Gagging On Deep Throat

Sorry about the headline, I couldn't help myself. The New York Times has a piece running today that sheds more light regarding the religious concerns I mentioned in the prior post.

"The Watergate tapes disclosed that Nixon himself had singled out Mr. Felt for special suspicion, once asking his chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, "Is he a Catholic?" Mr. Haldeman replied that Mr. Felt, who is of Irish descent, was Jewish, and Nixon, who often liked to see Jews at the root of his troubles, replied: "It could be the Jewish thing. I don't know. It's always a possibility."

Regardless of Nixon's position, I am still irked that people use race/color/creed to make determinations about others. But I am not above admitting that I look at radical Islamists as a bloc, so I am not totally above the fray.

From a different angle I am not surprised to read some of the comments of the players of that era and their criticism of Mr. Felt.

Patrick J. Buchanan Nixon Speechwriter and adviser, now a conservative commentator:

"I've always thought it was Mark Felt. I've told people that privately for a number of years. But I have not mentioned it publicly because I think Deep Throat is a dishonorable man."

"I think Mark Felt behaved treacherously. I'm unable to see the nobility of the enterprise, sneaking around in garages, moving pots around, handing over material he got in the course of the investigation."

Buchanan is a bigot, isolationist and an example of so many negative traits I cannot list them all here.

Charles W. Colson Special counsel to Nixon who served seven months in prison, now running Prison Fellowship Ministries, a Christian evangelical group that works with inmates:

"I am really shocked" about Mr. Felt's role. "I always thought that he was the consummate professional, very upright, everybody's vision of the F.B.I. guy.

"I can understand that he may have had some moral reservations about what was happening, but the right way to do it is to look the president in the eye and tell him, it isn't to go sneaking around dark alleys and talking to reporters. If the president had blown him off, he could have held a press conference and announced what he had done and he would have been a hero."

I think that Colson is kidding himself. It is not easy to look at the POTUS and tell him that you think that he and his administration are corrupt. And I don't know that I buy the argument that he could have just held a press conference and been spoken of in glowing terms. It was a different time and place.