Amid the extensive media coverage of the revelation that former FBI official W. Mark Felt was the secret Watergate source known as Deep Throat, Charles W. Colson and G. Gordon Liddy -- former Nixon aides who served prison sentences for their involvement in the Watergate scandal -- appeared on numerous network and cable news programs, where they disparaged Felt as unethical, dishonorable, "hypocritical," and "not a hero."
But several hosts and reporters who interviewed Colson and Liddy failed to disclose Colson's and Liddy's roles in the scandal and their resulting convictions.
Both Colson and Liddy were convicted for their involvement in the Nixon White House's campaign of "dirty tricks," which Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncovered with help of information from Felt.
Colson, special counsel to President Richard Nixon from 1970 to 1973, pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice for his role in the burglary of the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, one of the many crimes linked to the Nixon administration during the Watergate investigations.
(Ellsberg was responsible for leaking the Pentagon Papers to Congress and the media.) Colson subsequently served seven months in prison in 1974.
Liddy, a former FBI agent, helped plan the burglary of the Democratic National Convention headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington while on the payroll of President Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign.
He was ultimately convicted for his role in the break-in, as well as for conspiracy in the Ellsberg case and for contempt of court. He served 4 1/2 years in prison. Cont.
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