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<h2><b>June 08,
2005</b></h2><font size=3>
<a href="http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2005/06/deep_throats_cr.html" eudora="autourl">
http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2005/06/deep_throats_cr.html<br><br>
</a></font><h3><b>DEEP THROAT'S CRIMES: Mark Felt,
Constitution-shredder</b></h3><font size=3><i>The following is an
expanded version of an article I wrote for this week's issue of the
<a href="http://www.laweekly.com/ink/05/29/news-ireland.php">L.A.
Weekly</a></i><b>:<br><br>
</b>
<a href="http://direland.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/mark_felt_4.jpg">
<img src="cid:6.2.1.2.2.20050609092753.026f3d68@mail.freedomarchives.org.0" width=100 height=67 alt="mark_felt_4">
</a></b> After Mark Felt (photo left) outed himself as the legendary
“Deep Throat” in the Watergate case last week, there was a media rush to
canonize the FBI’s former Number Two man, and politicians proposed he be
given the Presidential Medal of Freedom. But in all this gush to make
Felt a hero, there has been little or no mention of Felt’s prime role in
COINTELPRO -- the most gigantic domestic political spying and disruption
operation ever in American history, illegally conducted by the FBI. <br>
<a href="http://direland.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/nixon_carton.jpg">
<br>
Felt, in fact, was indicted and convicted in federal court in 1980 of
directing nine illegal break-ins, aimed at domestic political
targets,</a> when he was boss of the COINTELPRO operation. Felt
thus became the highest ranking FBI official to be convicted of criminal
charges
<a href="http://direland.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/hoover_nixon_1.jpg">
<img src="cid:6.2.1.2.2.20050609092753.026f3d68@mail.freedomarchives.org.1" width=130 height=137 alt="hoover_nixon_1">
</a>
<a href="http://direland.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/hoover_nixon.jpg">
</a>since J. Edgar Hoover (photo right, with Nixon) became head of the
Bureau in 1924. (He was later pardoned by Ronald Reagan.) And in the
early ‘70s, Felt appeared repeatedly on national TV (on shows like “Meet
the Press”) trying to whip up a climate of security hysteria that this
country didn’t see until post-9/11, by painting the anti-Vietnam war left
as agents of foreign powers. <br><br>
Here’s what the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations
with respect to Intelligence Activities (headed by
then-<a href="http://direland.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/frank_church.jpg">
<img src="cid:6.2.1.2.2.20050609092753.026f3d68@mail.freedomarchives.org.2" width=124 height=144 alt="frank_church">
</a> Sen. Frank Church of Idaho-- photo left -- and known to historians
as the Church Committee) said about COINTELPRO in its final report in
1976, after an extensive, headline-making, three-year investigation:
<br><br>
"Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic
society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity,
but COINTELPRO went far beyond that...the Bureau conducted a
sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the
exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association, on the
theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation
of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter
violence.” (The Church Committee’s 14 reports, the most extensive
official review of intelligence activities ever made public, are
available online in their entirety by
<a href="http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/reports/contents.htm">
clicking here</a> ) The FBI compiled dossiers on over 500,000 Americans
during the course of COINTELPRO.<br><br>
“There’s a great deal of irony in the fact that Felt -- at the very time
he was meeting Bob Woodward in those parking garages to confide
information about the Watergate break-in and other illegal spying by the
Nixon administration -- was again and again directing exactly the same
sort of thing against groups on the left the FBI didn’t like--illegal
activities that Felt continued to order even after Richard Nixon was in
deep trouble because of Watergate,” the historian Athan Theoharis --
whose many books include “<i>Chasing Spies: How the FBI Failed in
Counterintelligence but Promoted the Politics of McCarthyism in the Cold
War Years,</i>” and "<i>The FBI and American Democracy: A Brief
Critical History</i>" -- told me this week. (Morover, Theoharis
says, the FBI had a history of leaking on presidents and pols: it leaked
information on Truman in the 1948 campaign -- for which its agents wrote
Republican campaign literature, spread slurs that Adlai
<a href="http://direland.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/adlai_stevenson.jpg">
<img src="cid:6.2.1.2.2.20050609092753.026f3d68@mail.freedomarchives.org.3" width=140 height=176 alt="adlai_stevenson">
</a> Stevenson (photo left) was a homosexual when he ran for president in
1952 -- and delivered a dossier to the Nixon White house concerning the
alleged homosexual proclivities of certain solons Nixon didn’t
like.)<br><br>
The FBI’s targets in its COINTELPRO operation included: the Communist
Party-USA, especially its black members and groups; the Socialist Workers
Party, a Trotskyist group; black nationalist organizations such as the
Black Panther Party and the Nation of Islam; New Left groups such as
Students for a Democratic Society; Youth Against War and Fascism; the
Progressive Labor party; the National Committee to Abolish the House
UnAmerican Activities Committee, and other anti-HUAC coalitions; the
Puerto Rican Independence Movement; anti-Vietnam war groups, especially
those on campuses; and various media, ranging from the <i>Liberation News
Service</i> to the <i>New York Post (</i>then the most liberal newspaper
in the country.)<br><br>
The COINTELPRO breakins of which Felt was convicted were ostensibly aimed
at the Weather Underground, a new left splinter group which had engaged
in bombings and jailbreaks. But so scattershot were the blunderbuss
COINTELPRO illegalities that they often hit people who had not the
remotest connection with the
<a href="http://direland.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/juan_gonzalez.jpg">
<img src="cid:6.2.1.2.2.20050609092753.026f3d68@mail.freedomarchives.org.4" width=100 height=72 alt="juan_gonzalez">
</a> Weathermen. One of the victims of Felt-directed break-ins was Juan
Gonzalez (photo right), now a columnist for the New York Daily News, and
co-host--with Amy Goodman--of the radio and TV news show “Democracy Now!”
On his radio show last week, Gonzalez said<b>:<br><br>
</b>“I can testify, having been a member of the Young Lords back in those
days that the numerous break-ins that occurred in the homes of Young Lord
members, including my own, back in 1972, clearly were political break-ins
and that people -- that the things that were stolen had nothing to do
with valuable goods of a drug dealer, but were clearly break-ins looking
for material and information, and I remember back in 1972, when I was
arrested by 13 F.B.I. agents for violating the selective service laws at
the time and refusing to serve in Vietnam, I was questioned for about
eight hours at F.B.I. headquarters before I was arraigned, and virtually
all of the questions that the F.B.I. agents asked me were notabout the
Young Lords, not about the selective service, but were: When was the last
time you saw Bernadine Dohrn? When was the last time that you saw Robbie
Roth? When was the last time you saw Mark Rudd? They were obsessed with
finding the Weathermen and being able to break a group that they saw
sending a bad signal of white progressive Americans and radical
Americans<a href="http://direland.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/burglar.jpg">
<img src="cid:6.2.1.2.2.20050609092753.026f3d68@mail.freedomarchives.org.5" width=160 height=111 alt="burglar">
</a> uniting with the Black and Latino liberation struggles at the
time.…[Felt] authorized some break-ins of my apartments.” You can read
the entire transcript of this show by
<a href="http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/02/1445253#transcript">
clicking here</a>.)<br><br>
The FBI stopped at nothing in its efforts to disrupt and destroy left
groups and activists, including the use of <i>agents provocateurs </i>who
engaged in arson, bombings, and attempted murder. Noam Chomsky
<a href="http://www.publiceye.org/liberty/Feds/ci-chomsky.html">wrote</a>
about one such agent provocateur several years ago in <i>Public Eye</i>
magazine<b>: <br><br>
</b>“A former student of mine, also active in the peace movement, was
teaching at San Diego State College in 1971. According to a report
submitted to the church Committee by the ACLU, the FBI provided
defamatory information about him to the college administration (and also
gained access to confidential college records). Three public hearings
were held under college auspices. He was exonerated each time, then
summarily dismissed by the chancellor of the California state college
system, Glenn Dumke, one of the numerous examples of the treachery of the
universities in those years. During this period the same student was the
target of an assassination attempt by a secret terrorist army organized,
funded, armed and directed by the FBI, which concealed evidence of the
crime and prevented
<a href="http://direland.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/images_3.jpg">
<img src="cid:6.2.1.2.2.20050609092753.026f3d68@mail.freedomarchives.org.6" width=180 height=183 alt="images_3">
</a> prosecution of the FBI agent in charge and the FBI infiltrator who
led this organization in its rampage of fire-bombing, shooting, and
general violence and terror aimed at the left, all with the full
knowledge and cooperation of the Bureau. In this case, the intended
victim of the FBI assassination attempt escaped injury, though a young
woman was seriously injured…”<br><br>
<a href="http://direland.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/ap_2.gif">
Historical amnesia is sadly rampant in this country, but one other reason
that the media may have made little or no mention of Felt’s COINTELPRO
crimes is that a huge number of media outlets were themselves complicit
in COINTELPRO, which had an extensive disinformation campaign aimed at
newspapers and television. Journalists promised not to reveal that the
FBI had suggested stories or provided information for them, and some
reporters went further and actually volunteered to help the Bureau,
writing articles designed to damage a specific FBI-targeted individual,
event, or group. Media </a>outlets with reporters cooperating in
COINTELPRO, according to
the<a href="http://direland.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/ap_4.gif">
<img src="cid:6.2.1.2.2.20050609092753.026f3d68@mail.freedomarchives.org.7" width=180 height=44 alt="ap_4">
</a>
<a href="http://direland.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/ap_3.gif">
</a> Church Committee report, included: the Associated Press; U.S.
News & World Report; the Hearst and Newhouse newspaper chains; the
<i>New York Daily News, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Philadelphia Inquirer,
Chicago Tribune,</i> and the <i>Los Angeles Herald Examiner</i>; as well
as KTTV in Los Angeles and 11 other local TV stations; and many
more.<br><br>
<a href="http://direland.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/bob_woodward.jpg">
<img src="cid:6.2.1.2.2.20050609092753.026f3d68@mail.freedomarchives.org.8" width=124 height=148 alt="bob_woodward">
</a> Even Bob Woodward (left), in his long, June 2 Washington Post
article explaining
“<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/01/AR2005060102124.html">
How Mark Felt Became ‘Deep
Throat</a>
<a href="http://direland.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/images_2.jpg">
,’” never mentioned Felt’s COINTELPRO convictions at all, or the other
Felt-directed FBI crimes for which he was never prosecuted. As to Deep
Throat’s motivations, the National Security Archive last Friday released
transcripts of some Nixon White House tapes on the FBI -- including on
which Nixon declares he wants a “house cleaning” at the FBI, which one
can deduce included Felt -- who, in his 1979 Memoir, “The FBI Pyramid
from the Inside,” wrote that he thought he stood an “excellent chance” of
being named the Bureau’s director until Nixon </a>passed over him. On
another tape, Nixon -- who’d just been told by Al Hag that Felt had
leaked material to the New York Times -- says of Felt, “He's a bad guy,
you see." And he also said of Felt, ""I don't want him. I
can't have him" as Bureau director. Both these conversations were
BEFORE Watergate. Disgusted by not getting the top FBI job, Felt resigned
from the Bureau in June of 1973.<br><br>
I’m perfectly prepared to acknowledge that Deep Throat’s confirmations
and occasional “look in this direction” guidance put some spine into Ben
Bradlee, giving him reassurance that Woodstein were on the right track
and that the story should be pursued (as Bradlee admitted to Ted Koppel
on “Nightline” last week). But to make a hero out of Felt -- the serial
Constitution-shredder and convicted criminal -- for his self-serving,
parking garage torpedoes aimed at a president who didn’t like him,
strikes me as a chapter in the book of laughter and forgetting. <br>
<br>
Posted by Doug Ireland at 02:34 PM |
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