The lead story in the mainstream media on Wednesday was the acknowledgement by former FBI official Mark Felt that he was "Deep Throat". The media is treating the story as one of a heroic whistleblower who exposed the illegal activities of the Nixon Whitehouse. The only criticism that has been offered in the media of Felt has come from Watergate conspirators such as G. Gordon Liddy and Charles Colson. What has been completely left out of the mainstream coverage of Felt is the fact that he was the highest ranking FBI official to be convicted of criminal charges in relation to COINTELPRO.

In September 1980, Felt, along with FBI agent Edward Miller, was 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 The Weather Underground. During the trial, government prosecutors said 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 was pardoned by President Ronald Reagan and in 1983 a federal judge ordered that Felt's criminal record be swept clean.