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Mark Felt, 'Deep Throat' in Watergate reporting, dies
Chicago Tribune ^ | December 19, 2008 | Laura Norton

Posted on 12/18/2008 10:07:11 PM PST by re_tail20

Mark Felt, the FBI official who as the anonymous journalistic source "Deep Throat" helped bring down President Richard M. Nixon, died on Thursday at his home in Santa Rosa, Calif. He was 95.

Felt suffered from congestive heart failure but the immediate cause of death was not known on Thursday night.

"He was an important person for the history of our nation, but also such a gem and such a treasure to our family," said his grandson Nick Jones, who confirmed the death. "He was a great man."

Jones said the family would issue a formal statement on Friday.

In 2005, more than 30 years after his whistle-blowing helped topple a presidency, Felt held a press conference on the front steps of his Santa Rosa home.

Felt, then 91, revealed that he was "Deep Throat," the anonymous source who in 1972 leaked information to the Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein about the Watergate scandal that eventually led to Nixon's resignation in 1974.

(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...


TOPICS: Government
KEYWORDS: deepthroat; felt; markfelt; nixon; obituary; watergate; woodward
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To: laconic
South Vietnam went down the drain because of Mark Felt and Watergate which led to the election of an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress which cut off all military aid. I wonder if his family is “proud” of the hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese killed as a consequence. Moreover, he did his backstabbing not out of conviction but out of revenge for having been passed over for a promotion; his family thought they deserved money for it.

And don't forget the millions of Cambodians exterminated as a direct result of unchecked communism in SE Asia.

41 posted on 12/19/2008 3:33:15 AM PST by abb ("What ISN'T in the news is often more important than what IS." Ed Biersmith, 1942 -)
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To: hinckley buzzard

I always thought this too from the first interview I saw of
Woodward. There was just something strange about the guy like he wanted so much to be regarded by fellow elitist as a great author that he was willing to invent/do whatever it took to get their adoration.


42 posted on 12/19/2008 3:35:22 AM PST by when the time is right
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To: Chinstrap61a

First, the EPA, along with the Endanged Species Act, were signed into law by Nixon. The EPA is a criminal organization that completely ignores the Constitution and, aided by a corrupt federal judiciary, is about to assume control over every piece of private property and business in America through its illegal law writing.

Check out the Rapanos v US ruling for a foretaste of America under Nixon’s EPA.

The EPA and ESA are clearly totalitarian monsters created by the left to bring fascism into America, where you will be “allowed” to own private property but be required to manage it for the collective comon good, as defined by the state.

Welcome to fascist America.

The fascist federal bureaucrats in the EPS and ESA have both precipitated armed confrontations with property owners under the guise of law. The thugs in these illegal agencies have stolen property and send people to federal prison for dumping dirt in holes.

If you think the creation of EPA and ESA are minor episodes in the Nixon administration that can be brushed off and ignored because Nixon established relations with Red China, your misreading of the harm the Nixon presidency has caused to this country is severe.


43 posted on 12/19/2008 3:44:02 AM PST by sergeantdave (Liberal Michigan is a disease that can't be allowed to spread)
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To: Smokeyblue
Because the investigation against them was muffed thanks to the illegal activities of the Washington Post’s favorite Watergate answer man himself, Mark Felt — aka Deep Throat.

I don't believe Felt was DT, but Woodward's got his reputation invested in that myth, and his media colleagues will protect their hero.

The prosecution of Felt and Miller wasn't the reason the Weathermen skated, but the culmination of a decade of discrediting and dismanteling of our intel agencies, most notably through the efforts of the Democrat-controlled Congress, aided by the media and the Weather Underground itself.

The era began with a break-in of an FBI office in Media, PA, by a group calling itself the "Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI,” aka the Weather Underground, who demonstrated great skill in break-ins themselves, ironically. The files that were stolen were selectively leaked to news media and the left's obsession with what the FBI called "COINTELPRO" began.

The drama increased exponentially with Watergate, and a simultaneous series of COINTELPRO-related disclosures stemming from NBC correspondent Carl Stern's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in 1972. The Justice Department had finally released particular documents to Stern in December 1973, and this disclosure eventually led to a hearing before the Civil Rights and Constitutional Rights Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee in 1974.(Stern later became Public Affairs Director for the Reno/Gorelick Justice Dept.)

"The "Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities of the United States Senate," commonly referred to as the "Church Committee" for its chairman, Senator Frank Church of Idaho, joined the fray with further disclosures, and eventually became responsible for the hog-tying of both the CIA and FBI in its ability to investigate both domestic and international terrorism, through guidelines written in response to the committee's recommendations by Attorney General Edward Levi in 1976. (Gerald "Let the Healing Begin" Ford hand-picked Levi in an effort to reform the image of the DOJ after Watergate, and therefore further his chances of election to a full term in '76.)

Then along came Carter, and Felt and Miller were indicted in1978 by his Attorney General Griffin Bell on charges that they

"did unlawfully, willfully, and knowingly combine, conspire, confederate, and agree together and with each other to injure and oppress citizens of the United States who were relatives and acquaintances of the Weatherman fugitives, in the free exercise and enjoyments of certain rights and privileges secured to them by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America."

The main "relative" referred to in the indictment was Jennifer Dohrn, Bernardine's sister (now a member of the Columbia U. College of Nursing faculty), who, as WU spokesperson, was known to be helping WU fugitives. (Jennifer Dohrn sued Felt in 1978, and settled out of court.) The jury returned guilty verdicts on November 6, 1980. On December 3, 1980, Ayers and Dohrn surrendered to Illinois authorities on a plea bargain presumed to have been negotiated in advance. Due to "prosecutorial misconduct," charges against Ayers were dismissed, while Dohrn received probation and a fine for crimes committed during the "Days of Rage" in Chicago in '69. They dynamic duo were among the last, and the guiltiest, to surrender, but many of their group had already come out of hiding, beginning in the mid-70's, and all, including Wilkerson who escaped the townhouse explosion, were given relatively light sentences. Ayers and Dohrn had much more to conceal, so waited for the optimum moment to become "guilty as hell, free as a bird."

Reagan pardoned Felt and Miller on April 15, 1981. Felt sued and had his law license restored in 1982 and the same year Felt and Miller testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee's security and terrorism subcommittee that the restrictions placed on the FBI by Attorney General Edward H. Levi were threatening the country's safety. Under Reagan, some of the restrictions were rolled back, but not enough to prevent 9/11/01, as we've learned.

That's just a bare outline, but suffice it to say that by 1980, the public had been conditioned to believe the FBI were a bunch of law-breaking thugs (which may have been true in some, but certainly not all respects), while the Weathermen's excesses -- bombings, break-ins, theft, jail breaks, suspected murders, attempted murder, planned bombing of a military facility, etc. -- were all but forgotten. To attribute their pardons solely to Felt and Miller's actions misses the point entirely.

44 posted on 12/19/2008 4:28:10 AM PST by browardchad
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To: re_tail20

Felt’s real rationale for being “Deep Throat” was that he was passed over for Director of the FBI. There was no noble purpose there, just anger for thwarted ambition.


45 posted on 12/19/2008 4:40:37 AM PST by Jimmy Valentine (DemocRATS - when they speak, they lie; when they are silent, they are stealing the American Dream)
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To: FFranco
"Nixon was a Republican, so he had to be punished"

The DemocRATS never forgave Nixon for bagging Alger Hiss.

46 posted on 12/19/2008 4:42:29 AM PST by Jimmy Valentine (DemocRATS - when they speak, they lie; when they are silent, they are stealing the American Dream)
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To: FFranco

The left was after Nixon because he had the audacity to actually go after Alger Hiss.


47 posted on 12/19/2008 4:48:38 AM PST by 7thson (I've got a seat at the big conference table! I'm gonna paint my logo on it!)
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To: browardchad

Great overview setting the facts straight. With this period of history completely rewritten, it is apparent most have bought into the media/lefty driven notion that Ayers et al were the good guys and those on the other side were demons.
A good example today would be to picture the media’s handling of the Sun God’s answers about the senate seat bribe. Then in that picture remove the zero and put in Nixon. Notice how the mode changes from lap to junk yard dog.

Vince


48 posted on 12/19/2008 4:54:15 AM PST by Mouton
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To: advance_copy

I think Nixon was a very complicated individual. I read long ago that had he won the presidency in 1960, it would have been a different Nixon than the one that won in 68. The left was after him for nearly all his political life. He had the audacity to defeat a female Dem to get into the House. He had the audacity to ensure Hiss was convicted. The left and their cohorts in the press hounded him for years. And he did not have many friends in the Republican Party either. So, I always thought that what he did concerning Watergate was a result of how he was treated by decades of a hostile environment.


49 posted on 12/19/2008 5:24:46 AM PST by 7thson (I've got a seat at the big conference table! I'm gonna paint my logo on it!)
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To: abb
Yep.

I still believe Deep Throat was a composite or nonexistent character.

50 posted on 12/19/2008 5:27:51 AM PST by Skooz (Gabba Gabba we accept you we accept you one of us Gabba Gabba we accept you we accept you one of us)
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To: LdSentinal

bttt


51 posted on 12/19/2008 5:29:39 AM PST by ConservativeMan55
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To: Jimmy Valentine
The DemocRATS never forgave Nixon for bagging Alger Hiss.

Plus he had the audacity to run against and defeat The Pink Lady (Helen Gahagan Douglas).

52 posted on 12/19/2008 5:32:04 AM PST by abb ("What ISN'T in the news is often more important than what IS." Ed Biersmith, 1942 -)
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To: jrooney

I wonder if Richard Nixon was on hand when this guy knocked on the ‘pearly gates’.


53 posted on 12/19/2008 5:32:23 AM PST by Just mythoughts (Isa.3:4 And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them.)
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To: Mouton
Great overview setting the facts straight.

Thanks. I had to do quite a bit of research to get it straight in my own head. The best detailing of the chronology I've found so far comes, unfortunately,  from the left, in David Cunningham's "There's Something Happening Here: The New Left, The Klan and FBI Counterintelligence," written in 2004 to warn us against the excesses of Bush, the FBI and the Patriot Act. Even Cunningham describes the prosecution of Felt and Miller as "largely symbolic."

This decade itself is being rewritten as we speak, and most people will absorb it, believe it and move on, until someone like Hugh Hewitt gives them a facile one-paragraph scapegoat summary to explain 9/11, the WOT and the necessity of freeing the unfairly incarcerated brave Jihadists from the unending tortures of Gitmo. Blech.

54 posted on 12/19/2008 6:06:10 AM PST by browardchad
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To: browardchad

Bump, bookmark...one of the best FR threads.


55 posted on 12/19/2008 6:52:44 AM PST by Tainan (Talk is cheap. Silence is golden. All I got is brass...lotsa brass.)
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To: abb

Was Helen Gahagan Douglas a bad seed? I’d always read that she was unfairly tarred by Nixon.


56 posted on 12/19/2008 7:13:03 AM PST by Borges
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To: Borges
I’d always read that she was unfairly tarred by Nixon.

That's the way the Drive-Bys always characterize it. She was the 1940 version of Hillary Clinton. LBJ had a fling with her way back.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Gahagan

In the 1940s, Gahagan Douglas entered politics. She was elected to the United States House of Representatives from California's 14th congressional district as a liberal Democrat in 1944, and served three full terms. During this time, according to author Robert Caro, she carried on an affair with then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson.

57 posted on 12/19/2008 7:19:47 AM PST by abb ("What ISN'T in the news is often more important than what IS." Ed Biersmith, 1942 -)
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To: Borges

She authored a book about Eleanor Roosevelt. I can just imagine how it reads.

http://www.amazon.com/Eleanor-Roosevelt-We-Remember/dp/B0007DXN2C/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229700399&sr=1-3


58 posted on 12/19/2008 7:31:38 AM PST by abb ("What ISN'T in the news is often more important than what IS." Ed Biersmith, 1942 -)
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To: re_tail20

Prayers for a deeply misguided individual.


59 posted on 12/19/2008 7:34:31 AM PST by fieldmarshaldj (~"This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps !"~~)
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To: Borges

She was one of the most left-wing members of the House at that time, similar voting record to the Communist American Labor Party Congressman from NYC, Vito Marcantonio. Think of her as the ‘40s version of Barbara Boxer, with a strong Hollyweird connection.


60 posted on 12/19/2008 7:37:02 AM PST by fieldmarshaldj (~"This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps !"~~)
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