The Accidental Patriot

by Marie

The true identity of Deep Throat should disabuse all liberals of any notion that a government official in the executive branch of the US government will step forward and report on the subversion of the Constitution taking place in the Bush administration. Not that there aren’t men and women in the FBI, Pentagon, CIA, State or White House that don’t possess such information. Only that their bread is buttered better by remaining silent. That snitching is the lowest of the low in any organization; formal or informal; criminal or legitimate. That silence confers more power than speaking. That the foreign policy, intelligence, crime enforcement and military institutions of the US government are dominated by those with a Republican worldview. And worldviews are hardly never trumped by lofty abstract principles.

Mark Felt not only survived but thrived in the J Edgar Hoover FBI. The FBI that fed a GOP nominee for governor of California illegally collected information on individuals in the Free Speech Movement. The FBI that collected information on all politicians. The FBI that told the WH what to do not the other way around. Nixon and his gang tried to change that rule. Would there have been a Deep Throat had Felt been promoted and pressure not exerted on the FBI to close down the Watergate investigation? Felt would then have owned Nixon but only the inner circle would have known that and Nixon would have remained POTUS. Nixon suspected that Felt was Deep Throat and may have
gone to his grave blaming his downfall on the Jewish thing that he ascribed to Felt instead of his own deeply embedded bigotry and nefariousness

Felt seems not to have said, “Mr. President have you no shame?” His awareness of Nixon's subversion of the Constitution seems to have been somewhat inchoate. What he seems to have been mostly concerned about was the protection of the FBI. An organization that under J Edgar was as rotten as the Nixon administration. If we consider that Woodward and possibly Bernstein were no more invested in the preservation of the Constitution than Felt appears to have been, the pieces of the subsequent mystery of Watergate begin to click into place.

“A third rate burglary.” “The cover-up is always worse than the crime.” That is what most people in America would say about Watergate, if they can say anything at all. Two Republican talking points that have been repeated so often that even Democrats today spout them. Amazing that so few bother to question why a POTUS would be engaged in a cover-up of a “third rate burglary.” Forgetting that the perpetrators of the third rate burglary were tried and convicted long before any involvement by Nixon began to simmer in the minds of Americans. Before Congress launched hearings into Watergate. It is only vaguely recalled that GOP operatives broke into the offices of the DNC. That it was about bugging the DNC before the election in 1972. That it was only one action in the whole dirty tricks operation of CREEP and Richard Nixon. That they were shaking down people for illegal campaign contributions. That CREEP controlled a massive slush fund. That people like Segretti were out there gaming the election. That people like Karl Rove were being trained in methods to steal elections. The country didn’t learn what Watergate really meant, and the GOP learned that it was better to let the “plumbers” bend their own pipes and plug their own leaks. If they get caught, so be it. Their rewards will come later after their Presidential pardons that will go mostly unnoticed. Another side benefit of the experience of Watergate when Ford’s pardon of Nixon was accepted without destroying Ford's reputation for being a decent man. This explains why Reagan and GWB have survived as Presidents whereas GHB failed. Reagan was cognitively impaired early in his reign and GWB has no interest in details. They are “out of the loop” or can plausibly claim that they were misled, the fallback position if the Downing Street memo ever gets the attention it deserves for it is as much of a smoking gun as was Butterfield’s disclosure that Nixon had bugged his Oval Office.

How can we learn when we forget? Why do we forget? Likely because there was little higher order learning in the first place. Principles and fundamentals lead to learningthat cannot be forgotten. What can be seen as included in what Malcolm Gladwell in “Blink” describes as educated first impressions. Those who learned the Robert McNamara lesson from Vietnam that “we didn’t understand that it was a civil war” are now beginning to see that Iraq will become a quagmire. Those who had learned that the “McNamara lesson” was bullshit and it was the US that had stymied the Geneva Accords mandated election in South Vietnam in the 1950’s and installed puppet regimes knew before the invasion that Iraq would become a quagmire. Those who had learned the lesson of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution knew that the Iraq WMD claims were bogus. Those who had learned the character of Nixon knew instantly that the Watergate break-in was tied to Nixon and his merry men. Those who have learned the character of the Republican Party, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rove and GWB haven’t been surprised by the GWB regime; the only mystery is their actions on 9/11/01. Destroying the New Deal legacy has been on the GOP agenda since it was instituted. Destroying any part of the Constitution that decreases their chances to remain in power has been on their agenda since Nixon’s ascendancy to the White House. And George only knows that what's good for the oil and money men is good for America.

The secret identity of Deep Throat for three decades led all of us to fantasize about the
motivation of the man. These ranged from American patriot to Republican political
rival to Nixon. And the fantasy was unlikely not to be informed by one’s political orientation. This has led the left to overvalue anyone who speaks out against abuses of government power. Unlike Daniel Ellsberg, people like Clarke and Scheur faced no criminal liability for acting. They pick up a check from their publisher instead of one from the government. They do so without the personal crisis of having to question everything they thought they knew. Clarke sees nothing wrong with having approved the flight plans for the planes to get wealthy Saudis out of the US quickly after 9/11. Schuer implemented extraordinary renditions under the Clinton administration. The difference between them and Felt is thatWoodward and Bernstein collected the check for the book and Felt was more effective. Felt didn’t bring down Nixon anymore than Clarke and Schuer have taken down Bush. However, Felt facilitated Congressional action; prodded them into beginning a real investigation.. A Congress that could recall that they were obligated to act as a check and balance on another arm of our government. Were there any real patriotic heroes in the Watergate saga? Maximum John Sirica at least lived up to his reputation and that insured that the larger story didn’t die with the trial of the burglars. Nobody could have performed their duties better than Ervin and Dash did theirs but back then doing one’s job was not considered heroic. John Dean came clean instead of taking a bullet for his boss, but let’s not overlook the fact that unlike Tenet’s bullet, Dean’s would have turned into prison bars and not a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Woodward and Bernstein may have been idealistic, in addition to hard-working and lucky, although their subsequent work doesn’t support that interpretation, and Woodward’s gushing “Bush At War” would more rightly have been penned by someone who also wrote something like “Nixon, the Ethical President.” The Republican Senators who informed Nixon that he had to step down were not heroes. They weren’t concerned about putting this country through an impeachment and trial of a President. They only wanted to short circuit the process and limit the damage to the GOP. At that they succeeded far beyond their expectations.

Who would have predicted in 1974 that little more than a decade later that someone like North could covertly trade arms with the enemy and in violation of the Boland Amendment, arm Nicaraguan terrorists and get labeled a hero by many Americans. Or that another decade later that those Iran-Contra criminals pardoned by GHB would be back in the White House? Hell, who would have predicted that G. Gordon Liddy would get rich hosting a rightwing talk radio show? We let all the knaves get away. But where were the honest heroes? The one who at personal risk and sacrifice taught America what Nixon had done and why we must never again let any President abuse Executive power like that again? The people with the power to elevate principle and country above politics and personal comfort? A George Tenet who could have stepped forward and said, “No, Mr. President, I will not fix theintelligence on Iraq and I will go public if you make any attempt to do so?” A John McCain, John Kerry, and Joe Biden who proclaimed that the Iraq intelligence was poppycock and “No, Mr. President, we are not going to authorize a pre-emptive invasion of the country of a brutal dictator in the absence of a clear
and present danger?” A Colin Powell who all on his own could have destroyed domestic and international support for an invasion before Congress or the UN acted? Toadies, sycophants and weasels prop up Dim Son while others die for him. Maybe it’s too much to ask for a real hero, but by today’s standards, the Accidental Patriot, Mark Felt, looks good, but he can’t begin to compare with my thirty year old fantasy of the patriotic hero once known only as Deep Throat.