The Hindu Business Line : Perfidy or patriotism

BOB Woodward and Carl Bernstein have become legends in the journalistic profession for their doggedness in investigating the Watergate scandal in the mid 1970s during the presidency of Richard Nixon.

What looked at first like a bungled attempt by some Republican zealots to purloin the records of the Democratic National Committee located in the Watergate complex in Washington eventually turned out to be a massive cover-up operation, including obstruction of justice, masterminded by the President himself with his close aides, H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, acting as his eager accomplices.

Woodward and Bernstein kept startling the readers of The Washington Post day after day with detailed revelations of the various stages of the century's most gripping whodunit which inexorably pinned down Nixon as the main culprit and forced his resignation.

Not the least of the mysteries was the source of the clues, dubbed the `Deep Throat' by the two investigative reporters after the title of a pornographic film which was a hit in those days.

True to the promise made to him, they had refrained from divulging his identity for 33 years.

Last week, Deep Throat himself broke the secret. The American public learnt with a gasp that the shadowy figure in a cloak (though not the dagger) appearing almost daily in underground automobile parks to egg them on the right track was W. Mark Felt, the No 2 man in the FBI who was in possession of all the files and facts of the case, and had a score to settle with Nixon for overlooking him for the top slot in the FBI.

But for Felt, the Watergate break-in might well have faded fast as a footnote of the history of the times.

Expectedly, the US is polarised between those who hail him as a patriot who stopped the murder of the Constitution by the President, and those who excoriate him as a perfidious public servant who has set a pernicious example by violating all canons of loyalty and uprightness.

The raging debate reflects the eternal question: Do ends justify the means? They do, when loyalty to the Government is in conflict with national interest.

Felt cannot therefore be faulted for guiding the reporters along with whatever material he had at his disposal to expose wrongdoing by the President himself.

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