WASHINGTON – Richard Nixon’s former lieutenants yesterday blasted “Deep Throat” W. Mark Felt for spilling Watergate secrets to the press – instead of taking them to a grand jury.
Felt’s stunning confession has touched off a furious debate over whether he’s a hero, as his family and other supporters contend, or a disloyal villain who disgraced the FBI and the nation.
“Hero is not the first word that comes to my mind,” said Henry Kissinger, President Nixon’s former secretary of state.
“I view him as a troubled man. I don’t think it’s heroic to act as a spy on your president when you’re in high office. I could fully understand if he resigned . . . or if he went to the prosecutor. That would be heroic,” Kissinger added on Fox News Channel.
But Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) hailed Felt as one of the original government whistleblowers.
“I am confident that history will see him in a very positive light,” Schumer told The Post.
Felt – who helped The Washington Post unravel the 1972 Watergate break-in of Democratic headquarters – violated FBI protocol in spilling nuggets of the investigation to Bob Woodward, ex-prosecutors said.
It’s unclear if Felt broke the law and, even if he had, the 30-year statute of limitations has passed.
The Justice Department considers the past acts of the now mentally failing 91-year-old Felt a moot point – a sentiment echoed by G. Gordon Liddy, a former FBI man who led the Watergate break-in.
“You’re not going to take a 91-year-old guy whose mind is wandering someplace and put him in jail,” said Liddy.
Felt, who kept his secret identity as Deep Throat from even his family until 2002, is in declining health since suffering a stroke and now lives with his daughter in Santa Rosa, Calif.
President Bush – who detests White House press leaks – refused to pass judgment on whether Felt was a hero or villain.
“It’s hard for me to judge,” Bush told reporters yesterday. “I’m learning more about the situation.”
Bush said Felt’s unmasking as Deep Throat “caught me by surprise” and admitted he’s eagerly devouring tidbits of information about the revelation.
“It’s a brand-new story for a lot of us who have been wondering for a long time who he was,” the president said.
Meanwhile, Nixon loyalists pummeled Felt as the Watergate era’s greatest villain with a ferocious cascade of criticism.
“I don’t think Deep Throat is a hero. I think Deep Throat is a snake,” former Nixon speechwriter Pat Buchanan said on CNN.
“He’s an FBI agent, for heaven’s sakes, the top man in the bureau except for one, and he’s sneaking around garages leaking the results of an investigation to a Nixon-hating newspaper.”
Alexander Haig, Nixon’s chief-of-staff who was suspected of being Deep Throat by White House lawyer John Dean, said Felt should have quit the FBI and taken secrets of the cover-up to Congress or the courts.
“He had the trust of America’s leaders and to think that he betrayed that trust is hard for me to fathom,” said Nixon chief counsel Charles Colson, who worked closely with Felt and later served prison time for his role in the scandal.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a counselor to Nixon in the early 1970s, said: “I think any time any wrongdoing occurs, I think it’s important that wrongdoing be reported. Now, who one reports that to – the authorities is one thing, or somebody else is another.”
Felt’s defenders say his secrets on a Watergate cover-up that reached all the way to Nixon could not have been passed through his bosses – acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray and Attorney General John Mitchell – because they were ensnared in the scandal.
Felt’s family, which coaxed him to go public with his bombshell secret in an upcoming issue of Vanity Fair magazine, hailed him as a “great American hero” and the Washington Post scribes who made Deep Throat famous – Woodward and Carl Bernstein – deemed his acts noble.
Actor Hal Holbrook, who played the fidgety character in the Oscar-winning Watergate film “All the President’s Men,” gave a television interview declaring that Felt acted with “morality.”
Also yesterday, a book written and apparently autographed by Felt was being offered for sale on eBay.
The seller of the book said she purchased it at FBI headquarters in 1981, according to the Web-site posting.
A photograph of the book shows the inscription “With warmest regards W. MARK FELT.” It is dated “10-1-81.”
Bidding opened Tuesday at $9.99. By yesterday afternoon, a day after Felt’s identity as Deep Throat was confirmed, the bidding reached hundreds of dollars. The auction closes next Tuesday evening.
In the 1979 book, “The FBI Pyramid: From the Inside,” Felt denied he was the source who provided Woodward and Bernstein with the crucial information that helped drive Nixon from office.
“I never leaked information to Woodward and Bernstein or to anyone else!” wrote Felt.
It wasn’t the only Felt-related items being offered on eBay. One of the others was a piece of toast that had an image supposedly of Felt above the words “I’m Deep Throat.”
QUOTES
“I don’t think it’s heroic to act as a spy on your president when you’re in high office. I could fully understand if he resigned…or if he went to the prosecutor. That would be heroic”
– former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
“You’re not going to take a 91-year-old guy whose mind is wandering someplace and put him in jail”
– Watergate burgler G. Gordon Liddy