It Must’ve Felt Strange

November 22, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under News media, Watergate 

Hat tip to Mick Guilford for providing the link to this local account of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s recent visit to the Santa Rosa, California home of an ailing Mark Felt, Woodward’s secret Watergate source. Standing behind the trio is Felt’s co-author, John O’Connor.

Bernstein (left) had never met Felt before. Woodward looks as though he could’ve lived with the moment being indefinitely postponed. His ambiguous expression seems reflective of Watergate’s moral and ethical dynamics. We now know that the person feeding him government secrets was a top FBI official who was mad at President Nixon for not giving him J. Edgar Hoover’s job. Even still, Felt might have been remembered as a principled whistle blower about Nixon campaign abuses if his own illegal acts hadn’t doomed the prosecution of William Ayers.

Mark Felt and Richard Nixon had a reunion, too. The Carter Justice Department had indicted Felt for the illegal black bag jobs he’d ordered against the Weather Underground, and so the wartime President he’d helped drive from power returned to Washington to testify on his behalf. After Felt’s conviction, Ronald Reagan pardoned him in 1981.

Comments