Carrying the Lantern

EDITED

Bill R.: THIS IS HUGE!!

One of the great mysteries of my youth is answered. How do I know this it's huge? Because in 1972 - 1974 I was busy in college - 'busy' as in getting good enough grades, but also going to way too many parties. I had no interest in politics, even though I was about to enter the military (the connection was lost on me back then.) But though politically ignorant, I was just sick over The President of the United States pulling such shenanigans. I mean if you can't at least trust your government leaders to work within the law ....

Context is important, and help explain my reaction today. At the time, our country was still reeling from Vietnam. How bad was it? Let's just say I remember standing in formation in my ROTC uniform while other students threw eggs at me; and I was tear gassed; and a few miles up the road just two years earlier (May 1970) college students like me - STUDENTS! - had been shot and killed by scared/confused/angry Ohio National Guardsmen. Those were very trying times.

Against this backdrop, when a national healing was sorely necessary, the President and 'all his men', thinking they are above the law, pull dirty tricks at Watergate and then try to cover it up - for two years. Just sickening.

To this day, I have as much animosity and resentment towards Richard Nixon because of his role in Watergate as I do towards Jane Fonda because of her actions in Vietnam.

You bet I think W. Mark Felt is a hero, as do others (for example Dan Gillmor). Here's what The Washington Post had to say tonight in their confirmation...

The Washington Post today confirmed that W. Mark Felt, a former number-two official at the FBI, was "Deep Throat," the secretive source who provided information that helped unravel the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s and contributed to the resignation of president Richard M. Nixon.

The confirmation came from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the two Washington Post reporters who broke the Watergate story, and their former top editor, Benjamin C. Bradlee. The three spoke after Felt's family and Vanity Fair magazine identified the 91-year-old Felt, now a retiree in California, as the long-anonymous source who provided crucial guidance for some of the newspaper's groundbreaking Watergate stories.

- Posted by William A. Riski - 9:56:26 PM - comment []