Last night, I rented the 2017 film, “Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House” starring Liam Neeson. The movie was a huge flop—-domestic box office was a paltry $1.2 million.
Which is kind of a shame because, although Mark Felt is not exactly a household name, he was... well... largely responsible for... no big deal... Richard Nixon’s downfall. It’s a veritable travesty if you consider that “The Emoji Movie” made $217 million.
In 2005, at the age of 91, Felt revealed, in a Vanity Fair article, that he was the Washington Post’s confidential Watergate source, then known only as “Deep Throat.”
This came as something of a shock, as Felt was Associate Director of the FBI, the Bureau’s second highest-ranking post, when the Watergate burglary occurred. When the Nixon Administration, illegally aided by then FBI Director L. Patrick Grey, shut down his investigation, Felt smelled a conspiracy and, despite considerable peril, steadily leaked information to the Washington Post for months. You know the rest.
Apparently, to this day, there are those in the FBI who detest him for leaking, and many consider him a traitor. Some say he did it out of revenge for being passed over for the top job when J. Edgar died.
I prefer to think he was an American patriot willing to stick his neck out for the greater good. That shit used to happen around here sometimes. Call me a romantic.
Whatever the reason, there would have been no Nixon impeachment without him. Mark Felt was arguably the man who saved The Republic forty-five short years ago, a time when we also had a dangerous, sleazy, narcissistic, paranoid dictator-wannabe occupying the Oval.
There should be statues.
Lots of them.
Everywhere.