Watergate Scandal in the Wake of Contemporary Ethics Whistleblowing Applications

Context: The term “Watergate” has a rather ambiguous connotation for many people that can think back to the 1970’s. However, for the most part the greater number of Americans can confidently say it was a dark age for our country and its leaders. The scandal was first instigated by a group of Cuban-Americans who broke into the Watergate complex in Washington in June of 1972 under the presidential administrations knowledge. This was a constitutional crisis because it was later evident that our very own federal government (president and administration), attempted to dilute their involvement in the burglary-conspiracy. With that knowledge, Mr. Nixon could discreetly push for political gain for re-election. This misconduct led to the discovery of the U.S.’s federal government affiliation and inevitably shed light to their apt sense for abusing their power for the worse. Nixon even tried to ensue multiple cover-ups. Mark Felt, otherwise known as “Deep Throat”, refused to let that happen and released information to the press confidentially, and thereby felt obliged to blow his whistle at the Nixon administration’s manipulation of power. In this analysis, we will dive into the severity of the problem at hand, and how Mr. Felt took a justifiable approach to reprimand and spotlight Nixon and his confidants ethical wrongdoing.

Severity of Scandal: First and foremost, from a societal standpoint this scandal was and still is an extremely genuine issue. Despite that most whistle blowing cases occur through negligence of violations of lawfully protected environmental and safety regulations, this was the first instance that showed they can occur in modern political agenda. The main justification for this whistleblowing was that it involved multiple elite members of society that with their job, possess substantial amounts of control. In other words, much like in our CI method, we wouldn’t appreciate if all members of the federal government were to utilize their power for political gain and in-turn manipulate the peoples’ knowledge or perspectives. Especially the president. In the CI scope of perspective for Mark, it’s also okay to assume that people would at least take some form of anticipative action to prevent Nixon from continuing to use his power for the corrupt.

Ethical Justifications: Unfortunately, because the entire scandal was a complex ordeal that lasted years to adjudicate the parties involved, it was obvious that Mark Felt, believed that there were potentially no other alternatives to solving this conflict internally. He was an FBI agent and was doing his job. Plus, he only had so many political facets to work through. Not to mention, that being an agent of the FBI strictly calls for professional courtesies and boundaries. Boundaries that are set forth to prevent any individual from relinquishing classified, judicial evidence. In fact, all agents are directly told that it is a fiduciary duty to uphold the law but to do so with secrecy. Therefore, Mark’s call to stir knowledge and discussion about Watergate put him in a conflict of interest. What comes first and foremost is Marks respective personal motives or morals that can justify this interest conflict. He had the capability to release information in which he knew for a fact that the government and president was behind something that they shouldn’t be. If it weren’t for him, powerful criminals would get the pleasure of free-riding consequences through their ample resources to pull off a cover up.