Blayne Sucks

What a week! I’ve found several cool things online that I’d like to mention. Personally, I don’t think that I’m really all that much of a nerd, but so be it. All you can be is honest. Besides, is it really all that bad to be a nerd? I didn’t think so.

So now we know who deep throat is. I am personally really disappointed. If you were to ask me prior to this revelation I would have said it was likely someone like William Rehnquist, who was a member of the White House counsel at the time. This would have made sense. He was technically a lawyer who would have violated attorney-client privilige and Nixon had appointed him to the Supreme Court, so he would be turning his back on someone who really thought he was important and cool. It would have been obvious why people were compelled to hide his identity. He’s the chief justice for crying out loud! However, it turns out that it was in reality it was W. Mark Felt, who was the second most powerful man in the FBI.

So why is this all that disappointing? Well, trivially, there’s the name recognition factor. Who the heck is W. Mark Felt? I really didn’t know. It turns out that he was a leading cadidate for “Deep Throat” in many people’s opinions for years. He had a real reason to be upset at Nixon. He was passed over for the top spot in the FBI when Nixon appointed someone from outside the department, so he could have done it out of spite.

However, here’s the real reason why this is hideously disappointing to me: W. Mark Felt was the number two guy at the FBI for crying out loud! Talk about being in exactly the right position to actually handle the situation the way the system was designed to handle it with exactly the right information needed to take care of things. Why on earth would you shirk your responsibility to the FBI and to the American people and NOT use that information the way your job requires you to use it? Talk about cowardly. Instead he ran to the press and leaked classified information in an ongoing investigation that he was running! Wow. This is our heroic “Deep Throat”?

If it was Rehnquist, I would be far more willing to forgive his violations of his responsibilities because this was a huge risk to the honor, validity and integrity of the United States political system. Rehnquist was in no position to stop the cover up and expose the truth. W. Mark Felt was literally the guy that was supposed to be doing the stopping and the exposing via the government position that he held and he wasn’t doing it! Now we’re supposed to shake his hand and thank him for ignoring his responsibility?

Oh, and in case you’re wondering why he decided to reveal this now. He’s 91 years old and looking into the great beyond, so perhaps he’s personally motivated to come clean. However, his children, who urged him to reveal the truth, are just in this for their 15 minutes of fame. His daughter said that she’s hoping she’ll be able to make enough money to pay off the debts she’s incurred for education expenses. How sick is it that someone is going to be able to make money for avoiding their Watergate-related job 30 years after the fact? Anyhow, I’m pretty disappointed.