Deep throat. Nothing to do with Linda.

[Iain]

There was a thread on THR in L&P about today's not so exciting revelation, it was rightfully locked as OT.

I'd like to explore further the idea expressed on that thread that Felt was a traitor. Anyone?

[grampster]

More like a sour grape reaction, if what is being reported is accurate.  J Edgar goes and he expects the job, but doesn't get it.
 
If news reports are accurate, he has felt a great deal of guilt, not for ratting out Nixon necessarily, but for betraying the FBI and the confidences he held that he betrayed.

I suppose a man's conscience is the greatest prison.  Regret is a chain that has no key that fits the the padlock holding it around ones soul.

Interestingly, Liddy has said recently , I'm told, the break-in was all about finding a list of hookers servicing Democrats so they could be co-opted and wired for sound.  From a delectable amusement angle, that would have been worth having the break-in be sucessfull.

[Sean Smith]

Don't see how he's a traitor.  Treason is defined quite clearly in the Constitution, and his behavior is nowhere near meeting the criteria therein.

Hard to call him "heroic" for what he did, since he seems to have had some pretty base motives, e.g. getting back at people.  But selling out some criminals is hardly "treasonous."  At worst he was a crooked guy informing on other crooked guys.  Boo hoo.

[Iain]

The reason I ask is that these things happen at sensitive times, and over more sensitive issues than Watergate. I guess it would be fair to say that Watergate was not really an issue of national security, I get the feeling that perhaps there was a certain amount of partisanship in those comments, but I digress.

British spy op wrecked peace move

A joint British and American spying operation at the United Nations scuppered a last-ditch initiative to avert the invasion of Iraq, The Observer can reveal.

[snip]

...The new claims emerged as The Observer has discovered that Government officials seriously considered dropping the prosecution against Katharine Gun, the translator at the GCHQ surveillance centre who first disclosed details of the espionage operation last March.

According to Whitehall sources, officials feared the prosecution would leave the Government and the intelligence services open to embarrassing disclosures. They were known to be concerned that the 29-year-old Chinese language specialist would be seen as a patriotic young woman acting out of principle to reveal an illegal operation rather than as someone who betrayed her country's secrets...

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,1148622,00.html

Mainly posted that article as a brief recount of Gun's revelations.

If Peel committed treason, what did Gun do? I tend to to think that Gun didn't commit treason either. Which leads us to the validity of Official Secrets Acts and so on. Tricky.

[Standing Wolf]

I suppose a man's conscience is the greatest prison.  Regret is a chain that has no key that fits the the padlock holding it around ones soul.

I'll concur with you about regret, but it seems to me one's conscience is like one's house: clean or dirty, spacious or cramped, inviting or repugnant, depending on the way it's kept.

[Ron]

Hard to call him "heroic" for what he did, since he seems to have had some pretty base motives, e.g. getting back at people.  But selling out some criminals is hardly "treasonous."  At worst he was a crooked guy informing on other crooked guys.  Boo hoo.

Sean has hit it right on the head.

The stupid left is lionizing him as a hero to their detriment.

He violated the law leaking FBI info to the press.

He did it out of spite apparently rather than altruistic motives.

He repeatedly lied over the years about it.

He has come clean now for financial reasons.

If the #2 guy at the FBI did the same thing to President Clinton the media would be going after the leak instead of the President.

This was a case of politics as usual with severe consequences.  To be #2 at the FBI you have to be a political animal.  I view him as niether a good guy or a bad guy,  he is no different than any of the other political animals running the country.  

Or they are all bad guys but I am not quite that jaded YET.

[RevDisk]

If the #2 guy at the FBI did the same thing to President Clinton the media would be going after the leak instead of the President.

And what of Robert Novak leaking Valerie Plume's name while she was undercover?   I don't see the rush to declare him a traitor, when it could be argued it was closer to treason than Deep Throat ratting out a bunch of criminals.

Novak clearly committed a felony under Intelligence Identies Protection Act (with a 10 year sentence) by revealing the name of an undercover CIA case officer, who was investigating the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction.  This also threatened her sources.  


I'm sure it was just a coincidence that this happened immediately after her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, announced that the Yellowcake 'evidence' was bunk.   Perhaps I should invest in tin foil.

[Ron]

Rev as much as I enjoy our verbal sparring....

Your misdirections don't work on me.  We are not talking about Robert Novak.  We are talking about whether or not Mark Felt is a traiter.

I said in a round about way no he is not a traiter.  He is not a hero either.

Just in case you missed my initial point here it is again

To be #2 at the FBI you have to be a political animal.  I view him as niether a good guy or a bad guy,  he is no different than any of the other political animals running the country.

[RevDisk]

Rev as much as I enjoy our verbal sparring....

Your misdirections don't work on me.  We are not talking about Robert Novak.  We are talking about whether or not Mark Felt is a traiter.

I said in a round about way no he is not a traiter.  He is not a hero either.

My "misdirection" is commenting on your "misdirection" regarding Clinton.  You made a comment about a political figure that you dislike (whom I dislike also), so I made a comment about a political figure I dislike.  You made a somewhat modern day comment, so I made a somewhat modern day comment.  

Indeed.   I do not think Felt is a traitor because he ratted out criminals.  

When should one leak sensitive information, even if it is illegal/unethical to do so?   If you know a superior is committing crimes, do you have a responsibility to make sure said criminal is punished?  What if seeking justice is illegal?  (Funny, that seeks volumes for our legal system.)

There is some thoughts on whether Felt released the information to seek justice or to seek revenge.  I'm not sure how much of a difference it makes.  Or for that matter, how much of a difference it is.  If it was seeking revenge, one could argue that he did the right thing for the wrong reasons.  

There is little doubt these days that Nixon was involved in the Watergate scandal.   Did he deserve to be sack'd for committing political espionage?  I personally believe so.   While a President should be given some leeway, breaking into a political opposition's office is slightly beyond the line.

[Stand_watie]

Ian, I think that there may be a huge difference in law between the American definition of treason and the British. If my memory serves me correctly there was a big hullabaloo over just that at the Constitutional convention (over what they believed to be crown abuses of treason statutes) that led to American legal definition of treason being very narrowly defined. So it's possible the guy might have been a "traitor" there and not here.

[Sean Smith]

This is the U.S. legal definition of treason:

Section. 3.
Clause 1: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

This is straight out of the U.S. Constitution.  Easy to see that Deep Throat doesn't even come close to meeting these critera.

[grampster]

Standing Wolf,
     My conscience comment was couched in the perspective that Felt actually had a foundational moral compass.  I was reflecting on my own life regarding conscience and regret.  I guess, maybe, I was giving an old man sort of a pass for things that he did in the heat of disapointment or anger, that caused him great distress over the last 30 odd years.  I hope he has.  He did his organization (and America) wrong with his actions in that the end never justifies the means.

  One hopes that even tho he was political, in that he rose through the ranks of a fiercely political organization,  he knew the difference between right and wrong.  At some point his emotion over-rode his ethics and he became Deep Throat.  Some comments that I heard that he made in the article gave rise to my wonder about that.  
     Some have said that it appears his family has urged him to "come clean" for financial purposes.  It will be interesting to watch this one play out.  The left is so predictable, that a script would be easy to put together for a made for TV movie.

[Waitone]

Lemme see here.  Grandpa is in failing health.  Kids and grandkids see Woodward and Bernstein about to make another sack full of money after Grandpa dies.  What fun is that when he is their Grandpa and W&B are already filthy rich?  So the kids and grandkids work grandpa for 3 years to get him to out himself well ahead of W&B's plan to unveil Deepthroat.  Grandpa's got a few years left (maybe) so now he can participate in the writing of the book and maybe serve as technical consultant to the movie.  All of which will be carefully scripted by kids and grandkids.

Is th dood a hero?  I get a little edgy when the deity levels of the FBI gets a little greedy.  Evidently Grandpa thought he ought to succeed Hoover (without the dress) and when he was passed over by a bureaucratic drone, he went off the reservation.  Yea, you can paint him with all kinds of noble motives but when you scrape the paint off you are faced with hurt feelings and the need for revenge.

Just one more example in a line of examples of law for us and law for them.

[Ron]

Then there is the issue of him being found guilty of (of all things) authorizing illigal FBI searches without warrants!

Adding insult to injury former President Nixon urged President Reagan to give him a presidential pardon!

Once again I say if the parties were reversed and the #2 guy at the FBI broke bad on a Dem president he would be considered a villian.  The media would be obsessed with destroying him.

[Nathaniel Firethorn]

Heard Woodstein say that he did it because he was displeased at how Nixon was misusing the FBI. Therefore, he had some comprehension issues about his chain of command.

That said, I'd hate to discourage whistleblowing when it's really needed.


- NF

[Iain]

That said, I'd hate to discourage whistleblowing when it's really needed.

That's what I was aiming at with this thread. I was also asking just who it is that we owe our allegiances to if we sign official secrets acts and the like.

Seems to me there are several circumstances that I can think of when I'd think that blowing the whistle is a good thing.  Corruption at high govt levels is one, and finding out that your country is spying on other representatives on the UN security council is another.

[RevDisk]

Once again I say if the parties were reversed and the #2 guy at the FBI broke bad on a Dem president he would be considered a villian.  The media would be obsessed with destroying him.

Righto.   And many folks didn't/don't think Deep Throat is a villian?   Re-read this thread, GoRon.  

Playing poor oppressed Republican isn't cutting it.  Both sides have committed crimes.  At times, they have both gotten hit with scandals.  Not enough politicians on both sides of the aisles have gone to prison.   As for the media...   It's not one cohesive entity.  There are left wing media organizations, there are right wing media organizations.  The Dems do not have a lock on the media.   If you wanted, you could start up your own media organization tomorrow, with whatever bias you want to spin.  Or not spin.   Don't believe me?  Ask Matt Drudge or any other internet publisher.   What about Hackworth for that matter?


Heck, I just wish it was actively a crime to pass a law that violated the Constitution.   Nothing major, just barred from being a politician ever again, being a lobbyist or lawyer.  It'll never happen, but here's to dreaming.

[Ron]

As for the media...   It's not one cohesive entity.

This is true now more than at any time in history.  During the 80's I used to watch the news and feel like I was in an alternate universe.

During that time I was more of a libertarian than I am now.  Even though I wasn't really a Republican I used to be amazed at how slanted and anti Reagan the networks were.

I wonder if Ted Turner rues the day he started up the alternate media? (CNN)

That said, I'd hate to discourage whistleblowing when it's really needed.

Thats why I don't have real strong negative feelings about him.  Not because he is a good guy but because I want whistle blowers to feel safe.

I haven't been able to watch much news in the last couple days.  I did notice that Fox was playing it as is he a "villan or hero?".

Once again I think he is niether.  He is/was a politico who played hardball.

[Monkeyleg]

Waitone, you can't type, but you sure can think.

Woodward and Bernstein promised to reveal the identity of Deep Throat after his passing.

Seems like some other modern-day journalists need to "follow the money."