"DEEP THROAT" TAKES DOWN NIXON: A LEAK THAT WOULD FOREVER CHANGE AMERICAN POLITICS

As significant as Daniel Ellsberg’s Pentagon Paper's leaks were, they were soon eclipsed by a scandal of epic proportions known as Watergate.   Both scandals were indirect results of President Richard Nixon’s notorious paranoia.  But a closer look at the Watergate scandal makes one wonder if it all was blown out of proportion, and if it was  ultimately  the result of a vendetta by a disgruntled G-Man.

I’ve always been fascinated by the Watergate break-in and its cover-up, as it is truly the mother of all American political scandals.  Virtually any political scandal that would follow in the next four decades would have the suffix "–gate" attached to it thanks to the events of June, 1972. 

For years, the identity of “Deep Throat” (the Washington insider who blew the whistle on the break-in and set in motion a chain of events that would prove to be Nixon’s undoing) remained a mystery.  Like something out of a spy novel or James Bond film, “Deep Throat” would set-up clandestine meetings all throughout the Metro D.C. area and feed highly classified information to young Washington Post reporters, Robert Woodward and Carl Bernstein. 

The list of names of who “Deep Throat” could be was about as long as the list of people who may have conspired to kill Kennedy.    Everyone from Dr. Henry Kissinger (Nixon’s Secretary of State) to ABC World News Tonight anchor, Diane Sawyer (who was then a young White House aide) were thought at one point in time to be the source of the leaks.

In 2005, “Deep Throat” was finally revealed as Mark Felt, a former FBI agent who (at the time of his unveiling) was in his nineties, frail and close to death.  So why did Mark Felt ultimately betray his president and expose government secrets that lead the United States down a very ugly road?

According to Woodward, “Felt believed he was protecting the bureau by finding a way, clandestine as it was, to push some of the information from the FBI interviews and files out to the public, to help build public and political pressure to make Nixon and his people answerable. He had nothing but contempt for the Nixon White House and their efforts to manipulate the bureau for political reasons” (http://themoderatevoice.com/2993/how-mark-felt-became-deep-throat-and-bob-woodward-made-history/).  So Mark Felt exposed these secrets and helped cause a national nightmare to protect the Federal Bureau of Investigation from the wrath of Richard Nixon?  I’m not so sure.  It’s also been said that Felt was dealing with some sour grapes because he was passed over for the FBI Director position (formerly occupied by J. Edgard Hoover) and was Hell-bent on spiting Nixon.  

There are many who view Mark Felt as a hero for what he did, by exposing the lies and corruption inside the oval office.  I disagree wholeheartedly with this.  It’s true that President Nixon acted in an incredibly paranoid and foolish manner and violated the trust of the American people (as other American Presidents have); but consider the fall-out of “Deep Throat’s” actions.  The “long national nightmare” that President Gerald Ford would later refer to Watergate as was a black-eye for America and American politics.  Much like the Monica Lewinsky scandal that plagued Bill Clinton’s presidency in the late 1990s, Watergate became a scandal of soap opera proportions, a media circus whodunit filled with finger-pointing and he said/she said allegations. 

President Nixon actually escaped the Watergate scandal relatively unscathed.  He was pardoned by President Ford, and spent the rest of his life out of politics, penning books in sunny California.  His political reputation, however, was ruined.  And while he was a controversial president, what many consider to be the positive aspects of his presidency (his rapport with Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev and his détente with China) would soon be forgotten thanks to Watergate. 

The real victims of the scandal were the American people who quickly lost faith in the American political system.  And for what? All because Mark Felt was disillusioned over having been passed over for a promotion?  While it would have been challenging for Felt (or anyone in his position) to keep this information to himself, he could have easily avoided escalating things the way he did.   

In the end, there was little or no fallout for Mark Felt.  When he finally did reveal himself as “Deep Throat” (in a 2005 article for Vanity Fair), he was frail and shaky.  Three years later, he died at the age of 95.  One can’t help but wonder how different American politics would be if Felt had taken the secrets and things he knew about the Watergate scandal and the Nixon Administration with him to the grave.