Deep truth

As a journalist, I was amused by comments made this past week by former Nixon cronies attacking former FBI Deputy Director Mark Felt, the man who will go down in history as Deep Throat.

Pat Buchanan, a former Nixon speechwriter, continues to defend his old boss, claiming Nixon was brought down by "a band of Nixon-haters" that took advantage of "a snake in the FBI."

Chuck Colson, Nixon's special counsel, a man who spent seven months in the slammer for his part in the Watergate scandal that brought the President down, told reporters he was "terribly disappointed" that a man he trusted was "going around in back alleys at night" leaking White House secrets.

It's amusing now to listen to these comments, or to hear Felt's supporters call it sour grapes by losers, but there was a time when the country was truly in danger. We were engaged in a terrible and senseless war, and the Nixon administration treated anti-war sentiment as treachery. How was the Vietnam War ever to end?

Some historians claim Nixon's downfall began with the publication of "The Pentagon Papers" by the New York Times, not with Deep Throat's leaks to the Washington Post. Some say Nixon clearly brought it upon himself, either out of political paranoia as he hunkered down in his White House bunker or, a more dangerous thought, out of his egomania and unfounded belief in his own power.

Still, Felt had something to do with it all. His words to reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, immortalized on film by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, was "follow the money," sage advice for any journalist. I used to joke that all you have to do today, with modern computers and the Internet, is Google the dollar signs to chase down the bad guys.

Buchanan and some Nixon supporters have wrapped themselves in the flag for years in their war against liberals. But if they consider Felt, as an FBI man, wrong on philosophical grounds for breaking their trust and leaking secrets to the enemy, how do they justify the actions of our founding fathers — they boarded ships in Boston harbor and destroyed private property, they refused to pay their taxes, and Nathan Hale died as a spy?

On a more practical level, how could Felt have stopped the corrupt Nixon machine by following normal operating channels, as some have suggested would have been the right thing to do? His superiors, FBI Director L. Patrick Gray and Attorney General John Mitchell, were implicated in the Watergate scandal themselves. Who was he supposed to report to — Nixon himself?

Determining when means justify ends is always a gray area. We make those kinds of decisions all the time in our daily lives, but they are usually minor ones with little significant impact on others. Looking back at history provides us 20-20 vision, Monday night quarterbacking. It's easy to know when the right and wrong decisions were made.

I don't think the Mark "Deep Throat" Felt case is all that complicated. Felt may have had personal reasons for going after Nixon — not getting the top FBI job after Hoover died, for example — but so what? Nixon was out of control at a crucial time in our nation's history, and history is often a messy business.

It's time Nixon's surviving supporters climb out of the bunker into the bright light of practical wisdom.