Originally posted by: irwincur
Without a question, he is a national hero. He risked his life and livelyhood to bring the truth to light.
The truth was already known. He had a grudge, and he was also looking to cash in. Little did he know that Woodword and Bernstein would take the money and run, essentially leaving him without anywhere to turn. Then they shut him out for three decades as he tried to make some money off of HIS fame by refusing to admit that he was thier guy.
The most shameful part of this whole epsiode may be that W & B got rich and famous off of this guys back while he has been living in his mothers garage for the past two decades - and they knew it.
YOU'RE SO FULL OF SH8, MY ASS IS JEALOUS! :| :| :|
Ben Bradley, the Washington Post's editor confirms the secret was kept at Felt's request.
Woodward and Bernstein became famous because they published the truth about Nixon's criminal thugs. They also maintained their honor by keeping their promise to Felt. Even when the news first broke, they refused to comment until they got direct confirmation from Felt, himself, that it was now OK to tell what they knew.
FYI, Woodward and Bernstein did not just parrot what they got from Felt. They were a couple of young reporters who dug in a lot of places to bring a story to light that was NOT already public information. In fact, most of the "established" press was too intimtidated to follow up on the story because the Nixon thugs were already sicking the IRS, the FBI and other government agencies on anyone they considered to be an enemy. Ask Daniel Schorr, then with CBS, and now with NPR. I've seen the video of him reading Nixon's "Enemies List." The look on his face is priceless when he got to his own name.
Felt was the #2 man at the FBI. His boss, L. Patrick Gray, was a Nixon plant who was leaking every bit of info the FBI had back to the Whitehouse criminals. Felt could NOT go through any other chain of command to bring the truth to light because the only available chain was directly to the crooks. His reasons for keeping his identity secret are his alone, and those who knew it honored his requrest.
Keeping the secrecy was the only way Felt could stay close to the info that needed to be exposed, not to mention well known little facts, such as that Nixon's goons were not above bugging, harrassing and physically threatening anyone they considered a possible leak or impediment to their well proven continuing, ongoing, multiple criminal enterprises.
If you're not old enough to remember Wategate the first time, STFU until you go back and learn what really happened. If you ARE old enough to remember it, you should be ashamed of yourself for not learning the lesson, the first time and even MORE ashamed of embarrassing yourself by posting such utter bullsh8 in public.
Hero is still too strong of a word for this. There really was nothing heroic about it as the house of cards was already falling around Nixon. This in essense did nothing to speed up the process or even really impact it. Just media crated stuff of legend so they can puff out their chests and act like the media is sometimes usefull.
I repeat, you don't know your ass from a hole in the ground, and
YOU'RE SO FULL OF SH8, MY ASS IS JEALOUS! :| :| :|
Now my questions - what about the whistleblowers in the Clinton White House. An FBI agent there went to the media with his accounts of rape and sexual harrasment by the Commander and Pimp. Was he a hero? No, the press never bothered to listen to him, or the four others that came out with independant and corresponding reports. The press actually attacked them.
Big surprise.
And big deal. Clinton lied under oath, and he was wrong for doing so. If his most significant "crime" was failure to return his fly to its full upright position before landing, can you sit there with a straight face and tell us that's as important as disclosing criminality at the level of the Nixon gang, including illegal bugging of American citizens' homes and phones, criminal burglaries searching for politically damaging info about his enemies, abusing the power of his office to sick the IRS and FBI on innocent Americans and much, much more?
If you can, you're dumber than a fscking rock, and you haven't the slightest shread of a clue what Watergate was about.
Of course, it also means you haven't a clue about why the Bush administration is at least as evil for exactly the same reasons. Even John Dean, former Counsel to Nixon, has stated that what the Bush adminstration has done is worse than Watergate. Since it goes beyond simply criminal acts to pure
TREASON for outing a covert CIA agent, I agree with his analysis.