Deep Throat

“I believe you said, in reference to the "Swift Boat Liars for Bush", that "their mission was not criminal charges, it was purely political slander to get bush re-elected."

Did I misunderstand you somehow? I simply pointed out that the man you are claiming was exposing criminals, Felt, was no different than the "Swift Boat Liars for Bush" in that they didn't press criminal charges against Nixon. He made a claim and let somebody else press criminal charges.

How is that confusing your post? I quoted you verbatim. If your point was something else, well, I think you might need to work on your communication skills. You and me both.”

“i said:

“sarge, there is a difference between outting criminals and pure political slander.

hmmmm. well maybe it is a gray area”
sacco
12:44:23 PM



you said:

And what have the Swift Boat Liars for Bush proven in court? Anything?

Their Mission was Accomplished.

Bush - 4 more years.

last edited: 6/03/05 12:50:10 PM”
Sarge
12:49:28 PM



now it's your turn to say something about liberals (i.e., anyone who disagrees with you about anything)

or just a plain "typical"

b/c i'm outta here.”

“Sacco, You do realize that wasn't all you posted, don't you? I made it very clear which post of yours I was replying to, and even went so far as to copy your text.”

“alrighty, one last time

what are you talking about sarge?

you've lost me again.

in this post you copied some of my text:

I believe you said, in reference to the "Swift Boat Liars for Bush", that "their mission was not criminal charges, it was purely political slander to get bush re-elected."


that is true. their mission was not criminal charges, it was to get bush re-elected.

it was; you admit it when you say :

And what have the Swift Boat Liars for Bush proven in court? Anything?

Their Mission was Accomplished.

Bush - 4 more years.

last edited: 6/03/05 12:50:10 PM”
Sarge


so now what's your point again? mine's been made.
last edited: 6/03/05 12:32:59 PM”

“I’m surprised none of the wingers have repeated the meme about how Felt weakened the Presidency and made us lose Vietnam.”

“Naaw, it was them long hair hippies what done that!”

“i thought it was kerry's fault we lost 'nam”

“Felt was protecting HIS FBI not the country. My God, he got his training under Hoover he was more about protecting himself. He leaked info because he was pissed that Nixon passed him over for the head of the FBI. If had been given the job, who knows whether or not he would have leaked info or assisted in teh cover-up.”

“Yeah, Kerry and Jane Fonda, them long hair hippies, what I said! It had nothing to do with supporting corrupt military dictators who lost support of the people and the military.”

“sacco - I see your confusion clearly now.

I was never making the point that anybody was only politically motivated, and not "criminally" motivated. Somebody else made that point.

I was making the point that both sides in this case are referring to people that were politically motivated. You and Geo kept trying to make it a "which is worse" argument, politics or criminality. As I pointed out, Felt and the SBVs both just made charges about crimes. Neither one brought criminal charges. So, their motivations can be viewed as identical, although only the left actually ended up bringing criminal charges (against Nixon). Neither of our "heros" did that. They only brought to light where crimes were being committed.

You appear to be concluding that because charges were brought against Nixon, that somehow proves Felt's intentions were to enforce law and not politically motivated. That's crazy talk. He no more brought criminal charges that the SBVs did.
last edited: 6/03/05 12:47:34 PM”

“although only the left actually ended up bringing criminal charges (against Nixon).

There you go again, Sarge. There were 17 Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee, none of whom could even remotely be called liberal and all of whom would have resented the label, who voted to impeach. Among them was M. Caldwell Butler of Roanoke, Va., in the Shenandoah Valley who, after changing his mind to vote for impeachment, wondered whether he would be shot when he returned to his district. Also among them was Larry Hogan of Prince George's County, Md., who was a former FBI agent and among Nixon's staunchest supporters.

And when the Senate delegation went to the White House to tell Nixon that he did not have the votes in the Senate, it was made up of three conservative senators: Carl Albert, Hugh Scott, and Barry Goldwater.

Man, you're like Joe McCarthy, but instead of seeing communists under your bed, you see liberals. Better watch out before one infiltrates your head.”

“Geo - Did I say who voted to impeach, or who brought up the charges? Please refresh my memory. Thanks. Who voted for impeachment is irrelevant. We were talking about bringing up criminal charges, or did I somehow cross into the Nexus via a wormhole or space anomoly?”

“This is like the 4th forums I've seen the exact same thread title the past couple of days :D”

“all forums are the same, they just have different window dressing”

“Sarge, you are familiar with that liberal document, the U.S. Constitution, are you not? To impeach the president is to "bring criminal charges" (high crimes and misdemeanors). The House impeaches; the Senate tries the case.”

“Geo - Are you now claiming Felt didn't bring criminal charges against Nixon?”

“WTF are you talking about?”

“Quoting hyway
Felt did the right thing but not for these great reasons yall are spouting. He did it because he was pissed that he was passed over for [the]directorship if the FBI for an outsider brought in by Nixon. He did it to keep his FBI out of the clutches of Nixon. I doubt that he had any grand patriotic ideals

Quoting Geobeet
He was indicted with other FBI officials in 1978 for approving other break-ins during the Nixon administration. He was convicted in 1980, and President Reagan later pardoned him.

I'm in agreement with hyway and thanks for the other info geobeet. There is more to this story than we will ever know. How could Felt be protecting the integrity of the FBI from Nixon, and at the same time be approving illegal wiretapes during the Nixon administration? Wiretapes that later required a pardon by Reagan? He was just as bad as the man he ratted out.

The fact that he was passed over for heading up the FBI may be one reason he did it but there is probably more.

What is interesting to me is that this story breaks at the same time as the surfacing of British cabinet memo telling about Bush cooking the Iraq WMD intelligence because he had already decided to go to war. Nothing like a big story about old scandals and a Michael Jackson trial to divert the attention of the sheeple from the pressing matters of the day.
last edited: 6/04/05 4:45:33 PM”

“Last night the Pentagon released the news that there had been Koran abuse at Gitmo, although they trumpeted the news that none were flushed down the crapper. But it seems that other abuses were committed, and that is just as bad. The old Friday after work news release trick all over again.”

“The end justifies the means. Unless of course you are seeking justice and they are mean.”

“Well Dean tried to warn him, but you know Nixon.”

“Geo - I'm glad to see you stand up for religion and the word of god. You're a true conservative in the making.”

“The irony is that Nixon was impeached for committing a felony by an FBI agent who committed a felony by leaking information.

Nixon is the goat, Weld is a hero.

The end justifies the means.

Except that this slogan was what was used by Liberals against Republicans.

Irony.”

“I love this.
Nixon brought the country to it’s greatest constitutional crisis since the Civil War and he’s the victim. There is no excuse for what he put the country through. Nixon dug his own grave nobody did it for him.

Watergate is about right or wrong not left or right.”

“You are correct I did not write that very well. I don't excuse Nixon. He was a crook. He deserved worse than what he got.

Weld was a crook too. He should not be held up as a hero.”

“Poor, poor, picked upon bacpac.

The world's out to get you, dude.

It's not paranoia if it's real.

Nixon is lucky Gerry Ford let him off the hook. Not putting that SOB on trial may have helped in the short run, but it leaves us open to revisionists who paint him as the victim.”

“Nixon did what he did. He got what he deserved. There are some things worse than going to jail for a pol.

Felt did what he did. He got his pardon too. Is he a hero? Who knows? My guess is probably not. In the end most people are looking out for their own interests. What we need is a clear picture of what Felt's interests were. That we are not going to get. From some reading I've done in the last several days on this guy, I gather one reporter gave up on a feature article on him because the man is practically senile.

One question I have about Felt is was he a life long FBI man or an appointee from the Johnson years?
last edited: 6/05/05 9:54:09 AM”

“He was with the FBI long before Johnson took office.”

“I certainly did not intend to portray Nixon as a victim. I was pointing out the double standard where Weld commits a felony and is viewed a hero.

They are both crooks.”

“Who is Weld?”

“If you mean Felt, here is the passage from Woodward's confirmation of the Deep Throat identity story:

"The secrecy held through some amazing twists of fate. In 1980, Felt and another senior FBI veteran were convicted of conspiring nearly a decade earlier to violate the civil rights of domestic dissidents in the Weather Underground movement; President Ronald Reagan then issued a pardon."

A decade earlier would have put it smack in Nixon's first term. I wonder whether orders came from on high.

The question Felt faced was whether to violate confidentiality to expose a criminal conspiracy by the person holding the highest office in the land. Nixon's old cronies are saying he should have taken his information to a higher up. His higher up was Patrick Gray, another Nixon flunkie. Was he supposed to take it to the White House? Maybe to Kliendienst in Justice?

Nixon turns up on one tape telling Haldeman what he would do with Felt after Haldeman told Nixon there was nothing they could do. Unfortunately, it is inaudible, but Lawrence Eagleburger on CNN said Nixon wanted him killed.

The role he played with Woodward was not exactly that of passing on unsolicited information. He confirmed information that Woodward and Bernstein had uncovered through their own investigation. Nixon and cronies did not know him as "Deep Throat," but suspected he was leaking information to The Post. He wasn't leaking anything. He was confirming what Nixon appointees were telling W&B off the record. All those guys eventually jumped ship when they were put under oath.”

“You are correct it was Felt.

Leaking information of an ongoing investigation is a felony.”

“Technically he didn't leak it. They already knew it. He merely confirmed it or told them to go back to the drawing boards. Not sure how that would play out in court.

Also not sure a court wouldn't be lenient on a whistle blower revealing information about a crime committed by someone in authority (much less the president of the United States).

It comes down to a judgment call across the board.”

“Technically his passing classified information to the press constituted a felony.”

“it was a hoot when this topic came up on the 700 club while i was flipping thru channels the other day, to watch (whatever the name of that jackoff that hosts it) saying "deep throat" with a straight face”

“Were Felt's Leaks Illegal?
Probably. But he still shouldn't have worried.
By Timothy Noah
Posted Wednesday, June 1, 2005, at 11:29 AM PT


According to Vanity Fair, Mark Felt kept mum about being Deep Throat in part because he wondered "what the judge might think"—i.e., he feared prosecution. Exasperatingly, the article's author, John D. O'Connor, never outlines the legal issues surrounding the disclosure of information about an ongoing criminal investigation—even though O'Connor is Felt's lawyer. Maybe he wants to keep his powder dry, in the highly unlikely event that a prosecutor should want to indict a 91-year-old man for behavior widely deemed patriotic.

Were Felt's actions potentially illegal? I posed that question to Michael R. Bromwich, who was inspector general at the Justice Department from 1994 to 1999. (He is now at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson.) He answered yes.

The likeliest statute under which Felt could have been prosecuted would have been Title 18 USC §641, which prohibits theft of public money, property, or records. The statute is a nasty piece of work, prohibiting not just theft but government leaks. (The relevant language is "conveys or disposes of any record … or thing of value of the United States." Never mind that the people to whom the leaks are "conveyed" are the very taxpayers who paid for the information to be gathered in the first place.) The statute was on the books in the early 1970s when Felt did his leaking; moreover, Bromwich points out, until 1997 the FBI was exempt from laws that protected government whistle-blowers. If convicted under Title 18 USC §641, Felt could have been imprisoned for up to 10 years.

But note that I write in the past tense. It's "could have been" rather than "can be" because there's a five-year statute of limitations on USC §641. Felt has been free and clear since the late 1970s.

If Felt were doing his leaking today and came forward to identify himself as the leaker, he would potentially be in much bigger trouble, according to Bromwich:

Today, disclosure of investigative information might well run afoul of provisions of the Privacy Act (first enacted in its current form in 1988), and [the] grand jury secrecy provisions (Rule 6(e)) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure (which [were] strengthened considerably in the late '70s).

Felt was not a grand juror, but Rule 6(e) covers not just grand jurors but also government officials who are made privy to the information in question.

Timothy Noah writes "Chatterbox" for Slate.”

“Former FBI agent says 3 FBI officials helped W. Mark Felt leak information about Watergate probe to the press:
http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=367183
last edited: 6/07/05 9:47:10 AM”

“WASHINGTON (AP) -- A new book about "Deep Throat" by Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward says W. Mark Felt denied being the Watergate source during a 1976 grand jury appearance, according to USA Today.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/D/DEEP_THROAT?SITE=APWEB&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT”

“he is not Deep throat I tell ya.”

“Why do you think Woodward would lie about this, at this point?”

“why not?”

“'Cause the real Deep Throat threatened to kill him?”

“Wounded Knee threatened to kill him?”

“Hal Holbrook was Deep Throat!”