Harry Shearer on modern whistleblowers:

Ever heard of Greg Thielmann? He should be at least as famous as W. Mark Felt by now. A few stories about him surfaced during the time it mattered, the runup to the war, when he, and his British and Australian colleagues (Dr. Brian Jones and Andrew Willkie) tried to alert us all to the falsity of the intel on which the invasion was based. Their experiences raise the question: what if a whistleblower risks his all to warn his countrymen, and nobody listens? Deep Throat would have been useless without a Deep Ear.

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert says reminders of Watergate have come at a good time:

The trauma of Watergate, which brought down a president who seemed pathologically compelled to deceive, came toward the end of that extended exercise in governmental folly and deceit, Vietnam. Taken together, these two disasters, both of which shook the nation, provided a case study in how citizens should view their government: with extreme skepticism.

Trust, said Ronald Reagan, but verify.

Now, with George W. Bush in charge, the nation is mired in yet another tragic period marked by incompetence, duplicity, bad faith and outright lies coming once again from the very top of the government. Just last month we had the disclosure of a previously secret British government memorandum that offered further confirmation that the American public and the world were spoon-fed bogus information by the Bush administration in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.

President Bush, as we know, wanted to remove Saddam Hussein through military action. With that in mind, the memo damningly explained, “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

That’s the kind of deceit that was in play as American men and women were suiting up and marching off to combat at the president’s command. Mr. Bush wanted war, and he got it. Many thousands have died as a result.

From the PERRspectives blog:

Which brings to the Bush White House. Thirty years after Nixon’s resignation, the Bush team is waging a more subtle and successful war against the media. The most paranoid, secretive and vengeful White House since Nixon has sought to create its own news reality through bogus science, fake news, fake reporters, staged events and scripted interviews. Retribution against leakers, whistle-blowers, and objective truth itself is certain, swift and severe. Just ask General Shinseki, Paul O’Neil, Richard Clarke, Richard Foster or Joseph Wilson.

In the wake of the Newsweek fiasco, the uproar over the Amnesty International report, and the unending revelations from Guantanamo Bay, the Bush White House attacks the messenger, just as Nixon did 30 years ago. Scott McClellan argued, “This was a report based on a single anonymous source that could not substantiate the allegation that was made. The report has had serious consequences.” And an “outraged” President Bush merely said the allegations came from “people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble -- that means not tell the truth. And so it was an absurd report”.

Robert F. Kennedy once famously said, “Richard Nixon represents the dark side of the American spirit.” Well, RFK never met George W. Bush.

In today’s Washington Post, Bob Woodward tells How Mark Felt Became ‘Deep Throat’:

In the course of this and other discussions, I was somewhat apologetic for plaguing him and being such a nag, but I explained that we had nowhere else to turn. Carl and I had obtained a list of everyone who worked for Nixon’s reelection committee and were frequently going out into the night knocking on the doors of these people to try to interview them. I explained to Felt that we were getting lots of doors slammed in our faces. There also were lots of frightened looks. I was frustrated.

Felt said I should not worry about pushing him. He had done his time as a street agent, interviewing people. The FBI, like the press, had to rely on voluntary cooperation. Most people wanted to help the FBI, but the FBI knew about rejection. Felt perhaps tolerated my aggressiveness and pushy approach because he had been the same way himself when he was younger, once talking his way into an interview with Hoover and telling him of his ambition to become a special agent in charge of an FBI field office.

It was an unusual message, emphatically encouraging me to get in his face.

Is W. Mark Felt, AKA Deep Throat, a hero or a villain?

The Daily Show examined the question, and pretty much nailed the answer:

G. Gordon Liddy: If Mark Felt was Deep Throat, he’s no hero.

Pat Buchanan: I think what he did is deeply dishonorable. It’s shameful.

Robert Novak: He was one of the worst of J. Edgar Hoover’s toadies.

Daily Show anchorman Jon Stewart: Pat Buchanan, Bob Novak and Watergate burglar G. Gordon Liddy don’t like Mark Felt. Mark Felt is truly a great man.