Readers indignant at my sympathetic view of Mark Felt; suggest a Jewish angle

Some readers are exercised by my musings about whether Mark Felt did the right or wrong thing. Anything short of total condemnation of him is a betrayal of everything I supposedly stand for. One correspondent writes:

In your latest entry regarding Mark Felt you failed to address the issue that Felt had been convicted himself and pardoned by Reagan. How could Felt be an honest man when he had broken the FBI’s own rules previously. Why did you not mention his conviction? Where was Felt’s “angst” when he himself broke the rules against the 60’s Weathermen group? When is a crime not a crime in your books?

Now how can Felt be an honest man when he is a liar? “Thou shalt not lie” is one of the Ten Commandments. Felt had denied publically for decades that he was “Deep Throat”. And yet he was! That makes him a liar. The fact that you choose to exonerate him when he has been caught in a lie makes you to be a moral relativist. So forget your moralistic posturing about absolutes…

I replied:

You aren’t being serious, are you? The crime Felt was convicted of was the Cointelpro operation which involved searches of houses of leftist terrorists who were using bombs to kill people in this country. There was a dangerous revolutionary faction in America, and federal law enforcement engaged in extraordinary acts to deal with it. Felt was rightly pardoned by President Reagan.

Also, you are deficient in reading comprehension. I did not exonerate Felt. I asked the question, to which I said I don’t yet have the answer, whether he did the right thing or the wrong thing in leaking the Watergate information.

Then I received another e-mail from a different correspondent, whose style and thoughts are so similar to those of the first correspondent (with the addition of an anti-Jewish angle), that I wonder if they are the same person:

To: Lawrence Auster
Subject: The Jewish Connection

So Mark Felt is a good man according to your latest?

Which part of the “Thou shalt not lie” commandment don’t you understand? He lied in covering up his “Deep Throat” identity. I guess you are a moral relativist after all… I guess it’s difficult to defend Christianity’s moral absolutes totally when you view western civilization and culture as an equal counterpart to Christianity and thus render it “relative”.

As it is written in the OT, “They worship me with their lips but their hearts are far from me.” And as Jesus said in the NT, “You render God’s laws ineffectual through your own man-made commands.”

Perhaps you’re covering up for him as a fellow Jew? The Jewish connection runs from Felt to Bernstein. Jews didn’t much like Nixon.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 04, 2005 10:55 AM | Send