"Deep Throat" Mark Felt Dies at 95

[2 articles]

The Other Side of 'Deep Throat': He Bugged My Friends!

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003924092

Journalists and many others lionizing the former FBI official --
rightly -- for his contribution in helping to bring down Richard
Nixon, should not overlook the fact that Felt was one of the
architects of the bureau's notorious COINTELPRO domestic
spying-and-burglary campaign. Only a pardon, courtesy of Ronald
Reagan, kept him out of jail for a long term.

By Greg Mitchell
December 19, 2008

Journalists and many others (rightly) lionizing the late W. Mark
Felt, the former FBI official, for his contribution as "Deep Throat"
in helping to bring down Richard Nixon, should not overlook the fact
that Felt was one of the architects of the bureau's notorious
COINTELPRO domestic spying-and-burglary campaign.

He was convicted in 1980 of authorizing nine illegal entries in New
Jersey in 1972 and 1973 -- the very period during which he was
famously meeting Bob Woodward in a parking garage. Only a pardon,
courtesy of Ronald Reagan, kept him out of jail for a long term.

So the man knew a thing or two about illegal break-ins. COINTELPRO
was George W. Bush's domestic spying programs on steroids. And that's
where I come in.

I'll never know for sure, but it's possible that I was once on, ahem,
fairly intimate terms with Felt.

Back in the bad old/good old days of the early 1970s, a fellow named
Stew Albert used to write, off and on, for a rather legendary
magazine that I helped edit in New York City, before I went straight,
called Crawdaddy. (We had plenty of other contributors, including
Joseph Heller, P.J. O'Rourke, John Lennon , Tom Waits, Richard Price,
William Burroughs, and Tony Kornheiser, to name a few.) Stew was a
proudly left-wing guy, but from the fun-loving ex-Yippie side of the
antiwar spectrum (he helped found the Yippies), as opposed to the
violent Weatherman sector. By 1973, he had a bad heart, and was
pretty much retired from the high-stress forms of political activity.

Stew had both the good and bad fortune to live in an isolated area of
the Catskills, sharing a humble cabin on a hilltop near Hurley, N.Y.,
with his wife Judy Gumbo (as she was known, and also a well-known
politico). Occasionally I spent a weekend with them there, or stopped
by on the way to somewhere else.

In those days, at least one famous left-wing fugitive seemed to be on
the loose at all times, ranging from Patty Hearst to Abbie Hoffman.
Given their location, and backgrounds, Stew and Judy were, at least
on paper -- or in the fertile minds of Mark Felt's FBI agents --
plausible candidates to, perhaps, shelter at least one of the
runaways. So they'd joke about their phone being tapped, or spotting
spooks hiding behind trees in the woods, or expecting to find a
listening device installed somewhere in their house.

Well, as we used to say, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean
they aren't watching you. Turns out all of those fears were
justified, and then some, thanks to Mr. Deep Throat and the program
he helped organize.

Our fears first spiked when someone broke into the Crawdaddy office
on lower Fifth Avenue one night. The intruder busted the gate
protecting our rear entrance, and opened a few drawers, but nothing
of true value or embarrassment was missing. You might say, in the
parlance of the time, that we were only "Felt up." Unfortunately, we
had very little to hide, beyond Bruce Springsteen's home phone number.

Then, I got a call from Stew on a Sunday morning, Dec. 11, 1975. He
had come out to his old car, parked in front of a friend's house in
Greenwich Village and noticed the band of grime on his rear bumper
was brushed away in one spot. Investigating, he reached under the
bumper -- and found a crude homing device, about the size of a pack
of cigarettes, with a cute little antenna sticking out. He had no
idea how long it had been there or who, exactly, had been following them.

I rushed to the scene. Naturally, Crawdaddy editor, Peter Knobler,
called a photographer, and we published a story about the episode the
following month, which drew national attention. Pardon my French, but
I recall that we called the story, "Bug Up My Ass!"

With this rather firm evidence in hand, the couple launched a lawsuit
against the government. During the course of it, FBI documents were
released, and we all learned that, indeed, G-men had hidden in the
woods watching them -- and worse, had broken into their cabin at
least half a dozen times. The feds also monitored all their mail at
the local post office, and opened some of it. Of course, in my
editorial duties, I had sent them many letters: Remember snail mail?
They also perused the couple's bank records. What incriminating
evidence did they find? Zip. Nada.

One of the agents, according to the documents, had the wonderful name
of George T. Twaddle.

Oh, one more thing: A listening device had been planted in their
bedroom. I used that bedroom at least once while I visited them --
with a girlfriend, no less.

This was all standard fare for many FBI agents at the time, when they
weren't infiltrating, or even starting, lefty political groups.
"There was no instruction to me," Felt later told Congress, "nor do I
believe there is any instruction in the Inspector's manuals, that
inspectors should be on the alert to see that constitutional values
are being protected."

Stew (who recently passed away) and Judy managed to win a cash
settlement from the government, though I forget the figure and the
details. Still, I doubt if Judy is joining in the chorus of hero
worship today for W. Mark Felt, who has good reason to prefer going
down in the history books as Deep Throat, not Deep Doodoo.
--

ADDENUDUM

Some of my fellow geezers may recall that the chief probe of
COINTELPRO and similar lawless intelligence operations was carried
out by the so-called Church Committee (headed by Senator Frank
Church). It issued a chilling report in 1976 that briefly had
tremendous impact. Here is one section that deals with Felt:

"Internal inspection at the FBI has traditionally not encompassed
legal or ethical questions at all. According to W. Mark Felt, the
Assistant FBI Director in charge of the Inspection Division from 1964
to 1971, his job was to ensure that Bureau programs were being
operated efficiently...He could not recall any program which was
terminated because it might have been violating someone's civil rights.

"A number of questionable FBI programs were apparently never
inspected. Felt could recall no inspection, for instance, of either
the FBI mail opening programs or the Bureau's participation in the
CIA's New York mail opening project. Even when improper programs were
inspected, the Inspection Division did not attempt to exercise
oversight in the sense of looking for wrongdoing. Its responsibility
was simply to ensure that FBI policy, as defined by J. Edgar Hoover
was effectively implemented and not to question the propriety of the
policy. Thus, Felt testified that if, in the course of an inspection
of a field office, he discovered a microphone surveillance on Martin
Luther King, Jr., the only questions he would ask were whether it had
been approved by the Director and whether the procedures had been
properly followed.

"When Felt was asked whether the Inspection Division conducted any
investigation into the propriety of COINTELPRO, the following exchange ensued:

"Mr. FELT. Not into the propriety.

"Q. So in the case of COINTELPRO, as in the case of NSA
interceptions, your job as Inspector was to determine whether the
program was being pursued effectively as opposed to whether it was proper?

"Mr. FELT. Right, with this exception, that in any of these
situations, Counterintelligence Program or whatever, it very
frequently happened that the inspectors, in reviewing the files,
would direct that a certain investigation be discontinued, that it
was not productive, or that there was some reason that it be discontinued.

"But I don't recall any cases being discontinued in the
Counterintelligence program."
--

Greg Mitchell (gmitchell@editorandopublisher.com) is editor. His most
recent book, on Iraq and the media, is "So Wrong for So Long."

--------

The Ambivalence of Deep Throat

http://hnn.us/articles/58626.html

By Ron Briley
Mr. Briley is Assistant Headmaster, Sandia Preparatory School.
12-22-08

When writing college letters of recommendation for my high school
students, I often employ the somewhat pretentious phrase that the
student displays a sophisticated appreciation for the role played by
paradox and ambiguity in historical causation. The saga of former
FBI official Mark Felt provides yet another example of history's
ambivalence. And with the death of Mark Felt and the acclaimed
cinematic adaptation of Broadway's Frost/Nixon by filmmaker Ron
Howard, it seems that this holiday season will not escape references
to the shadow which Richard Nixon continues to cast upon American politics.

Felt confirmed that he was the "deep throat" source who provided
essential information to Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and
Carl Bernstein during the Watergate scandal which toppled the Nixon
Presidency. Felt is perceived by many as a hero whose whistle
blowing exposed the threat posed to American democracy by the Nixon
administration. On the other hand, former Nixon loyalists such as
Charles Colson criticized Felt for betraying the President and his
government position. Others censured the Felt family for attempting
to cash in on the informant's new found notoriety. But who can blame
the family? After all, plenty of others, including Woodward and
Bernstein, profited from their Watergate allegations.

If one accepts former Presidential counselor John Dean's conclusion
that a cancer was growing in the Nixon White House, then Felt emerges
as a hero. The isolated Nixon Presidency was a threat to American
democracy as exemplified by the Watergate cover up, the break-in at
the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, and the so-called
"dirty" tricks campaign directed against such Democratic candidates
as Ed Muskie.

Yet, Felt's own actions as the number two man at the FBI during the
1970s raise some questions regarding the agent's motivations. Was
Felt primarily concerned about issues of democracy and civil
liberties or was he more afraid that the White House might intrude
upon the national security prerogatives of the FBI?

For what has been termed the Watergate scandal was about a great deal
more than the break-in at the Democratic National Headquarters in the
Watergate Hotel. The newspaper and Congressional investigations
which evolved from the initial Watergate burglary and cover-up
revealed widespread governmental abuse of power. The Internal
Revenue System was used to harass enemies of the Nixon
administration, and Senator Frank Church labeled the CIA "a rogue
elephant" for its lack of Congressional oversight and illegal covert
operations.

In addition, the FBI fashioned the COINTELPRO program, administered
by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover's top assistant Mark Felt, to
infiltrate and discredit such groups as the Black Panthers and
Weather Underground faction of the Students for a Democratic
Society. Citing national security threats, the FBI carried out a
systematic campaign of harassment and intimidation which resulted in
the deaths of several Black Panther leaders. The FBI also authorized
burglaries at the homes of Weather Underground family members,
attempting to locate the fugitives implicated in a bombing campaign
directed against the government and war in Vietnam. The tactics of
Felt and his associates led to many of the charges being dismissed
against former members of the Weather Underground such as Mark Rudd,
Bill Ayers, and Bernardine Dohrn. In fact, the overzealous actions
of Felt allowed Ayers to assume his career as a college professor and
stay out of prison. Without Felt's violation of constitutional
guarantees granted the Weather underground, it would have been
difficult for Barack Obama, in the grandiose rhetoric of Sarah Palin,
to "pal around" with an alleged terrorist such as Ayers. For his
role in orchestrating these illegal activities, Mark Felt was
convicted and sentenced to prison in 1980 (President Reagan granted
him a pardon.)

The ambivalent legacy of Mark Felt, who exposed corruption in the
White House but was willing to violate the civil liberties of
American citizens, should provide ample discussion material for my
classes and students as we struggle with the complexity of American
history. All Americans, however, should consider the broader
implications of Felt's career and the Watergate scandal. The
greatest danger to our democracy and civil liberties may come from a
President, as well as government bureaucrats, who are isolated from
the American people and engage in secretive policies, employing the
rationale of national security to deprive us of our precious
liberties. In recent years, the Bush administration has endangered
American troops and national security by pursuing policies of torture
and domestic surveillance. Such affronts to civil liberties, whether
at the highest levels of the executive branch or law enforcement,
merit the full investigative powers of the new administration without
the pardons which were bestowed upon Nixon and his nemesis Felt.

--------

"Deep Throat" Mark Felt Dies at 95
http://www.truthout.org/121908O
Patricia Sullivan and Bob Woodward, The Washington Post: "W. Mark
Felt Sr., the associate director of the FBI during the Watergate
scandal who, better known as 'Deep Throat,' became the most famous
anonymous source in American history, died yesterday. He was 95. Felt
died at 12:45 p.m. at a hospice near his home in Santa Rosa, Calif.,
where he had been living since August."

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