COMMENTARY: Don’t Turn `Deep Throat’ Into a Paragon of Virtue

c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) The stunning disclosure that “Deep Throat” was the No. 2 man in the FBI has revived the Watergate-era hysteria. Mark Felt, consummate FBI professional, whom I dealt with often and trusted completely, turns out to have engaged in cloak-and-dagger escapades worthy of Frederick Forsyth to bring down what he […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) The stunning disclosure that “Deep Throat” was the No. 2 man in the FBI has revived the Watergate-era hysteria. Mark Felt, consummate FBI professional, whom I dealt with often and trusted completely, turns out to have engaged in cloak-and-dagger escapades worthy of Frederick Forsyth to bring down what he believed was a corrupt presidency.

So was he a hero?


I can understand why he wanted to stop Watergate. In my memoirs published this month, entitled “The Good Life,” I recall those moments in the White House when I now realize I should have acted to stop the spreading scandal. One night in the Oval Office, President Nixon ordered H. R. Halderman to get a team in place to do break-ins. I should have spoken up, but I didn’t. I rationalized that there was a war going on, friends of mine were POWs, and top-secret documents were floating throughout Washington. So maybe the president was right, I reasoned at the time; we had to take extreme steps to protect the country. And, as I saw it then, getting Richard Nixon re-elected was the most important thing I could do for my country.

What I now realize is that we humans have an infinite capacity for self-justification. Jeremiah, the biblical prophet, was right; “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”

So I sanctioned wrong means for what I perceived as good ends, justifying myself in the process. The result: I was sentenced to prison, ironically for giving an FBI report to a reporter, another point at which I can identify with Mark Felt.

So I can imagine what went through Felt’s mind when he dealt with Woodward and Bernstein. I’ll grant that he probably rationalized himself into believing that the means he used to bring down Nixon were justified. That’s why, of course, many today say he’s a hero.

But before we jump to that conclusion, let’s look at what he really did. Here’s the way Bob Woodward put it, “He was protecting the Bureau by finding a way, clandestine as it was, to push some of the information from FBI interviews and files out to the public, to help build public and political pressure to make Nixon and his people answerable.”

Do we really think it is heroic for a man entrusted with the most sensitive information in the U.S. government to sneak around in the dark of night, looking for flower pots on someone’s balcony, to give that information to reporters?

There were noble means available to Felt to pursue his noble objective. If he had asked me to arrange a meeting for him to tell the president that crimes were being conducted in the White House, I would have done it in a heart beat. It wasn’t the kind of thing we would have wanted to hear, but it would have forced us to act. If we had refused to see him, he could have held a press conference, announced what the bad guys in the Nixon White House were doing, and resigned. That would have precipitated the Watergate crisis immediately rather than causing it to drag another year.

Today I’m not concerned about how Mark Felt or those of us in Watergate or the press is judged by history. What I am concerned about is how in the eyes of many people, Mark Felt’s end justified his means.


I’ve watched some of the classroom discussions on TV, and almost to a person, students say Felt did the right thing because his ends were legitimate. This is terribly wrong.

I know we live in an era of moral relativism _ everybody chooses what is “right” for them. But this is a path to chaos. A nation where ends justify any means would be lawless and ungovernable.

The lasting legacy of this sad era in American life ought to be a sober reminder that the ends do not justify the means. Let Mark Felt live his remaining years in peace, but please, don’t make him a role model for our kids. As I’ve argued in my new book, we can only find the good life by pursuing truth and maintaining our integrity _ in every area of our lives.

MO/JL END RNS

(Charles Colson is founder and chairman of Prison Fellowship, a former special counsel to President Nixon and author of a new book, “The Good Life.’)

Editors: Check the RNS photo Web site at https://religionnews.com for photos of Colson as well as the jacket cover of his new book.

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