Feeling up Felt's
Moderators: Tunnelcat, Jeff250
Feeling up Felt's
So the infamous "Deep Throat" of Watergate fame has come in from the cold and is being lionized by the mainstream press. Typical to liberal values, the press chooses to honor a convicted felon while aiding in character assination of honorable people. For those of you who have not been listening, former FBI agent Felt was at one time convicted of illegal searches of the underground Weathermen but later pardoned by Ronald Reagan. Felts also denied all these years that he was the source of information for the Watergate affair but now says he was. Felts also was angry over not being picked by Nixon to be the FBI's head honcho. So what we have is a angry lying crimminal that passed FBI information to a news reporter because he was passed over for the number one G-man spot. Yet to hear all the lauditory compliments by the press one would think Felts was a saint. So explain it to me differently DBB'ers.
I certainly can't. While I belive the government should be held accountable for there actions when they screw up. I also believe that any government employee who leaks sensitive or higher information should be held for treason. There has to be a legal way to oppose the government aside from actions such as his.
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Will Robinson
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Two things come to mind from this:
1) Woodward and Bernstein didn't bring Nixon down afterall, they merely delivered the message early to the public that he was coming down and then took all the credit for his fall.
2) Felt is only a minor hero if the FBI wasn't going to use the info they had to bring Nixon down. A not likely scenario based on the facts. So really he was more like a rogue employee who should have, and probably would have, been fired for leaking info from an ongoing investigation.
In the bigger picture, Nixon was a paranoid pill popping bastard who did some good things for the country and was racing toward total instability so it's just as well he retired when he did so he could get away from the pressure. We don't want them going postal when they still run the post office....
1) Woodward and Bernstein didn't bring Nixon down afterall, they merely delivered the message early to the public that he was coming down and then took all the credit for his fall.
2) Felt is only a minor hero if the FBI wasn't going to use the info they had to bring Nixon down. A not likely scenario based on the facts. So really he was more like a rogue employee who should have, and probably would have, been fired for leaking info from an ongoing investigation.
In the bigger picture, Nixon was a paranoid pill popping bastard who did some good things for the country and was racing toward total instability so it's just as well he retired when he did so he could get away from the pressure. We don't want them going postal when they still run the post office....
"For those of you who have not been listening, former FBI agent Felt was at one time convicted of illegal searches of the underground Weathermen but later pardoned by Ronald Reagan."
You know, this sounds like something that, in a different time, you would be cheering.
"Yet to hear all the lauditory compliments by the press one would think Felts was a saint."
That's not all you hear. I think the press coverage on the facts has actually been pretty good. You get the good and the bad. The very first bit I saw on TV about this was G. Gordon Liddy (!) on CNN calling him "unethical." That was pretty rich. Do a google news search on Felt, and you'll find plenty of articles that discuss his less than wonderful moments, and discuss his less than noble motivations.
The mystery of 'who is Deep Throat' has captivated many people for 30 years, and with this revelation comes a lot of introspective blather that isn't inherently negative. He was the symbolization of the anonymous source. He fed Woodstein, and in turn, us, authentic info on Nixon's loathsome actions. That's a good thing, right? His motivations are an obvious part of the story that have been missing for three decades, but his information was accurate. It was an historic moment in American history, and Felt was an important catalyst.
All in all, and in hindsight, I think he did a good thing. Perhaps for the right reasons, perhaps for the wrong reasons.
You know, this sounds like something that, in a different time, you would be cheering.
"Yet to hear all the lauditory compliments by the press one would think Felts was a saint."
That's not all you hear. I think the press coverage on the facts has actually been pretty good. You get the good and the bad. The very first bit I saw on TV about this was G. Gordon Liddy (!) on CNN calling him "unethical." That was pretty rich. Do a google news search on Felt, and you'll find plenty of articles that discuss his less than wonderful moments, and discuss his less than noble motivations.
The mystery of 'who is Deep Throat' has captivated many people for 30 years, and with this revelation comes a lot of introspective blather that isn't inherently negative. He was the symbolization of the anonymous source. He fed Woodstein, and in turn, us, authentic info on Nixon's loathsome actions. That's a good thing, right? His motivations are an obvious part of the story that have been missing for three decades, but his information was accurate. It was an historic moment in American history, and Felt was an important catalyst.
All in all, and in hindsight, I think he did a good thing. Perhaps for the right reasons, perhaps for the wrong reasons.
How will history judge Felt? An interesting perspective from Ben Stein.
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Deep Throat and Genocide
By Ben Stein
Published 6/1/2005 12:22:42 AM
Re: The "news" that former FBI agent Mark Felt broke the law, broke his code of ethics, broke his oath and was the main source for Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward's articles that helped depose Richard Nixon, a few thoughts.
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.
Oh lord. When the Supreme Court halted the counting of ballots in florida, this is what they bought themselves in the Kharma Supermarket that is life:
1.) The September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack.
Sounds pretty out there, eh?
Ben Stein is saying Nixon would have won the Vietnam War if he didn't get pinned down with Watergate. Or rather, it wouldn't have been lost during the 3 year remaining in his second term. It's the rosiest of speculation of an alternate history. It's like saying Clinton would have achieved Middle East peace if Ken Starr had not broke the law, broke his code of ethics, and broke his oath to leak information on Monica Lewinsky to the press.
An interesting perspective, indeed.
1.) The September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack.
Sounds pretty out there, eh?
Ben Stein is saying Nixon would have won the Vietnam War if he didn't get pinned down with Watergate. Or rather, it wouldn't have been lost during the 3 year remaining in his second term. It's the rosiest of speculation of an alternate history. It's like saying Clinton would have achieved Middle East peace if Ken Starr had not broke the law, broke his code of ethics, and broke his oath to leak information on Monica Lewinsky to the press.
An interesting perspective, indeed.
Arguing by analogy is pointless since the *parallels* are often made of straw. Disregard Stein's inclusion of liberal presidents' shortcomings if you find it upsetting but his point still stands by itself: Nixon was committed to ending the war but through Peace With Honor and not high-tailing it out of South Vietnam before that country had a better chance of defending itself. Due to Nixon's removal and the subsequent loss of American resolve toward all things Vietnam, we obviously left the region ill-prepared and history speaks for itself.
I'm sorry. I agree with you that discussions with analogies can be tiresome. I was trying to make the point that affixing blame to people for abhorrant atrocities because a very optimistic and fictitious alternate history didn't take place is kind of obsurd.
I believe it is a stretch to claim that Nixon would have ended US involvement with a standing and secure South Vietnam before the end of his second term if his dirty tricks were never brought to light.
I believe it is a stretch to claim that Nixon would have ended US involvement with a standing and secure South Vietnam before the end of his second term if his dirty tricks were never brought to light.
Considering it was Nixon's election platform and the primary focus of his second term to bring American troops home while leaving South Vietnam capable of shouldering the war on it's own I'd term it neither absurd nor a stretch to speculate he may have been able to pull it off. Once cut off at the knees, however, that policy was doomed to be abandoned in favor of a hasty exit.
Did forcing Nixon from office naturally lead to the atrocities in Southeast Asia? Perhaps not but there is a fairly direct causal line running between the two events. The only person determined--despite the unpopularity of the delay--not to be the first American president to lose a war was suddenly removed from the picture. I hold little doubt that our cold war adversaries realized they had just received a green light from that point forward to do what they wished in that region with little fear of America returning. And they were correct in that assumption.
I understand, however, there's a need for the anti-war left to keep that aspect of its Nixon takedown firmly placed in a blind spot so as not to have to face up to the fact that that trophy head eventually came at a very high cost.
Did forcing Nixon from office naturally lead to the atrocities in Southeast Asia? Perhaps not but there is a fairly direct causal line running between the two events. The only person determined--despite the unpopularity of the delay--not to be the first American president to lose a war was suddenly removed from the picture. I hold little doubt that our cold war adversaries realized they had just received a green light from that point forward to do what they wished in that region with little fear of America returning. And they were correct in that assumption.
I understand, however, there's a need for the anti-war left to keep that aspect of its Nixon takedown firmly placed in a blind spot so as not to have to face up to the fact that that trophy head eventually came at a very high cost.
Look, I have always never considered nixon to be the horrible man he has since been portrayed as. He was an above average president, and compared to the veiled lies of Bush administration he is a saint in my book. But I think the Vietnam assessment is wishful thinking. And then for him to spit in the face of democrats, it comes across as a polarized load of crap.
I can obviously only speak for myself, as someone with little vested interest in the Vietnam era anti-war establishment. I was born in 1974. My knowledge of the era comes from history books. I just find it a little too convenient, the claim that if Nixon didn't self destruct, he would have achieved the ultimate goal in Vietnam within 3 years. I'm open to the suggestion, but I don't buy it. There are far too many variables at play for me to come away thinking the absolute best case scenario was the most probable. Perhaps I'm being overly cynical, but I think I'm being rational.
Jeff, the ultimate goal would have been outright victory over the North. What Nixon was working toward was short of that. He was pressing for a negotiated stalemate, POWs exchanged, a line drawn in the mud (ala Korea), etc. I believe that wouldn't have been too terribly difficult to obtain had certain US commitments to assist South Vietnam been perceived as credible and unbreakable regardless of who sat in the Whitehouse. Shamefully, those commitments were disowned once Nixon resigned.
A couple of things. Nixon was starting to allow U.S. troops boarder incursion into Laos in pursuit of the NVA. I suspect if Nixon would have stayed in, troop build up along the DMZ may have developed with the clear intent of going into North Vietnam. This may have been a attempt to strong arm the NVA into a negotiated settlement that even Fonda and Kerry would have had a hard time screwing up. But who knows.
Second thing is along the idea of the aftermath of Nixons ouster leading to bad things. A more modern corallary would be Somalia and the ignomious pullout of American troops as ordered by Clinton. Osma bin Laden viewed the pullout as a sign of weakness on our part, as he did with the no reaction involving the USS Cole, Kolbart Towers and certain african embassies. These terrorist actions combined to paint america as a spineless liberal country without the backbone to take action even when punched in the face. What we have to remember at no time is it in our interest to sit back and try to understand why we were punched, but to hit back at those who are throwing the punches. It is incumbant upon our President to understand this as 9/11 is the end result of looking the other way.
Second thing is along the idea of the aftermath of Nixons ouster leading to bad things. A more modern corallary would be Somalia and the ignomious pullout of American troops as ordered by Clinton. Osma bin Laden viewed the pullout as a sign of weakness on our part, as he did with the no reaction involving the USS Cole, Kolbart Towers and certain african embassies. These terrorist actions combined to paint america as a spineless liberal country without the backbone to take action even when punched in the face. What we have to remember at no time is it in our interest to sit back and try to understand why we were punched, but to hit back at those who are throwing the punches. It is incumbant upon our President to understand this as 9/11 is the end result of looking the other way.
I'm done discussing the Stein article. I would just keep repeating myself. The ultimate blame for Nixon's downfall lies squarely with Nixon himself. Dreams of what could have been are just dreams, for it didn't happen any other way than it did. Nixon limited himself. I think Stein is being crass and obsurd to lay communist Vietnam and Cambodian genocide at the feet of Nixon's Watergate opponents.