By By Brian Bohl
Many of the key conspirators in the Watergate scandal have suddenly become experts on ethical conduct. Aides to the late President Nixon criticized former FBI deputy director, Mark Felt, in light of his recent admission that he was the official who leaked tips to investigative Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
Gordon Liddy is one of the hypocritical members of Nixon’s administration who has suddenly become knowledgeable on the subject of morality. Liddy worked on Nixon’s presidential campaign in 1968 and was one of the main operatives involved in the break-in at the Watergate hotel in 1972.
For his role in the attempted sabotage of the Democratic Party that year, Liddy received a 20-year jail sentence that was later reduced to four and a half years. So what did the convicted felon have to say about Felt’s actions?
“If he possessed evidence of wrongdoing, he was honor-bound to take that evidence to a grand jury and secure an indictment, not to selectively leak it to a single news source,” Liddy told CNN on June 1.
It is comical that Liddy, convicted of conspiracy, burglary and illegal wiretapping, has the audacity to comment on the honor of others. He has no standing to lecture people on the proper discourse of conduct when his actions are synonymous with the biggest political corruption scandal of the last century.
Chuck Colson, the chief counsel for Nixon from 1969 to 1973, said, “Mark Felt could have stopped Watergate. Instead, he [went] out and bascially underminded the administration,” according to an Agence France-Presse article.
Colson forgot to mention Watergate could have been avoided if Nixon’s operatives did not break numerous privacy laws or attempt to unduly influence a presidential election. Colson, Liddy and a host of others did far more to undermine their own administration than Felt ever did.
Pat Buchanan, a fiercely conservative commentator who worked as a Nixon speechwriter, said Felt is a “traitior.” Buchanan knows a thing or two about being a traitor as evidenced by the infamous quip he made in 1993 about the US Civil War. In his syndicated column, Buchanan wrote:
“The war between the states was about independence, about self-determination, about the right of a people to break free of a government to which they could no longer give allegiance.
How long is this endless groveling before every cry of ‘racism’ going to continue before the whole country collectively throws up?”
Supporting Confederate ideals of slavery and discrimination are more traitorous than exposing a corrupt presidential administration.
Buchanan’s idea of loyalty is bashing every ethnic group on the planet while giving full support to whatever endeavor he is currently pursuing.
To add to the irony and hypocrisy is the fact that many of Nixon’s aides made money from book deals and interviews after they completed their jail sentences. Felt on the other hand never made a dime from the story.
The statements that have come out from former Nixon aides have been nothing but pathetic responses from jaded and disgraced ex-political operatives.
They are not concerned about political integrity, but are merely trying to discredit Felt, a man whose actions exposed Liddy, Colson and the rest for frauds and manipulators.