DEEP THROAT: THE BATTLE FOR HISTORY

 
 
THE BATTLE OVER THE LEGACY OF DEEP THROAT IS HARD TO SWALLOW
When You Hear Nixon Apologists Say Deep Throat Mark Felt Is a Traitor, Remember That History Is a Story Won By The Ones Strong Enough To Endure The Mudslinging And Let Truth Shine Through The Muck. 

Born Again Chuck Colson has a problem with revelation that the number two man in the FBI Mark Felt went the anonymous source route. 

Colson added that Felt "broke the confidence of the president of the United States. If you're a president of the United States, you've got to have somebody in the FBI you can talk to with the confidence you talk to a priest."

People should remember that before Colson became born again and spoke out against people breaking confidences with the president, the president, Colson, and the rest of like men all alike broke confidence with the American people.
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SOURCE: BRODER/WASHINGTON POST             

Ben Stein has a problem with people who see the problem in Nixon. 

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?. ...........................................
BEN STEIN/ PROSPECT  

Ben Stein has a problem with reality.  Ben, many people remember and will never forget what Nixon did was so terrible. Stein’s  focus on the small detail of a two bit burglary like Watergate as some small thing obscures the larger picture that Nixon’s role in Watergate brought on a Constitutional crisis that may have echoes today.  Which is why some of these loud mouthed lances against the left have their swords out in the first place.  Who rewrites the history and the past so often has an agenda for the past.

David Broder puts the past in its proper context.

In these comments, Americans born in the 1970s, '80s and '90s can learn everything they need to know about the dangerous delusions of the Nixon era. The mind-set that created enemies lists, the blind loyalty to a deeply flawed individual, the twisting of historical fact to turn villains into heroes and heroes into villains -- they are all there.

Such tendencies are not unique to one White House; they go with the territory. They must be consciously resisted by men and women of conscience working within an administration and checked by those on the outside -- notably journalists -- whose job it is to monitor the presidency.

That is why excessive official secrecy is always suspect and why the isolation of a president behind a closed circle of advisers can lead to abuse of power.
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BRODER/WASHINGTON POST

The battle over the past and the battle in the present are joined at the skirmish line of how much power the president has and whether he is accountable  under law to the sovereign people of the United States of America.  Those who would put such poisoned fruits on our plates forget what is  the root of our liberty: We, the people rule.  So a president must serve us his best and will be held accountable by law for his worst.

Peggy Noonan is an idiot.  She too is upset with Mark Felt.  Felt and all the attention he brought to Watergate apparently are responsible for the death of millions.  Pat Buchanan has a similar view.  Look what happened after Nixon was removed from office!  The idea that what happened after Nixon was removed from office is a mote in the eye, unseen. Maybe, just maybe Noonan might want to consider that what happened after Nixon was removed from office happened because Nixon was once in office.

Ben Stein is angry but not incorrect: What Mr. Felt helped produce was a weakened president who was a serious president at a serious time. Nixon's ruin led to a cascade of catastrophic events--the crude and humiliating abandonment of Vietnam and the Vietnamese, the rise of a monster named Pol Pot, and millions--millions--killed in his genocide. America lost confidence; the Soviet Union gained brazenness. What a terrible time. Is it terrible when an American president lies and surrounds himself by dirty tricksters? Yes, it is. How about the butchering of children in the South China Sea. Is that worse? Yes. Infinitely, unforgettably and forever.

Maybe the big lesson on Felt and Watergate is as simple as the law of unintended consequences. You do something and things happen and you don't mean them to, and if you could take it back you would, but it's too late. The repercussions have already repercussed.

End of story. Why? Because in celebrating this story in a certain way journalists of a certain age celebrate themselves. Because to bring unwelcome and unwanted skepticism to the narrative would be to deny 20th-century journalism--and 21st-century journalists--their great claim to glory. Because the MSM is still liberal, and the great Satan of all liberals, still, is Richard Nixon.
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NOONAN/WALL STREET JOURNAL

Repercussed? While Noonan’s back neologisms are as strained and wannabee cute as her argument, the darling of the right may be right about the liberal media breaking its arm as it pats itself on the back.  The problem is today, however, is there is no liberal media, not if you look at the colossuses of calumny aligned against dissenting views.  In endeavoring to rehabilitate Nixon in the public eye, Noonan, Buchanan, and others remain blind to the logical fallacy they commit to achieve their goals.  That fallacy may be summed up as: after this, because of this.

The facts of Nixon are the reason his legacy will always have a five o’clock shadow, no matter what shadow opinion makers try to obscure the light of the truth now.  Willliam Ruckelshaus, the assistant attorney general who like his boss Elliot Richardson resigned rather than obey Nixon order to fire Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox, puts things in a perspective.

Willliam Ruckelshaus: "But if you see the White House and the head of the FBI [L. Patrick Gray] interfering with the investigation, what are you going to do? If you go public with the charges, who is going to believe you?"

Mark Felt did what whistle-blowers need to do. He took his information to reporters who diligently dug up the evidence to support his well-founded suspicions.

The republic was saved and the public well served. That Colson and Buchanan still don't get it speaks volumes about them.

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BRODER/WASHINGTON POST

The history of the past slams into the news of the present.  George Bush said he wasn’t sure if Mark Felt was a hero either.  That speaks volumes about Bush as well.

FOR THOSE WHO MAY HAVE FORGOTTEN

It Came to Light June 17, 1972: Operatives working for the White House were arrested and charged with breaking into the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. Early 1973: Top White House aides were implicated in the break-in and subsequent cover-up. July 1973: A Senate Committee learned that Nixon had secretly tape-recorded conversations in his office since 1971. Nixon refused to hand over the tapes and fought for more than a year to keep them private.  During this time, Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned over a federal investigation into his acceptance of illegal payments. House Minority Leader Gerald Ford became vice president on Dec. 6, 1973. Nixon offered to provide tape "summaries" and fired the special prosecutor Archibald Cox when he refused them. October 1973: The House Judiciary Committee initiated impeachment hearings. July 1974: The committee voted to recommend impeachment. Aug. 5: Nixon relinquished records of taped conversations. They indicated that he had approved a cover-up six days after the break-in.  Aug 8: Nixon announced on national television that he was resigning the next day. Aug. 9: Ford was sworn in as president and later pardoned Nixon to "heal the wounds that had festered too long."

COURIER POST ON LINE

MORE ON DEEP THROAT FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE INTERNETS

 MY WATERGATE. I’m glad the Mark Felt thing has died down. I will admit that it was a minor pleasure to see Pat Buchanan and Gordon Liddy and, Lord love us, Charlie "Grab ‘em by the balls and their heart and minds will follow" Colson, and their various blogospheric enablers, trying to blow-dry their own soggy reputations by denigrating Felt. (What lover of American political comedy could resist hatchet-man Colson telling Aaron Brown that "the ends don’t justify the means"?) 

FROM: ALICUBLOG

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ON PEGGY NOONAN: This is the last column of her's we'll read. We already subscribe to Mad Magazine and although her writing is a bit funnier, we get more variety in Mad. And we suspect if the column below was submitted as a satire, Mad would reject it for being too off-the-wall. The Onion? Her column isn't quite cutting edge enough.
FROM:  THE MODERATE VOICE

QUESTIONS: Is Deep Throat Mark Felt a traitor or a hero?  Nixon: Saint or Sinner?  Are anonymous sources a good or a bad thing?  What do you think?

Comments

[jen]

1) hero. 2) sinner. 3) necessary. 4) i try not to too much.