I have to admit that I'm really enjoying all the stories about Mark Felt and his actions as Deep Throat. I read every Watergate book, watched every documentary, talked at length with friends of similar interest. I even once had a bizarre lunch with the infamous Charles Colson, which I'll tell you about one of these days. Anyway, I find it all fascinating.
As I said earlier, I think it's premature to call Felt an out-and-out hero. We don't know all that much about his motives and just how much of what he told Bob Woodward was classified. But it's also ignoble to suddenly start damning the man with every conceivable negative interpretation of his actions. That's just Nixon People trying to spare themselves the discomfort of seeing themselves once again viewed as participants in villainy. Say what you will about him, Felt helped to expose a corruption that was creeping into the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the arguments that he was "disloyal" and a lawbreaker himself are basically arguments that he should have been a good, silent drone and allowed the plan to succeed.
That said, Felt may not be much of a hero, not for his Deep Throat activities but for some later twisting of the law. As this article in the Boston Globe notes, Felt engaged in some nefarious crimes and (irony alert!) illegal break-ins.
I'm not sure how I feel about either period of his life. I guess I feel I don't know enough to judge. But it does remind me that some people are not All Good or All Bad; that sometimes, they can be both at different times. Or even both at the same time.