Felt exposed criminal corruption in the nation's highest office. He had no alternative because he was already the number two man at the FBI, and his immediate superior, L. Patrick Gray, was known to be Nixon's man, feeding all internal investigative info on the Watergate investigation straight to the Whitehouse.
Without a question, he is a national hero. He risked his life and livelyhood to bring the truth to light. Watergate was not the start of his heroism. He originally got close to Woodward when he exposed the corruption of Nixon's disgraced Vice President, Spiro Agnew.
I find it more than a little amusing that all those who now claim Felt's actions were somehow dishonorable are the same ones we know were the Watergate bad guys. For example, dickwad Pat Buchanan was a speech writer for both Nixon and Agnew. So now, we're supposed to believe any kind of mud he and others involved in the original crimes try to toss at Felt, Woodward or Bernstein? They're just trying to cover their newly re-exposed ugly asses. We can NEVER allow the truth of what Nixon and his criminal gang did to corrupt the government of our allegedly free government. To do so is to relenquish any claim to that freedom.
What we need, now, is more heros like Mark Felt to come forward and expose the Whitehouse traitors who blew the cover of top CIA operative, Valerie Plame.
WTF!!! We're only talking about treason and blowing the sh8 out of national security. :|