posted on June 6, 2005 05:54:52 PM new
In response to Fenix post about Felt's daughter financial reasons:
Deep Throat, the FBI, and 9-11
By Gary Palmer
The revelation that Deep Throat was actually Mark Felt, the No. 2 man at the FBI during the Nixon Presidency, has focused new attention on the Watergate era and the political consequences that followed. But with the revelation that Felt was the informant that brought down Nixon should also come some attention to the investigations into the FBI and Felt's activities after Watergate and the consequences the nation suffered on 9/11 as a direct result.
First, in regard to Felt and Watergate, the liberal media today are all lauding him as a hero because without him Nixon might not have been forced to resign. The irony of it all is that some of the same groups and individuals that Felt was helping to take down Nixon, would later be involved in taking down the FBI and Felt.
While the liberal media hated Nixon, they also hated and distrusted the FBI and its powerful director J. Edgar Hoover. They would have had the same feelings toward Felt because he was a dedicated Hoover man who was also involved in carrying out domestic intelligence gathering operations. During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, the FBI was engaged in numerous domestic investigations and intelligence operations targeting communist groups, hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, black militants such as the Black Panthers, anti-war groups and other groups that were involved in subversive and sometimes violent activities. The FBI kept extensive files on organizations and individuals that could be considered a threat to national security.
In gathering some of this information, the FBI abused its power and committed inexcusable encroachments on civil liberties. In fact, Felt, former FBI Acting Director L. Patrick Gray, and Deputy Associate Director Edward Miller, were all indicted for authorizing illegal break-ins related to FBI surveillance of the violent extremist organization, the Weather Underground. Felt and Miller were convicted in 1980, but both were pardoned in 1981 by President Ronald Reagan.
Because of the public disclosure of abuses involving FBI operations that targeted American citizens involved in the anti-war movement, Congress initiated an investigation into the domestic intelligence operations of the FBI and CIA in January 1975. The Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, also known as the Church Committee because it was chaired by Senator Frank Church of Idaho, issued 14 reports in 1975 and 1976 on the activities of the CIA and the FBI. The committee's reports lead to the creation of oversight committees for intelligence in the United States Senate (1976) and the House (1977) that drastically changed the FBI's approach to protecting the nation from domestic terrorism.
Prior to the Church Committee, the FBI took a pro-active stance toward domestic terrorism, choosing to interdict terrorists or subversives before they actually carried out a violent attack. But after the Church Committee reports, the Justice Department under the direction of Attorney General Edward Levi, put severe restrictions on bureau's ability to conduct domestic intelligence gathering. The "Levi Guidelines," most of which remained in effect until 9/11, led the FBI into a posture of initiating an investigation only when they were certain that a group was on the brink of an attack.
The "Levi Guidelines," along with other restraints imposed in the 1980s in the aftermath of another Congressional inquiry, changed the FBI's mentality from pro-active to reactive. In other words, the FBI's role in fighting domestic terrorism was effectively reduced to cleaning up the mess after an attack and trying to apprehend the perpetrators. As a direct consequence of operating for almost 25 years under these restrictions, the FBI failed to follow up on leads in their Phoenix and Minneapolis field offices during the summer of 2001 that would have led them to the 9/11 hijackers. Had the FBI been more aggressive in following up on these leads it is very likely that the attacks on 9/11would have been prevented.
Frankly, the FBI overstepped some bounds and needed to be held accountable. But as is so often the case, the politicians, pressured by the liberal media and their own political ambitions, caved in to political correctness and imposed overreaching restrictions on America's first line of defense against domestic terrorism. And as history has now proven, in their efforts to end abuses by virtually eliminating their ability to conduct domestic intelligence operations, two-and-a-half decades later the cure proved to be worse than the malady.
In regard to Mr. Felt, I doubt he was ever the left's hero. What Felt did to expose Nixon, he did to protect the FBI and perhaps, in some degree, as retribution against Nixon passing over him for the director's job after Hoover died. Felt continued Hoover's domestic surveillance practices that were so despised by the liberals and the radicals of that era. In the end, Felt and the FBI were sucked into the radical liberal vortex of political correctness and hypersensitivity to civil liberties that took him and the FBI down together. Who knew that as a result, two decades later, the World Trade Towers would come down too?
A word to the wise ain't necessary, it's the stupid ones that need the advice."
- Bill Cosby
