With all of the brouhaha about Mark Felt’s revelation that he was the famous “Deep Throat”, it’s also worth pointing out that Mark Felt was involved in the Cointelpro program which targeted radical groups with illegal surveillance, illegal break-ins and deliberate undercover disruption that included acts of terrorism.

Mark Felt was the Deep Throat who helped break the Watergate story, but he was also deep into a variety of illegal activities that no doubt touched the lives of UM campus activists.

University of Maryland (UM) and Montgomery College(MC) activists actually played a couple of small roles in the Watergate investigation through the publishing of the Spark newspaper.

The Spark helped expose the fact that Watergate burglar James McCord also taught classes in “industrial security” at Montgomery College. McCord had recruited at least one MC student to help break into the office of presidential candidate George McGovern, although the student reportedly chickened out. Spark also picked up persistant rumors that other MC students had worked for McCord, but was unable to confirm this.

Craig and Bob Simpson had a cousin who was working for the Senate Watergate Committee at the time and shared the results of the Spark investigation with her. They also helped to set up a meeting between her and Tim Butz.

Tim Butz was a Viet Nam veteran with an army intelligence background who then worked for a group called Counterspy. Counterspy was made up ex-US intelligence people who had come over to our side.

Counterspy had discovered how the Nixon people had hired rightwing college students to spy on peace groups and perform various dirty tricks against them. One of these “tricks” included setting up some Quakers for a drug bust.

Tim Butz also took the results of his investigation to Post reporter Bob Woodward. You can find a brief summary of this in Woodward and Bernstein’s book All the President’s Men.