J. Edgar Hoover who ruled the FBI with an iron fist for decades. No one screwed with J. Edgar, even though he liked to wear dresses. Mr. Felt conducted one black bag operation after another at Mr. Hoover’s direction.

W. Mark Felt performed his duties according to the cultural norms of the FBI under Hoover. Hoover believed that the ends always justified the means as long as the means used were for the good of the country. This would be a great time for me to mention that Mr. Hoover firmly believed that what was good for Mr. Hoover WAS ALWAYS good for the country. While this does not justify what the agency did, it does explain some of the logic behind the actions, flawed or otherwise.

I make a leap of faith here in assuming that there was some degree of patriotic motivation behind Mark Felt’s decision to leak things to the press. That’s as far as I am willing to go. There was no love lost between Felt and Nixon and vengeance was a motivating force. I’ll let you readers assign the relative degrees.

I have said this before. Watergate did not bring Richard Nixon down. Let’s look at Watergate as a gift of monumentally stupid proportions. Richard Nixon handed it to Mark Felt on a silver platter. All Felt did was take advantage.

Politicians are politicians whether they reside and perform in the public or private sector. The CEO of General Motors is every bit the politician as a candidate for the United States Senate. The only difference is that there is direct accountability in the private sector that does not exist in the public sector. Politicians, private AND public, cannot survive without huge egos. Huge egos exist in both sectors. However, in the private sector, a huge ego can’t get too big before a board of directors brings it back into perspective.

This does not happen in the public sector. The egos get bigger and bigger, leading to the illusion of impenetrability. Arrogance begins showing its ugly head. Whenever ego mates with arrogance, the resultant love child is always stupidity. Add in a heaping cup of narcissism, and you have all of the ingredients of a political disaster that will register at least an 8.5 on the legal Richter scale.

Congress would not have forced Richard Nixon to resign if he had assumed responsibility for Watergate at its beginning stage. He could have claimed that it all resulted from a misunderstanding and sacrificed the participants for the “greater” good. The Republican Party would have rallied behind him. Had it been a Democrat, the same thing would have happened. After the obligatory period of sanctimonious congressional hissy fits and endless prognostications on the various talk shows, the parties would have kissed, made up, and Dick Nixon would have finished out his second term, assuming that something else didn’t get him first.

Unfortunately, Richard Nixon was like a common drunk, except Nixon was drunk on power. A common drunk pulled over by the police has the RIGHT to remain silent but lacks the ABILITY to remain silent. Nixon had no more ability to deal with a blow to his ego than a town drunk has in dealing with addictive alcohol intoxication. Had his Waterloo not been Watergate, it would have been something else eventually. Serious character flaws get their owners one way or another.

W. Mark Felt was neither villain nor hero. He did what he did for reasons that will be forever speculative. If you were a Nixon fan, you’ll call his actions despicable. If you were a Nixon hater, you’ll call his actions heroic. If you were neutral on Nixon…Yeah, RIGHT!


Joseph Walther is a freelance writer. Contact him by clicking on the CONTACT ME link above or email him at TheTrueFacts@comcast.net