[Vision2020] Mark Felt and Andreas Schou comments

[Andreas Schou]

> [History of COINTELPRO snipped.]

For those of you interested in getting a history lesson about
COINTELPRO from someone other than Phil, the complete text of the
Church reports is available online.

http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/cointel.htm

I'll admit that I wasn't aware of the full extent of COINTELPRO's
activities; I thought it was officially constituted by HUAC, partially
under Nixon's direction.

Note, however,  that Nixon and Johnson are listed as the worst
offenders during the entire duration of COINTELPRO (though it was
Kennedy that ordered the single worst offense of COINTELPRO, the
campaign to discredit Martin Luther King).

> John Mitchell was not the AG when Felt turned Deep Throat, since he had
> resigned to run Nixon'x Campaign, during which the Watergate Breakin
> occured.  Richard Kleindienst was the AG during the initial period of the
> Watergate scandal and he was followed by Elliot Richardson.  Since
> Richardson's conducted during the Saturday Night Massacre shows that he
> could and did act against the interests of Nixon, Felt could indeed have
> gone to the AG's Office during that time frame.

With 20/20 hindsight, he might've been able to go to the AG's office.
Put yourself in Felt's place. Given Felt's recent history with the
AG's office, would he have been wise to go to the AG? The answer is
pretty clearly no -- not to mention the fact that going to the AG
could easily turn the Watergate affair into an interagency pissing
match that would've brought down the post-Hoover FBI and the Nixon
White House at the same time.

Despite the fact that that's what would've been best for the country,
that's certainly not what Mark Felt -- as the actual number-two man in
the FBI* -- would've wanted.

> As for Felt as a dedicated wonder, look at this from Wikipedia;
> 
> "Immediately upon his death, Hoover's secretary for five decades, Helen W.
> Gandy, began destroying his files with the approval of Felt and Gray. She
> turned over twelve boxes of the "Official/Confidential" file to Felt on May
> 4, 1972. This consisted of 167 files and 17,750 pages, many of them
> containing derogatory information. Felt stored them in his office and Gray
> told the press that afternoon that "there are no dossiers or secret files.
> There are just general files and I took steps to preserve their integrity."
> Felt earlier that day had told Gray, "Mr. Gray, the Bureau doesn't have any
> secret files" and to prove it had taken Gray to Hoover's office. They found
> Gandy boxing up papers. Felt said Gray "looked casually at an open file
> drawer and approved her work", though Gray would later deny he looked at any
> thing. Gandy retained Hoover's "Personal File" and destroyed it. When Felt
> was called to testify in 1975 by the U.S. House about the destruction of
> Hoover's papers, he said "There's no serious problems if we lose some
> papers. I don't see anything wrong and I still don't.""
> 
> So Good old Felt was only too willing to destroy papers and information and
> cover up things when it suited his ends.
> 
> Similarly, during the very period that Felt was rolling over on Nixon as
> Deep Throat, he was performing Black Bag Jobs in 1973, though those exact
> types of operations had been specifically banned by the Supreme Court in
> Plamondon in June of 1972.  His only reply was "I was shocked that I was
> indicted. You would be too, if you did what you thought was in the best
> interests of the country and someone on technical grounds indicted you."
> 
> Yup, Felt thought that violating Constitutional rights was just fine as long
> as he and the wise men in the FBI were the ones doing the work and they
> thought that a higher purpose was being served.
> 
> And in the ultimate of ironies, Richard Nixon came to Felt's defense and
> also gave money to help Felt defend himself.  He ended up fined to the tune
> of $5,000, and though the potential did exist that they could have sent him
> to prison for ten years he was not required to serve a single day.  At least
> President Ford and his DOJ made sure that the Watergate guys other than
> Nixon served some time for their crimes, more than seems to have been the
> case when the Carter DOH sought sentencing on Felt.

I'm preserving this because I think it's the clearest indictment of
Reagan's pardon of Felt that I can find. I agree: Mark Felt probably
should've spent some jail time for what he'd done.

> So Nixon covered up Watergate, one break in and was involved in other
> violations of the Law.  Felt was convicted of 9 cases of the exact same kind
> of activity.  You stated that Nixon should have been jailed for the last 20
> years of his life, yet you seem to want to make a hero out of Felt.

It's not just for Watergate. The Plumbers also broke into Daniel
Ellsburg's psychiatrist's office, conspired with the CIA to
assassinate journalist Jack Anderson, spied on political opponents in
conjunction with every three-letter agency that Nixon could bring to
bear, and committed a great deal of tax fraud in relation to Nixon's
slush fund. This is not to mention Nixon accepting bribes and slush
fund donations, invading Cambodia without Congressional authorization,
and in general subverting the Constition in every way conceivable.

As a thought experiment, let's just single out one category of Nixon's
crimes. Add up the number of violations of federal wiretapping laws
that occurred on Nixon's direct orders (a tthe time, the maximum
sentence for illegal wiretapping was five years) and I'm sure we can
comfortably come to a number far exceeding twenty years.

Before you mention it, Nixon also went to China, set the end of the
Vietnam War in motion, founded the EPA, and did a whole bunch of
pleasant nonsense that doesn't even come close to excusing his
imperial presidency.

> Frankly it amazes me that those of the left love Felt so much and hate Nixon
> with such a passion.  Its as amazing as any conservative finding heroic
> qualities in Nixon. 

Pat was arguing that it was somehow Mark Felt's responsibility as a
law enforcement officer to cover the President's ass when he commits
felonies. This is not only incorrect, it's nauseatingly corrupt.  I'm
arguing that specifically that going to the press as Deep Throat was
heroic.

Whatever else he may've done while running COINTELPRO, he did
absolutely the right thing when he went to the press about Nixon's
abuse of power. And insofar as evidence can be provided of a motive, I
believe he did it for the right reasons: awareness of corruption in
the executive branch, and an attempt to get out from under the thumb
of a corrupt organization*.

There's been a bizarre attempt on the part of the right to hold a law
enforcement officer who turned in a corrupt President to a higher
standard than, for instance, a mob informer, whose crimes are
certainly more heinous and whose motives are certainly less pure. How
can I interpret that other than as an attempt to defend Nixon?

>  Nixon was no friend of conservatism and the program that he saddled America 
> with during his temure in office as great examples of
> his distrust of free markets and of individual freedoms.  Nixon was all for
> command and control economics and for extensive accreation of regulatory
> authority for federal agencies.  If he was in power today, most current
> conservatives would see him as a liberal.

This is because "conservatism", as it's currently constituted, didn't
really exist during the late 60s and early 1970s other than in the
person of Barry Goldwater. Liberal dominance of the national discourse
was so absolute that anyone to the right of Nixon was entirely
unelectable. Then the Democrats got lazy and corrupt, had a run of bad
luck, and began a decline that's only just beginning to halt itself
today.

-- ACS
 
(1) Throughout most of the Hoover era, Clyde Tolson was the actual #2
man in the FBI. However, his actual duties mostly involved being Mrs.
J. Edgar Hoover. They are buried side by side in the Congressional
Cemetary in Washington.

(2) ... and, I'm sure people will argue, back under the thumb of his
own brand corruption. Whether this involves an actual appetite for
corruption on Mark Felt's part or simply blinkered law enforcement
tunnel vision is a matter of iinterpretation.