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When Ronald Reagan said the only thing on earth enjoying eternal life is a government program, he forgot about Deep Throat. The late-spring exposure of former FBI deputy director Mark Felt as the long-secret Watergate source revived this unending political drama: movies were being produced, books published, and Watergate revisited on talk shows.

As one of the few Watergate survivors, I appeared on dozens of programs. "Is Mark Felt a hero?" I was repeatedly asked. My answer was emphatically No. He broke the law to pursue his (presumably) noble objective of bringing down a corrupt administration. But he didn't need to: Instead of sneaking around at night giving highly classified FBI information to reporters, he could have confronted the President, or, if the President refused, gone to Congress or held a press conference.

Following the interviews, I received an avalanche of angry mail. Of course Felt was a hero, my correspondents insisted, as did all but one of the television interviewers. In the rush to canonize Felt, no one asked if he did the right thing. Did the end justify the means?

I understand why Felt wanted to stop Watergate. In The Good Life, I confess I should have acted to stop the spreading scandal. One night, when, in my presence, Nixon ordered Haldeman to get a team in place for break-ins, I should have spoken up: "No, Mr. President, you can't do that." But I rationalized: We were at war, Marine classmates of mine were in combat, and the Cold War hung in the balance. Maybe the President had to take extreme steps.

I now realize that we humans have an infinite capacity for self-justification: "The heart is deceitful above all things." So knowing what was right, I did what was wrong, and justified myself in the process. I employed wrong means for what I perceived to be good ends, and I was sentenced to prison (ironically, for giving one FBI file to a reporter).

Today, I'm less concerned about how history judges Felt or Nixon than I am about the message we are sending this generation. For 30 years, I've seen the ravages of relativism in the vacant stares of the millions of teenagers we've jammed into prison. Tell them now that one of the most enduring Western ethical standards no longer applies, and we shouldn't be surprised if their numbers swell and savagery increases.

If we teach them that the end justifies the means, almost anything up to and including the Holocaust can be justified. As with any principle, there are exceptions, of course—as Corrie ten Boom lied to German soldiers about hiding Jews. Churchill said sometimes the truth is so precious that it must be accompanied by a bodyguard of lies. In wartime, there may be no choice.

But the question we should be asking regarding Mark Felt is whether he had no other recourse than to break the law. The answer is clearly No. (Those who accuse me of rewriting history—who say that Felt could not possibly have confronted the President—forget that I worked in the inner sanctum of the White House; I know if Felt had spoken out, Nixon would have had to straighten out the mess or see his presidency fall a year earlier.)

I assured interviewers I have no desire to revise history. I of all people am thankful for Watergate and prison. Look what blessings God has brought forth from that tragedy. But for the culture at large, what is the scandal's lasting legacy? Not legal reforms—they've all been repealed. Not the end of government scandals—we've had many more since. What a cruel twist of history it would be if the final Watergate legacy was the revival of Machiavellian philosophy—the idea that one can do whatever it takes to gain his ends.

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October 2005, Vol. 49, No. 10