Great American Hero?

From AP: Ex-Prosecutors: 'Deep Throat' Broke Rules W. Mark Felt violated FBI and Justice Department policies by sharing with reporters information about the Watergate scandal, but it's not clear whether he broke any laws, several former federal prosecutors said Wednesday. Not that anyone at the Justice Department is expressing a desire to prosecute the 91-year-old old Santa Rosa, Calif., resident... [M]ore than 30 years have passed and the statute of limitations on prosecution has expired. The former prosecutors said that if they were to look into Felt's conversations with The Washington Post's Bob Woodward they would examine whether he violated federal rules that keep grand jury matters secret, whether he disclosed other confidential material that was part of the Watergate investigation or broke privacy rules by revealing the names of people who had yet to be charged with a crime. "The administrative penalties for some of these things could be severe, including dismissal," said Joseph di Genova, who served as U.S. attorney in Washington during the Reagan administration. John Barrett, a law professor at St. John's University in New York, said that among the many ironies in the Deep Throat story is that Felt, as the official who ran the FBI on a day-to-day basis, almost certainly had to deal with the sort of employee misconduct that he apparently engaged in. ...One unanswered question...is why Felt chose to work with a reporter instead of taking his concerns about White House interference with the FBI to Congress. "If the head of the FBI and the Justice Department criminal division are both pipelines to the White House, perhaps you go across the branches of government to Congress, if you're a responsible government official," Barrett said. "IF you're a responsible government official." That is it in a nutshell. Felt's legacy is not a proud one. Felt's decision to keep quiet, however, made possible another moment that linked him to Nixon, Barrett said. When Felt was on trial for authorizing illegal break-ins during the 1970s at homes of people associated with the radical Weather Underground, Nixon testified on his behalf. And after Reagan pardoned Felt in 1981, he received a bottle of champagne and this brief note from the disgraced former president: "Justice ultimately prevails." This Mark Felt is a real piece of work. Nixon testified on his behalf!!! He congratulated Felt on his pardon!!! How did Felt manage to reconcile his underhanded conduct with the assistance and good wishes he later received from Nixon? There is no question that Felt behaved in a most cowardly manner, sneaking around in parking garages, rather than having the integrity to go to the U.S. Attorney or Congress to voice his concerns. Felt's Deep Throat antics were not heroic. The more I learn, the more firmly I believe that. He does deserve credit for mustering up enough strength of character to realize that what he did was nothing to be proud of. How sad that his money hungry family would strip him of that bit of goodness! A hero would not have lurked in the shadows, leaking information. A hero would not have been afraid to act on principle, nor would he have been afraid to go through the proper channels in order to pass information to the proper authorities. All this misguided talk by liberals seeking to elevate Felt to American folk hero status makes me think of some real American heroes-- The hundreds of thousands of men and women in our military who have served, and those who are serving, with bravery and honor The firefighters and police who ran into the fire and up the stairs of the World Trade Center, while helping others flee the doomed towers The passengers of Flight 93 who thwarted the terrorists on 9/11