J. Edgar Hoover died when I was still in nursery school, but I knew his name from about that time. People talked about him differently than they talked about anyone else. He was fearsome and untouchable because he knew secrets about everybody, especially the politicians in Washington. He seemed like some kind of evil Santa Claus who could control people's fate depending on whether they'd been naughty or nice, and apparently every adult who mattered had been naughty. Nixon finally resigned a few weeks before I started kindergarten, but my house was filled with much older people and they discussed Watergate while I played with my blocks and trains. Hoover had been dead for over two years by then, but it felt like he'd had an influence even from the grave. I had to wait more than three decades to get a confirmation of that feeling, but it came when Deep Throat was revealed to have been Mark Felt, the Associate Director for Hoover's FBI, who felt like he'd been unjustly passed over for a promotion after Hoover's death.
Maybe James Comey shares little more in common with Hoover than former job titles, but he might be able to take down a president while he's still living, and in broad daylight. For a lot of people, this is an example of a Deep State or an incompetent Establishment carrying out a coup that overrules the verdict the people made at the ballot box. And, it's true, our clandestine services have been known to orchestrate coups and meddle in elections in other countries. The presumption in these cases is that this meddling is unjustified or even immoral, but I don't know that people would have felt much differently about Watergate if they knew someone at the top of the FBI was leaking to Woodward and Bernstein. Nixon really had committed crimes and he really was committing more as he tried to cover his tracks. The way to make sure he was removed from office wasn't to prosecute him. It was to make sure the people knew what he had done.
Read Full Article »