The Bureau

Man, did the memories start flooding back. The family is saying that they let the cat out of the bag because their patriarch is a hero. The man who skulked around the parking garage chain-smoking Pall Mall cigarettes has been unmasked by his own hand.

The man who guided the slow-motion fall of Richard Nixon has been revealed. Deep Throat is a retired career justice official named W. Mark Felt, who is 91 years of age and said to be in the early stages of dementia.

I had to wrack my brain to remember who he was. Everyone of a certain age remembers J. Edgar Hoover and his long-time companion Clyde Tolsen at the apex of the FBI. They kept files on all of us, the kids who had doubts about Vietnam , the Members of Congress and everyone of any importance anywhere. At least, that is what Jedgar wanted us to think.

The Bureau has had an pivotal role in recent history, and arguably its fierce parallel hubris to the CIA’s is the reason the entire Intelligence Community had to be dismantled last year. They say that the first meeting of a new president with the Director of the FBI was an interesting thing, since with those files and all that dirt, Mr. Hoover had established an independent power center in Washington .

He had the dirt on Congressional daughters, and Dr. King’s lovers, and he had dirt on the people who had dirt on him. But that was a bit of a Mexican Standoff, meaning no disrespect to the people of Mexico .

The mob had stuff on Hoover , and he, of course, had stuff on them. So the weight of prosecution went elsewhere. And a lot of effort funded by the taxpayers went to protecting the Bureau.

I vaguely remember when Mr. Hoover passed away. It was one of those tipping points in history that connects the Baby Boom generation to John Dillinger. I didn’t go to the funeral, and it would not have occurred to me that I would find his grave in funky old Congressional Cemetery to be a place of tranquility on the banks of the muddy Anacostia River someday .

I visit the former Director fairly frequently, and sometimes sit on the iron bench in front of the wrought-iron railing around his plot. The bench and the fence were donated by the association of former Special Agents, which accounts for the relative luxury in a place that has seen few internments of power for a century.

I don’t know why Mr. Hoover chose Congressional as the place to spend eternity, but after that long dreamy summer of the Senate Watergate Hearings, maybe it was precisely the right thing to do. The Administration was slowly unraveled by the careful ministrations of Senator Sam Ervin, the grand old caricature of a Southern country lawyer, grilling the President’s men, one by one. Chewing them up, making them cower and rat out the next one up the chain.

It was entertaining and frightening at the same time. There was a parade of momentary celebrities on their way to the Penitentiary. Chuck Colson was one of them, who was quoted as saying he would have walked over his mother for the President. Alexander Butterfield. G. Gordon Liddy, unapologetic burglar, who considered the intramural fight in Washington to be an extension of the Vietnam War.

When the dust settled, nineteen White House and Re-election Committee officials spent time in the slammer, courtesy of Federal District Judge “Maximum John” Sirica.

Gordon was the most colorful of the lot, though E. Howard Hunt and the Cubans might have come close. They did not have the screen presence of the former G-man, who looked the part a lot more than W. Mark Felt. Gordon was able to capitalize on the notoriety and his intransigence in front of Maximum John by getting a recurring role in the then-hip cop show Miami Vice, and then his own talk radio show.

An idealistic young lawyer named Hillary Rodham moved to Washington to work first for Children’s Defense Fund, then for the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment proceedings against President Nixon, when the ponderous machinery of government moved the cock-pit of Constitutional action from the Senate to the House.

Hillary impressed her supervisor and colleagues on the Judiciary Committee, and they wanted her to stick around, but with the Nixon Administration finished, and the perils of a long-distance relationship with a paramour with a wandering eye, she chose to teach law at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville , close to Bill.

The Administration came down because someone inside was leaking material to the Post. We knew it because Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward had a source. A fabulous source with the commanding view to direct the investigation from afar. The intrepid reporters became rock-stars of the day, though the investigation was actually a job of inside sabotage. The duo borrowed the title of the Linda Lovelace porn movie to describe the source, tongue in cheek, of course, since that is precisely what the source was doing to the Administration.

Nixon was a paranoid fellow, as we now know. But as the saying goes, it is only paranoia if someone is actually not out to get you. Apparently it was the effort to protect himself from a highly autonomous FBI that caused the President to appoint long-time crony L. Patrick Gray as only the second Director in the history of the Bureau.

W. Mark Felt was number two there, the senior career bureaucrat. He was passed over in favor of a man the President could trust. It  seems he was right.

Mr. Felt clearly felt abused. Contemporary newsreels show a man with a swooping mane of gray hair, and those hip, thick-framed swooping glasses that made him look a little like Aristotle Onassis. He looked, from this distance, a little more like a mobster than a G-man. But we all wore unfortunate clothes at the time.

I think I was embroidering Egyptian Hieroglyphs on my low-rise elephant bellbottom blue jeans at the time, wearing a wife-beater tank top with a picture of Mr. Natural on the front. So perhaps I should cast no stones in the direction of a senior government official who at least wore a tie, even if it was unfortunately wide.

But after a career spent in this company town, it is with a sigh that I conclude that the Administration came down not because the President authorized the Watergate Break In, because he didn’t. He just tried to cover up the misdeeds of his minions after the fact. His inclination to stonewall the story led to his being ratted out by a disgruntled Bureau in his own Executive Branch. I suppose loyalty is first to oneself, followed closely by that to your Agency and then the Nation.

Mr. Felt kept the secret through his retirement and the honors from the government for a career well-served. He kept the secret through the publication of his memoirs, and apparently intended to keep the secret to his grave. But he spilled the beans to his daughter, Joan, and grandson, Nick. They considered him not only a national hero, but possibly a source to help pay off some college bills.

I don’t disagree with Mr. Nixon’s disgrace, or the consequences of a weakened Ford Administration that had to accede to defeat in the Asian war, or the malaise that followed. But consider this: Deep Throat was number two at the FBI.

Wouldn’t you think that the second most senior law enforcement guy in the Government would go to the Grand Jury, first?

Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com

Close Window