Wednesday, June 01, 2005

 

Colson: Deep Throat "Betrayed Trust"

Some -- apparently including conspirator Chuck Colson -- still don't get it. As today's news about the identity of Deep Throat reverberated, Colson said of the FBI's Mark Felt, "He had the trust of America's leaders and to think that he betrayed that trust is hard for me to fathom," Colson told the AP (as reported in the San Jose Mercury News).

Who betrayed our trust, Chuck? You still think it was a "betrayal" to tell the truth about illegal and corrupt actions of your administration? I guess Colson's famous "conversion" doesn't exactly involve repentance of his role in the Watergate crimes and their coverup. Once a CREEP, always a CREEP?

(And for those who missed the allusion: CREEP was Nixon's Committee to Re-Elect the President.)

Comments:
Please listen first. Then dispute the substance of their argument. If you don't, you argue against thin air and the opponent remains.
 
I'm not sure what you mean. I read Colson's comments. He said that he thinks Mark Felt should have remained "loyal" to President Nixon. That's the substance of his argument. I think he's wrong. IMHO, Felt had a moral obligation to tell someone about the crimes of which he was aware -- or else he's complicit in those crimes. And he understandably did not trust those who were involved in covering up the crimes; I think he was correct in his circumstances to go to the press instead of to other government officials, given the nature (and pervasiveness) of the criminal activity and coverup.
 
Some have also said that Felt should have gone up the chain of command, gotten punished (eg busted in rank and reassigned to some field office in Barrow), and then gone public with a clean conscience. I think that would have been an honorable course of action. But it also would have been less effective than remaining covert and privy to the inside as he did. Myself - I can't bring myself to judge him for taking one of those routes rather than the other - its just too finely-grained a distinction for me. In such matters, let each man do what is right according to his own consience, to paraphrase Paul.
 
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