The founder of the Wilberforce Forum and the Centurions program, Chuck Colson, has a terrific Breakpoint article out today.
The question on the table is ... do the ends justify the means?
Colson justified his activities in Watergate because he felt the ends [getting Nixon re-elected] justified the means [Watergate break ins].
Mark Felt also used the same moral reasoning to justify leaking FBI files to the press.
Felt is being held up as a hero. But is this right? To be a moral hero, one needs to consider the means and the ends. Felt had morally upright options available to him ... yes, it would have required moral courage. Instead, he chose to do what he did.
Let's not forget about the means when it comes to moral reasoning ... otherwise, we could [in theory] rationalize just about anything.
UPDATE: From Peggy Noonan's excellent piece in the WSJ.
"Were there heroes of Watergate? Surely many unknown ones, those who did their best to be constructive and not destructive, those who didn't think it was all about their beautiful careers. I'll give you a candidate for great man of the era: Chuck Colson. Colson functioned in the Nixon White House as a genuinely bad man, went to prison and emerged a genuinely good man. He told the truth about himself in "Born Again," a book not fully appreciated as the great Washington classic it is, and has devoted his life to helping prisoners and their families. He paid the price, told the truth, blamed no one but himself, and turned his shame into something helpful. Children aren't dead because of him. There are children who are alive because of him."