I Was The Target Of Illegal FBI Break-Ins Ordered by Mark Felt aka "Deep Throat"

On Tuesday the family of Mark Felt publicly said they hoped history would view him as hero for being Deep Throat.

But not everyone is praising Felt. A group of former Nixon aides are criticizing him for betraying the Nixon administration.

Former Nixon advisor Pat Buchanan says Felt was "corrupt" for revealing White House secrets.

G. Gordon Liddy also criticized Felt. Liddy organized the break-in of the Democratic National Campaign headquarters in the Watergate complex. Liddy said:

"He's certainly not a hero because a law enforcement official who obtains knowledge of a commission of a crime, has the evidence of it and who did it and so forth, is ethically obliged to go to a grand jury, bring his evidence and so forth, so an indictment can be obtained and justice can be done. He didn't do that. Instead, he selectively leaked it to a single news source."

That was G.Gordon Liddy. Liddy himself was convicted conspiracy, burglary, and illegal wiretapping in connection to Watergate. He served four and a half years in prison before having his 20 year sentence commuted by President Jimmy Carter. ??

While Felt's name will forever now be linked to helping expose the Watergate scandal, he is also connected to another dark moment in U.S. history -- the FBI's counter intelligence program known as COINTELPRO.

Under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI carried out an extensive campaign of surveillance and neutralization of political groups including the Black Panthers, American Indian Movement, the Young Lords, and Vietnam Veterans Against the War. ??

In 1980, Mark Felt -- along with Edward Miller -- became the highest ranking FBI officials to be convicted of criminal charges since Hoover became head of the agency in 1924.

The two officials were convicted by a jury of conspiring to violate the constitutional rights of American citizens for ordering FBI agents to secretly break into the homes of friends and relatives of the militant anti-war group The Weather Underground.

In September 1980, government prosecutors said in court that Felt's actions were a "violation of the rights of all people of this country, violations that cannot and will not be tolerated as long as we have a Bill of Rights." ??

Felt and Miller were later pardoned by President Ronald Reagan who credited them for bringing a "end to the terrorism that was threatening our nation." In 1983 a federal judge ordered that Felt and Millers' criminal record be swept clean. Felt and Miller were the only FBI officials convicted in connection to COINTELPRO.

Felt never denied the the break-ins but argues they were done in the name of national security. He claimed that the Weather Underground had extensive ties to foreign powers and that break-ins were part of a foreign intelligence investigation.

We are joined now in our studio by Jennifer Dohrn who was the target of FBI break-ins ordered by Felt. Her sister, Bernadine Dorhn, was a a founder of the Weather Underground and was on the run from the federal government during the 1970s. Government documents show that FBI agents repeatedly broke into Jennifer's home. In 1978 she filed a civil suit against Felt and Miller. The suit was settled in 1983 out-of-court.

* Jennifer Dohrn, sister of Weather Underground member Bernadine Dohrn. Jennifer sued Mark Felt after it was revealed that he ordered FBI agents to secretly break-in to her home as well as other associates of the Weather Underground.

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