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Dissension at the Post? Or is this meant enhance
Felt's image as a tough guy? _ JR
washingtonpost.com
The Contradiction of
'Deep Throat'
By John W. Nields The news that W. Mark Felt, former deputy director of the FBI, is "Deep
Throat" -- that it was he who played a key role in exposing and bringing to
justice the people who authorized the 1972 Watergate break-in -- came as an
unexpected revelation to many. But it was particularly unexpected for me,
because, together with others, I prosecuted Mark Felt for a series of illegal
and unconstitutional break-ins that he had authorized. In late 1972 and early 1973, during the same period when he was investigating
the Watergate break-in, Felt authorized FBI agents in New York and New Jersey to
break into and search the homes of friends or relatives of fugitives associated
with the Weather Underground, a radical, violent antiwar organization. These
friends and relatives were innocent of any wrongdoing. There was no probable
cause to conduct the searches. There was no search warrant authorizing them. And
they were clearly illegal. With Felt's authorization, teams of agents clad in old clothes picked locks
or bribed landlords and searched these people's homes. They searched thoroughly:
desks, beds, closets, etc. Using a document camera, they photographed a diary, a
love letter, a Valentine's Day card, statements of personal philosophy and other
documents. When they were done, they put everything back in place so that no one
would know they had been there. The searches were of no help in protecting our nation or enforcing the law.
There was next to no basis in fact to conduct them, and they turned up nothing
of any use to the FBI. At the home of a lawyer at a major New York law firm --
whose brother was a Weatherman -- the agents copied what they thought was coded
writing they found on some cards and sent the copies to the FBI lab for
cryptanalysis. It turned out that the lawyer had been taking Hebrew lessons. The
lawyer produced the original cards at the trial and demonstrated that the FBI
could have "decoded" the Hebrew without cryptanalysis by flipping the cards over
and reading the English translation on the reverse side. These secret break-ins and searches were known within the FBI as "black bag
jobs" or just "bag jobs." Because they were known to be illegal, they were done
in the strictest secrecy. The one-page memorandums initialed by Felt authorizing
the searches were marked "DO NOT FILE" and were kept out of normal FBI files.
The memorandums made no reference to a search or break-in. They said instead,
"Today I authorized [FBI Agent] to contact an anonymous source at [address to be
searched]." During the 1940s, '50s and '60s, bag jobs were done by the FBI in a variety
of matters. Then, in 1966, J. Edgar Hoover called a halt to them in a document
stating, "Black Bag Jobs are clearly illegal." President Richard Nixon
authorized "surreptitious entry" in 1970, in what became known as the "Houston
Plan." But he rescinded the authorization a week or so later when Attorney
General John Mitchell told him the public would object if it found out. Then,
after Hoover died in 1972, Felt decided to reauthorize bag jobs in the Weather
Underground investigation. No government official higher than Felt knew about
the bag jobs. The case was tried in 1980 before Chief Judge William B. Bryant. The
witnesses included Nixon and five former attorneys general. Nixon gave testimony
supportive of Felt. But the jury returned a conviction. The Fourth Amendment provides that "the right of the people to be secure in
their . . . houses [and] papers . . . from unreasonable searches shall not be
violated." As the trial progressed, it sank in that the Fourth Amendment was not
the creation of ivory-tower intellectuals. It was an _expression_ of our deepest
instincts. Many of the agents who entered into and searched the people's homes
testified at the trial. Their testimony was profoundly disquieting. While they
were inside people's houses, they clearly felt more like burglars than law
enforcers. As former attorney general and Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson
wrote of the Fourth Amendment shortly after serving as chief prosecutor at
Nuremberg: "These, I protest, are not mere second-class rights, but belong in
the catalogue of indispensable freedoms." The revelation of Mark Felt as Deep Throat is filled with conflicts and
contradictions. It is a matter of debate whether his role as Deep Throat makes
him a hero or a villain; and Felt, himself, seems to have been conflicted about
his conduct. But perhaps the biggest contradiction is that, as Deep Throat, Felt
helped establish the principle that our highest government officials are subject
to the Constitution and the laws of the land; and yet when it came to the
Weather Underground bag jobs, he seems not have been aware that this same
principle applied to him. The writer is a Washington lawyer and former federal
prosecutor. © 2005 The
Washington Post Company
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