This is from Matthew Hahn…
I think everyone's missing the point here on Mark Felt, just as they did when he outed himself as Deep Throat. Was he a hero because he exposed Nixon? Was he a traitor because he exposed Nixon? No. He was neither. He was a career bureaucrat whose nose was out of joint because Nixon promoted Pat Gray as head of the Bureau instead of him. This is the reason that he went after Nixon — revenge, pure and simple. He certainly didn't have a problem with illegal burglaries, as that is precisely what he was later convicted of himself.
That may be so but, after reading darn near everything that's ever been published about Watergate and about Mr. Felt, I don't see any evidence of why he did what he did. It's possible he was mad that he didn't get J. Edgar Hoover's old job. It's also possible that he was mad that instead of promoting from within, as was expected in an organization like the FBI, Nixon went outside the bureau and appointed a political hack. The FBI, rightly or wrongly, had always prided itself on being independent of the president or any other governmental entity…and now, Nixon had installed a stooge. (Remember: Gray was the guy who tried to impede the investigation of the Watergate break-in, lest it lead into the White House…and he later resigned after it was revealed he had destroyed the documents from E. Howard Hunt's safe.)
I could believe that Felt started leaking to Woodward because he was pissed at not getting the job. (Felt was not necessarily next-in-line, by the way. There were others in the FBI who might have been selected, too.) I could also believe he did it because he honestly felt that Gray was compromising the FBI and covering up crimes. (Felt leaked about a lot of other matters, and did so before Gray got the job.) I could even believe Felt was outraged at Nixon's lawbreaking but felt his own was morally justified.
I really don't know which version to believe, nor do I know any way to prove just what was going on in Felt's head at the time. What makes me suspicious of the scenario you describe is that it was the theory — presented as fact — by folks like Pat Buchanan who were desperate to kill the notion that the man who helped bring down their beloved Nixon was in any way a hero. When the real name of "Deep Throat" became known, there was this rush to tar him…and it came from people who had no way of knowing Felt's motives. They may be right. You may be right. But I see no reason to favor one interpretation over the other.