Out of the Closet and Into History

Wednesday, June 1, 2005 marked the end of a rare era for those of us of a certain age who’ve learned over time just how difficult it is to keep a really big secret. W. Mark Felt, Deputy Associate Director of the FBI during the Nixon administration’s notoriously troubled second term, confessed to Vanity Fair magazine that he was the Watergate whistleblower dubbed "Deep Throat" by reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. With Felt’s blessing, Woodward and Bernstein’s paper, The Washington Post, confirmed the assertion, and a secret that has consumed pols, pundits and conspiracy nuts for more than thirty years was finally put to rest.

As secrets go, the identity of Deep Throat (yes, it was a goof on the name of the famous porno movie of that era) has always been a bit of an open one. Many people very familiar with the case have long made the handsome, suave former G-man their pet suspect. Felt had access to all of the information passed to Woodward and Bernstein. More significantly, he’d had the motive to rat Nixon and Co. out – he’d been in line to inherit the Directorship of the FBI from J. Edgar Hoover, who had died just a month prior to the Watergate break-in, but had been passed over in favor of a Nixon suck-up named L Patrick Gray. Still and all, there were also many other suspects, and every few years a new red herring would be tossed out to keep speculation alive. Taking into consideration that Watergate was an historic event that had everything to do with revealing secrets and unraveling lies, it’s remarkable  the secret at the center of it all was kept so meticulously for so many years.

But then again, Felt was a different kind of G-man than we’re used to seeing today. Specifically, he was a J. Edgar Hoover G-man. He worked under a director who considered himself nothing less than a Caesar to the Bureau, who was utterly consumed with knowing the secrets of everyone who came into his orbit for any reason, from the janitor who cleaned his office right up to the Presidents with whom he served. For a hefty price Hoover kept those secrets, and thus created a system of checks and balances that kept the American public in the dark about the crimes, petty embarrassments and foibles of the six Presidents who came and went under his tenure. We’ve all heard the stories about Hoover’s many faults – arrogance, cowardice, pettiness, power-tripping – as well as his crimes, such as black bag surveillance that violated the constitutional rights of their subjects, and out-and-out blackmail. But he used all of these negatives to create a quiet system of accountability for all. Unfortunately, what Hoover gained was what the press and the American public lost. At the end of the day, the free flow of information was just another tribute sacrificed on the altar of Hoover’s insatiable hunger for power, relevance, and a legacy.

Felt, disgusted and appalled with Gray’s carte blanche handing of any and all FBI files to the White House, felt the accountability of the administration slipping from the Bureau’s grasp and did what any disgruntled second banana would do. He tattled to the papers. And with that single vindictive act he changed the American concept of political accountability forever. For not only would the White House never be able to control the flow of information in the same way again, but the FBI could no longer be counted on to play the Hoover game. For the first time, politicians became nostalgic for the days when a fat little payoff would be enough to keep their secrets safe.

In the media postmortem that has inevitably taken place this week, several people have piped up expressing a certain disappointment. "We thought he was a hero, but it was just an interagency pissing match," they grumble. "His motivations weren’t as pure as we thought." This is laughable. Since when does anyone in Washington have pure motivations for anything they do? We’re not talking Florence Nightingale here, folks. And I highly doubt that Felt turned on Nixon in order to be a "hero". The press conferred that role on him; he didn’t ask for it. He himself had been convicted of criminal breach of protocol for bypassing warrants while investigating the Weather Underground, so it wasn’t as if he was anyone’s idea of a white knight. Felt’s motives and character are beside the point anyway – his legacy has played out on the national stage over and over in the years since Watergate. Iran-Contra, the Keating S&L scandal, Monica Lewinsky, Valerie Plame...all bear out what political accountability means in the post-Deep Throat era.

That accountability is to the press and the public now, which is ironic considering the status quo that Felt came from. Unfortunately, while we’ve gained the right to know, we’ve lost the checks and balances that Hoover used to keep presidents, legislators and military leaders from gaining too much unilateral power. With Watergate the FBI lost its iron grip on internal affairs in Washington, and the ultimate cost to the nation was compromised security. It’s not likely that a 9/11 would have happened under J. Edgar Hoover. He would have had his fingers in too many pies, and heavy threats held over too many heads, to let a plan of such scope slip past our leaders. This is not something our current legislators aren’t aware of, hence the healthy dollop of Hoover nosiness in the voluminous pages of the Patriot Act. Could a return to black bags and blackmail be the best way to widen the net and capture those who mean us harm? It’s a serious question that deserves serious consideration as we reflect on the legacy of the FBI spook who exposed the man behind the curtain.