Deep Throat's Death

The most famous whistleblower of all time, Mark "Deep Throat" Felt, has died, the Washington Post reports.

As I wrote back in 2005, when Felt revealed he was the infamous leaker, he was, like so many whistleblowers, a complicated figure -- genuinely angry and concerned that the Nixon White House was undermining the FBI and obstructing the investigation of Watergate, but also disgruntled that he had been passed over for the top job at the agency.

And Felt was hardly a constitutional purist. As Slate's Jack Shafer has noted, "while leaking to [Bob] Woodward about Watergate in 1972 and 1973, Felt was also authorizing illegal break-ins in the search for Weather Underground bombing suspects."

By the way, here's the oddest part of the Post's obit of Felt, whose long career in government actually began at the Federal Trade Commission after he graduated from law school in 1940: "Felt was assigned to ask consumers about their impression of the Red Cross brand of toilet paper. He disliked the job, and in 1942, he joined the FBI."