Loyalists 'Til The End

Since all the right-wingers (including our favorite- Bill'O) probably won't give up their talking point about how the NY Times stories themselves are the real scandal anytime soon, I thought I'd bring up the Deep Throat comparison again. This past summer, when Felt revealed himself, the media was filled with appearances of convicted Watergate criminals (ie. G Gordon Liddy and Chuck Colson) and Nixon cronies in general (ie. Pat Buchanan) ranting about what a traitor Felt was to... expose the crimes they had committed? Yes, I can imagine how bad it was for this country and our national security in the early 1970s for the Washington Post, through numerous sources, to let Americas know that their President and all his men were criminals, revelations that led to their *gasp* accountability for those crimes. What a horrible injustice was done to Mr. Nixon and his men. Money quote from Pat Buchanan: "What he did was help destroy an enormously popular President". So popular Presidents are allowed to commit crimes? And I've looked at the old poll numbers- Ol' Tricky Dick wasn't too popular by the summer of 1974 when the American people found out what a crook he really was.

After the ramblings of these known criminals, Katie Couric asked Tom Brokaw on the Today Show for his opinion on what they had said, stating "I'm confused; I thought Watergate was a bad thing?". Here's Mr. Brokaw's response: "I thought it was back in 1973... I think Pat said yesterday that Mark Felt was a traitor. A traitor to what? The truth? Here's a man who didn't make this stuff up. What he told by Woodward, giving him a roadmap if you will, to follow the money, and the other linkage that led directly into the Oval Office... this was true, this was illegal activity."

This is something to keep in mind when you hear people slamming the New York Times and defending President Bush. These same people would've insisted at every turn that Nixon had done nothing wrong and that Woodward and Bernstein were traitors and were aiding the enemy. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Alberto Gonzales and his Justice Department can probe all they want, but our own history shows that the Times' leaker is likely a hero, not a criminal. We have whistleblower protection laws in place for a reason.

[Here's a video link from Crooks and Liars' archives- Tom Brokaw slams Pat Buchanan]