Watergate Deep Throat: Funeral tone taught us Presidents can be Dumb

W. Mark Felt, aka “Deepthroat” of the Watergate era, died at 95 today. One of the most famous anonymous – es in the world, he opened the door for many who feel that anonymity, while not optimal, is a neccessary evil when powerful, if wrong, people sit above you and control both the horizontal, and the vertical: from his obituary,

Mr. Felt later said he believed that the president had been misusing the F.B.I. for political advantage. He knew that Nixon wanted the Watergate affair to vanish. He knew that the White House had ordered the C.I.A. to tell the bureau, on grounds of national security, to stand down in its felony investigation of the June 1972 break-in. He saw that order as an effort to obstruct justice, and he rejected it. That resistance led indirectly to Nixon’s resignation.
Mr. Felt had expected to be named to succeed J. Edgar Hoover, who had run the bureau for 48 years and died in May 1972. The president instead chose a politically loyal Justice Department official, L. Patrick Gray III, who later followed orders from the White House to destroy documents in the case.
The choice infuriated Mr. Felt. He later wrote that the president “wanted a politician in J. Edgar Hoover’s position who would convert the bureau into an adjunct of the White House machine.” – [link]

But Deepthroats, aka Mark Felts funeral tone cast over American politics during the Nixon era also lit up some hopeful aspects of anonymity. It has helped support witnesses of horrible crimes, whistleblowers against unwarranted retribution. So thank. Meanwhile, there is some great watergate deepthroat audio here at the NYT audio archives.

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