Afternoon Baseball

Best part about this story, from a personal standpont: I caught a misspelling of Bob Woodward ("Bod") on the front page right before it went to press. Ah, the small joys of small-town copy editing.

EDIT: News links are below.
There's been some discussion about W. Mark Felt's legacy and whether he was wrong in what he did.
While in principle the actions of a government official such as Felt were not justified, and he probably had a political axe to grind (being passed over for FBI head), what he did ended up being the right thing. He had no control over how Woodward (and Bernstein) would profit and oversell his role in bringing down Nixon, or how Woodward would turn Deep Throat into an unnecessarily large legend that overshadowed the hard work done by all the investigators, the Senate, the FBI, and the sources who actually would go on the record. He also can't be held responsible for the outbreak in using anonymous sources for things of little magnitiude and without the corroboration that Woodward and Bernstein obtained.

For all those declaring how wrong and dishonorable Felt was, they should check the news. There are anonymous sources all over the place. These people (and the usage of anonymity) should be condemned as well. But if that's not the case, let us at least look at the consequences if Felt had gone public in 1972-74, or even if he had gone public after his resignation from the Bureau in June 1973. "All The President's Men" indicates they met with Deep Throat at least once after that time (November), so any access Felt still had would have been destroyed. It is very likely that he would have been prosecuted, not merely for this breach, but also for any other investigations that the Nixon White House had been opposed to during the previous several years.

The FBI would have been severely hampered in continuing its investigation into Watergate, much less anything else, even if the public stood behind the Bureau. Nixon could have purged the department and put his loyalists in -- at the very least stalling, if not derailing FBI inquiries. This all assumes that a whistle-blower such as Felt publicly coming forward would have A) been accepted by the public and Senate, and B) retained his credibility.
Under these circumstances, it's very understandable that Felt acted as he did (even if partly in his own bitterness), and if one must find fault, it is with the media's self-canonization post-Watergate (and continuing today).

Obviously, if Watergate had fizzled or had proven not to be so significant (or if Nixon wasn't such a horrible human being or so poor in judgment), then Felt would have certainly been cast in a worse light.

But isn't that how things generally work out. Circumstances and outcomes generally tell us who was ultimately right much more often than strict moral and ethical abstractions.

Legitimate doubts about Felt and Woodward, et al from Professor Bainbridge via Instapundit.


ORIGINAL ENTRY, with news links:
I talked about the rumors when John Dean said that Deep Throat was ill back in February. Mark Felt was not really a prime candidate; rather, the hot names were William Rehnquist and George H.W. Bush, either of whom would have been bombshells.
Mark Felt was just an FBI guy at a time when the FBI enjoyed great independence, and was angry at getting passed over for the directorship. He certainly did the right thing, but let's not pretend his reasons were all-together saintly. On the other hand, the end result here is truly what matters.

EDIT: Link above was the very first reports. The Washington Post has confirmed it, as well as Bernstein and Woodward.

Vanity Fair article actually exposing it.

Here's the process from the Vanity Fair viewpoint, and how they somehow managed to keep this a secret process and away from the Post.

For those who forgot Watergate details or don't know much about it, here's a great WaPo chronology of that era.

Also, here's a viewpoint expressing a letdown now that he's been revealed, but also marveling at the legacy Deep Throat created.