Deep Throat and FBI repression
I although I earlier wrote a commentary about the positive role that Mark Felt (Deep Throat) played in exposing the crimes of Nixon in the Watergate scandal, David Price makes an excellent point in Counterpunch about the role that he also played in the FBI as a Hoover protege who participated in repressive actions against dissidents. Price writes:
This raises the point that whatever his motivations were in leaking information to the Washington Post, his overall role in the FBI suggests a more mixed record in the history of American democracy.
When we consider that while Watergate may have brought down a paranoid, criminal, right wing President, it had little, if any, lasting effects on the democratization of American society. Nixon was replaced by another conservative President, he managed to avoid prosecution, and the next election in 1976 ushered the new era of of centrist Democratic politicians that only led to the ongoing rightward slide in politics that have continued to this day. We still have a political system that is corrupt and dominated by corporate interests. We still have an electoral college, we still have an electoral system that shuts out alternative voices, and now we have repressive government measures like the USA Patriot Act. In the long run, it seems that very little, if anything was really gained by the American people through the ousting of Richard Nixon. The right wing is now in ascendancy, and the human rights situation in the US is as bad, if not worse, than it was in 1974.
Celebrating Mark Felt as a hero may be a little premature, especially in light of what David Price has pointed out about Felt's role in repressive actions against US dissidents. It is one thing to celebrate the ousting of Nixon, who was, of course, a very bad person--but can we really say that the nation as a whole as benefited in the long run?
Mark Felt was a Hoover devotee who worked on these very COINTELPRO operations, but he did not feel the need to leak documents on the damage done to American democracy by these illegal campaigns.
This raises the point that whatever his motivations were in leaking information to the Washington Post, his overall role in the FBI suggests a more mixed record in the history of American democracy.
When we consider that while Watergate may have brought down a paranoid, criminal, right wing President, it had little, if any, lasting effects on the democratization of American society. Nixon was replaced by another conservative President, he managed to avoid prosecution, and the next election in 1976 ushered the new era of of centrist Democratic politicians that only led to the ongoing rightward slide in politics that have continued to this day. We still have a political system that is corrupt and dominated by corporate interests. We still have an electoral college, we still have an electoral system that shuts out alternative voices, and now we have repressive government measures like the USA Patriot Act. In the long run, it seems that very little, if anything was really gained by the American people through the ousting of Richard Nixon. The right wing is now in ascendancy, and the human rights situation in the US is as bad, if not worse, than it was in 1974.
Celebrating Mark Felt as a hero may be a little premature, especially in light of what David Price has pointed out about Felt's role in repressive actions against US dissidents. It is one thing to celebrate the ousting of Nixon, who was, of course, a very bad person--but can we really say that the nation as a whole as benefited in the long run?
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