Different River

”You can never step in the same river twice.” –Heraclitus

By now probably everybody knows who Deep Throat is, even people who have no idea who Deep Throat was — which is probably most people under age 30, and maybe even most people under age 40. In 1972-74, Deep Throat leaked a bunch of secret information and/or allegations about Richard Nixon to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who used it to bring down the Nixon Administration, for which they got a Pulitzer Prize.

In exchange for which, Woodward and Bernstein promised to keep Deep Throats real name secret until he died. Or, I suppose, until Deep Throat himself, now known as W. Mark Felt, Sr. leaked it earlier this week. Which of course prompted a cascade of accolades proclaiming Mr. Throat — er, Mr. Felt — to be a “great American hero.”

What did he do to become a “hero”? He was at the time the number 2 man at the FBI, and if he is to be believed, he passed classified (i.e., illegal-to-pass) information about the FBI’s investigation of the Watergate break-in to Woodward and Bernstein. If he did what he says he did, he violated numerous FBI rules and federal laws, and could have gone to jail — but for the fact that his identity was unknown until after the statute of limitations expired last year. The fact that he could have gone to jail — that “He knew he was taking a monumental risk,” is what makes him a hero, according to Woodward.

In other words, as James Lakely points out, Mark Felt is to Richard Nixon what Linda Tripp is to Bill Clinton.

The former attorney for Clinton scandal whistleblower Linda R. Tripp — who, like “Deep Throat,” exposed White House misdeeds — said his client’s harsh public treatment stands in stark contrast to the veneration of W. Mark Felt, whose aid to the press helped bring down President Nixon.

“I think that what happened to Linda Tripp — demonization is too kind a word,” said David Irwin, who represented Mrs. Tripp during President Clinton’s impeachment trial. “I thought she got the brunt of a lot of people’s frustrations.
…
[In contrast], Press members have largely praised him as a hero for exposing the corruption of the Nixon administration. The Post, which hid Mr. Felt’s identity for more than three decades, wrote in yesterday’s editions that Mr. Felt was motivated by fears that Mr. Nixon would try to “steer and stall” the FBI’s investigation of the Watergate burglary ….

Why did he do it? Why undertake such a monumental risk? To rid the nation of the evil Richard Nixon, right?

Well, not necessarily. Let’s complete the above sentence:

… and because he was passed over by Mr. Nixon to lead the FBI after the death of J. Edgar Hoover.

What? Deep Throat, great American hero, motivated by a personal vendetta? And even worse, the Washington Post,, the venerable leader of the Fourth Estate, valiant protector of the people’s right to know, knowingly suppressed this fact? A fact that would be useful to the public in evaluating the veracity of Deep Throats revelations? Perish the thought!

Or, don’t. The fact is, after J. Edgar Hoover died — the same J. Edgar Hoover who was appointed to the predecessor agency of the FBI in 1924, convinced Congress to expland his budget and authority, and built the FBI into both a crime-fighting organization and an organization that spied on everybody from Martin Luther King, Jr. to Marylin Monroe, and had a policy of taking advantage of the Supreme Court’s “exclusionary rule” interpretation of the Fourth Amendment to conduct warrantless searches and wiretaps and merely not use it in court — Nixon decided to bring in an outside to shake up the FBI and bring it back within the laws it was supposed to be enforcing. Instead of promoting Hoover protegé Mark Felt. So Mark Felt used the techniques he’d learned from Hoover to bring down Nixon in revenge. How heroic.

The simple fact is, Mark Felt is viewed as a hero because he brought down a President viewed (by most in the media anyway) as a villian. And Linda Tripp is viewed as a villian because they nearly brought down a president who was loved and adored (by most in the media anyway) . That’s the different. The only difference. Except maybe that Mark Felt had a personal vendetta against Nixon and Linda Tripp had no such vendetta against Clinton, that Mark Felt violated federal law and Linda Tripp didn’t, and Mark Felt hid behind a cloak of anonymity and Linda Tripp had the courage to come out in public.

Minor differences, of course, compared to the evil things Nixon did.

Which were what exactly?

Ben Stein, the lawyer/economist/actor/comedian who worked as an assitant speechwriter in the Nixon Admistration explained it as follows:

Can anyone even remember now what Nixon did that was so terrible? He ended the war in Vietnam, brought home the POW’s, ended the war in the Mideast, opened relations with China, started the first nuclear weapons reduction treaty, saved Eretz Israel’s life, started the Environmental Protection Administration. Does anyone remember what he did that was bad?

Oh, now I remember. He lied. He was a politician who lied. How remarkable. He lied to protect his subordinates who were covering up a ridiculous burglary that no one to this date has any clue about its purpose. He lied so he could stay in office and keep his agenda of peace going. That was his crime. He was a peacemaker and he wanted to make a world where there was a generation of peace. And he succeeded.

That is his legacy. He was a peacemaker. He was a lying, conniving, covering up peacemaker. He was not a lying, conniving drug addict like JFK, a lying, conniving war starter like LBJ, a lying, conniving seducer like Clinton — a lying, conniving peacemaker. That is Nixon’s kharma.

When his enemies brought him down, and they had been laying for him since he proved that Alger Hiss was a traitor, since Alger Hiss was their fair-haired boy, this is what they bought for themselves in the Kharma Supermarket that is life:

1) The defeat of the South Vietnamese government with decades of death and hardship for the people of Vietnam.

2) The assumption of power in Cambodia by the bloodiest government of all time, the Khmer Rouge, who killed a third of their own people, often by making children beat their own parents to death. No one doubts RN would never have let this happen.

So, this is the great boast of the enemies of Richard Nixon, including Mark Felt: they made the conditions necessary for the Cambodian genocide. If there is such a thing as kharma, if there is such a thing as justice in this life of the next, Mark Felt has bought himself the worst future of any man on this earth. And Bob Woodward is right behind him, with Ben Bradlee bringing up the rear. Out of their smug arrogance and contempt, they hatched the worst nightmare imaginable: genocide. I hope they are happy now — because their future looks pretty bleak to me.