{"id":179924,"date":"2017-09-12T17:58:00","date_gmt":"2017-09-12T22:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/09\/12\/the-motives-of-leakers-dont-matter\/"},"modified":"2017-09-12T17:58:00","modified_gmt":"2017-09-12T22:58:00","slug":"the-motives-of-leakers-dont-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/09\/12\/the-motives-of-leakers-dont-matter\/","title":{"rendered":"The Motives of Leakers Don’t Matter"},"content":{"rendered":"
What matters is what they leaked, and the context of that information.<\/div>\n

Case in point, if one looks at the history perhaps the most prominent leaker of all time, Mark “Deep Throat” Felt, it becomes clear that he was motivated by a desire to succeed J. Edgar Hoover as the head of the FBI, not concerns about either the bureau or the rule of law<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The unarticulated presumption, which Sullivan, Litman and Rich are not alone in making, is that Felt\u2014the FBI\u2019s deputy director in June 1972, and subsequently the parking-garage interlocutor who steered Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to reportorial heights\u2014was an honorable, selfless whistleblower intent on exposing the lawlessness rampant in the Nixon White House. Or, as David Remnick spelled out<\/a> in the New Yorker\u2014echoing Deep Throat\u2019s original hagiographers, Woodward and Bernstein\u2014Felt \u201cbelieved that the Nixon administration was corrupt, paranoid and trying to infringe on the independence of the bureau.\u201d The president and his top aides ran, Felt believed, \u201ca criminal operation out of the White House, and [Felt] risked everything to guide\u201d the Post reporters. A new biopic about Felt, starring Liam Neeson, is due out on September 29 and shows every sign of continuing to portray Deep Throat as a profound patriot and dedicated FBI lifer. <\/p>\n

But here\u2019s a heretical thought: Mark Felt was no hero. Getting rid of Nixon was the last thing Felt ever wanted to accomplish; indeed, he was banking on Nixon\u2019s continuation in office to achieve his one and only aim: to reach the top of the FBI pyramid and become director. Felt didn\u2019t help the media for the good of the country, he used the media in service of his own ambition. Things just didn\u2019t turn out anywhere close to the way he wanted. <\/p>\n

Only recently, more than four decades after Nixon\u2019s downfall, has it become possible to reconstruct Felt\u2019s design and what really happened during those fateful six months following the Watergate break-in. Doing so requires burrowing through a great number of primary documents and government records against the backdrop of a vast secondary literature. Nixon\u2019s surreptitious tape recordings rank first in importance, but only mark the starting point. One has to also research documents from the FBI\u2019s vast Watergate investigation; the bureau\u2019s subsequent internal leak investigation; records from the Watergate Special Prosecution Force; documents from Felt\u2019s own FBI file; and lastly, two unintentionally rewarding books: Mark Felt\u2019s original 1979 memoir, The FBI Pyramid<\/i>, and the slightly reworked version published in 2006, A G-Man\u2019s Life<\/i>. What you\u2019ll end up with is the real story of Deep Throat. And you might be left with this realization: No matter what happens to Donald Trump\u2014whether he\u2019s absolved, exposed or neither\u2014you should hope there\u2019s nobody as duplicitous as Mark Felt manipulating our understanding of Russiagate.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here’s the important thing:  Felt’s motives do not matter<\/span><\/b>.<\/p>\n

Except to the degree that they effect credibility,*<\/sup> a source’s motives never<\/span><\/b> matter.<\/p>\n

What matters was that he was telling the truth. <\/p>\n

What matters is the accuracy of the information and the significance of the information.<\/p>\n

If reporters refused to take information from disgruntled bureaucratic climbers, there would be very little real news out there. <\/p>\n

*<\/sup>Yes, I acknowledge that the trustworthiness of the source is a big f%$#ing deal. But once you are past that not inconsiderable hump, motive does not matter.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What matters is what they leaked, and the context of that information. Case in point, if one looks at the history perhaps the most prominent leaker of all time, Mark “Deep Throat” Felt, it becomes clear that he was motivated by a desire to succeed J. Edgar Hoover as the head of the FBI, not …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[539,389,523,504],"class_list":["post-179924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-ethics","tag-history","tag-journalism","tag-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179924"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179924\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}