Devil In Deep Throat

Around the time he was leaking information to Bob Woodward, assistant FBI director Mark Felt was authorizing illegal searches and burglaries against relatives and friends of Weather Underground fugitives.

"There was no instruction to me," he is quoted in the Church Report, "nor do I believe there is any instruction in the Inspector's manuals, that inspectors should be on the alert to see that constitutional values are being protected."

One of these authorized break-ins occurred at the New York apartment of Jennifer Dohrn, sister and aboveground spokesperson for Weatherwoman Bernardine Dohrn. The agents read Jennifer's mail, including love letters from John Johnson in Echo Park, California.

Johnson is now the publisher of Change-Links, a monthly paper featuring a calendar of events for the progressive community in Los Angeles. When Felt was indicted and convicted for the Dohrn break-in, the jury observed: "All they did was read love letters."

When Ronald Reagan became president, he pardoned Felt. Jennifer found out from reading her own Freedom of Information files that there had also been an FBI plan to kidnap her baby in order to force Bernardine to surrender. A reporter tipped her off that the FBI agents stole a pair of her panties and put them in a glass case, which they gave to Felt.

I asked Johnson, "In view of both Mark Felt's intimidation of Jennifer and Deep Throat's aid in bringing Nixon down, do you have mixed feelings about him?"

"No mixed feelings," he replied. "I would assume his efforts in bringing Nixon down had little to do with justice but some fraternal war the FBI was having with the White House, who were overtaking their powers."

G. Gordon Liddy, however, reeks of ambivalence. Although he feels that Deep Throat was a traitor, he considered Mark Felt to be a poster boy for illegal break-ins. A year before Watergate, Liddy led a "bag job"-a surreptitious entry-into the office of Dr. Lewis Fielding, a Beverly Hills psychiatrist who had refused to cooperate with FBI agents investigating one of his patients, Daniel Ellsberg, leaker of the Pentagon Papers. It was the function of the White House "plumbers" to "plug" such a leak.

The burglars scattered pills around the office to make it look like a junkie had been responsible. The police assured Dr. Fielding that the break-in was made in search of drugs, even though he found Ellsberg's records removed from their folder. An innocent black man, Elmer Davis, was arrested, convicted and sent to prison, while Liddy remained silent.

Researcher Mae Brussell corresponded with Davis, and after he finished serving Liddy's time behind bars, he ended up living with Mae. It was a match made in Conspiracy Heaven.