One wonders what went through the mind of Felt, when, on trial in Manhattan in 1980 for those FBI black-bag jobs against the Weather Underground that had bombed the Pentagon and Capitol, ex-President Nixon walked into the courtroom to testify in Felt's defense?

When Felt was convicted, Ronald Reagan pardoned him, declaring that if the Carter amnesty was proper for those who had defected to Canada rather than serve in Vietnam, it was right to pardon those who risked their careers to protect the nation.

After exposure as Deep Throat, Felt wrote in a 2006 memoir, "The bottom line is that we did get the whole truth out, but isn't that what the FBI is suppose to do?"

No, Mr. Felt, that is not what the FBI is supposed to do.

Do we really want, here in America, our premier investigative and police agency to get the truth out that it decides to get out?

Would it have been right for Hoover to get the "whole truth out" on JFK's liaisons with suspected German spies, Mafia molls and Marilyn Monroe, and destroy his presidency? Would it have been right for the FBI to get the "whole truth out" of Hoover's secret files, and ruin all the public careers the FBI could have destroyed?

Isn't that what the old KGB did to its enemies?

In the early '60s, Robert Kennedy authorized Hoover to bug and tap Dr. Martin Luther King. When the FBI turned up film of King with loose women, LBJ's White House moved the photos to the Washington press.

Felt knew of this. The Post knew of this. The Washington press corps knew of this. Why didn't Felt and the Post blow the whistle on this squalid deed? Was it not so egregious as sending pizzas to Muskie's rally?

In that Scoundrel Time, the liberal establishment -- the press, the politicians and the police bureaucrats -- colluded to destroy Nixon, even as they covered for JFK and LBJ.

Nixon, you see, was not one of them. Is it not always thus?