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Using illegal means to achieve a just objective can sometimes be ethically justified—the classic standard being somebody's drowning in a pond and there's a no-trespassing sign, but you violate the law and jump over the no-trespassing sign and go rescue the person. But Felt had legal means available to him. I know people say it was a paranoid era and he would have gotten transferred to Alaska, and as a whistleblower we'd have ruined him. That's nonsense, because all he had to do was try to see the President. If the President wouldn't see him, then he's totally within his rights to resign publicly and to say why. And if he did that, it probably would have ended the issue right there. And I dare say he would be a hero.

What would have happened differently if he'd taken the route that you suggest?

I think it would have precipitated an immediate crisis. If the No. 2 guy in the FBI says, "There's wrongdoing out in the White House and they won't listen to me, I'm resigning," the President would clean house in a hurry, or the impeachment would have taken place within two weeks, instead of nine more months.

You have roles not only as a former Nixon administration figure but also as a Christian statesman. From which role does this perspective come?

It's interesting, and that's a good question. It's interesting because I can identify with Mark Felt. In my political heyday I used a lot unethical means to justify what I considered very noble goals: getting our prisoners home, ending the war, and not leaking documents that could undermine it. So I learned in the Nixon days after my conversion that human beings have the infinite capacity for self-justification.

What I've learned as a Christian, and how I've reflected this on my own experiences, [should] moderate us from deifying or beatifying Mark Felt. I watched some high-school kids on TV last night who knew nothing about Watergate. They all said he was a hero. I'm thinking, "Oh, wait a minute. They are being taught Machiavellian ethics. This is terrible." Woodward said in a piece in The Washington Post today that Felt "believed he was protecting the bureau by finding a way, clandestine as it was, to push some of the information from the FBI interviews and files out to the public to help build public and political pressure to make Nixon and his people answerable. He had nothing but contempt for the Nixon White House and their effort to manipulate the bureau for political reasons."

Do you realize what's in FBI files? I would hate to think mine could be dropped out if somebody wants to put pressure on me. That's illegal. When I was in the White House, I thought this was a pretty good thing. I put out an FBI file. I thought it was justified. Now it horrifies me. So I think I'm speaking as a Christian.

How did Watergate change you?

Well, I've written books about that. Watergate changed me in the sense that I realize that the power that you think is so awesome when you're in government is very shallow. It changed me in the sense that my life has been totally redirected because, being in the middle of the Watergate crisis, I came to Christ. I now have a passion for serving "the least of these" in society. I see the world differently.

In my new book, The Good Life, I write about how Watergate has changed my perspective. But also I talk about integrity being the ultimate quality that you're looking for. And integrity means embracing the truth. It means finding what is true and just and good and doing it. You'll never live the good life apart from the pursuit of truth. To be the second-ranking official in the FBI sneaking around at night looking for flower pots on ledges and marking in The New York Times to take super-classified FBI interview forms and give them to a reporter, that is not pursuit of truth. That's not a life of integrity.

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June (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49