Mark "Deep Throat" Felt has reportedly closed a book and movie deal to tell his tale…what he remembers of it, anyway. Since his identity became known, one of my correspondents has bombarded me with messages, trying to convince me that Felt is not and never was a man of any honor. My pen-pal seems to think this announcement proves it, and others are touting it as evidence of Felt's bad motives. I'm more than a little amazed at the leap.
First off, Mark Felt has now become the absolute last major Watergate figure to sell a book about his role in that scandal. They all wrote books. They all tried for movie deals and many got them. If exploiting Watergate for profit was a crime, a lot of those guys would be returned to prison, and G. Gordon Liddy would have to give back his entire career since then.
Secondly, I fail to see how someone's actions in 2005 — and this is assuming they're his actions and not his family's — reflects on his motives in 1971. Is the premise here that Felt met with Woodward in that garage only because he was thinking, "Oh, boy. Maybe years from now when I'm old and can't recall anything, I can get a deal to write a book about this"?
Some of the attacks on Felt's arguable heroism have been hysterical, and some contradicted their own points by trying to simultaneously dismiss him as a figure of little importance and blame him for subverting the entire Nixon presidency. I think the record will show that a lot of people brought down the Nixon presidency, starting with Nixon. He was accused of using the C.I.A. to stop an investigation that might lead to him or his aides…and, lo and behold, there was a tape recording of him giving the order to have the C.I.A. stop an investigation that might lead to him or his aides. When that came out, even the loyalest Republicans deserted Nixon and he got the message and resigned. I don't see how any of that was because of anything Mark Felt did that might have been unethical…including making a book deal 34 years later.