Bob Woodward, acknowledging the fact that "Deep Throat" Mark Felt certainly had some issues with Richard Nixon that might have influenced his decision to assist Woodward in uncovering the details of the Watergate scandal, has said that Felt's motives don't matter. What matters, he says, is that Felt did "the right thing." CBS news anchor Bob Schieffer opined similarly on "Face the Nation," as have legions of other pundits. The motive doesn't matter; the results matter. We should judge the nature of an act by its consequences.

Ethically, that argument makes almost no sense at all. Does it matter whether Harry Truman dropped the atom bomb to end World War II, avoid a mainland Japanese invasion and save American lives, or because he wanted to fry as many Japanese babies as he could? Does it matter whether a juror votes to convict Michael Jackson because the evidence supports that verdict, or because the juror detests African-American pop stars? Of course it matters. Motive can define an act; motive can make the difference between noble conduct and misconduct.

True: the consequences of an act are the same regardless of the motives behind it. But it is also a basic ethical principle that consequences alone do not validate an act that is otherwise unethical. The rightness or wrongness of an action must be judged at the time the action is taken. Let's say that "Deep Throat's" revelations brought down Nixon's presidency, and as a direct consequence of the resulting chaos the nation was taken over by the Soviet Union. Felt did "the right thing" and it set in motion a chain of events that turned out to be disastrous. Does that mean that his actions were necessarily "wrong?" No. Unintended consequences are, as the name suggests, unpredictable. Terrible actions can end up having good results, and doing the right thing can trigger catastrophe.

Intended consequences are different. They are crucial to judging the ethical nature of conduct, and they are seldom without contradictions and impurities. Non-ethical considerations such as a desire for accolades, fame, rewards, love or power can accompany even the most laudable objectives. But this is also where motive is crucial. If the laudable objective of an act is only an incidental bi-product of conduct that is really prompted by jealousy, hatred or revenge, the act is, at its core, not an ethical one. If, on the other hand, the action in question would have been undertaken regardless of incidental non-ethical benefits to the doer, because of the doer's primary and over-arching goal was to do the right thing, then we can legitimately call the act ethical.

This analysis is critical to the question being posed ad nauseum in the press: Was Mark Felt a hero or a villain? A hero necessarily is one who makes a personal sacrifice in order to do an ethical act. A villain hurts others to benefit himself or his own interests. That question demands that we consider motive. Which did "Deep Throat" want to accomplish: the destruction of a superior who had by-passed him for an appointment he felt he deserved, or the elimination of "a cancer on the presidency?"

The answer is quite possibly both, in relative proportions that nobody but Mark Felt, and probably not even he, can determine. That would mean that "Deep Throat" was neither a hero nor a villain, but just a man doing something out of the ordinary under special circumstances. We can conclude that the results of his actions benefited the country, but he only gets ethics points for that result if it was the motivating factor in prompting him to assist the Woodward and Bernstein investigation. If they were just the fortunate bi-product of a bitter bureaucrat seeking revenge by illegally leaking damaging information to the press, the Watergate revelations do no credit to Felt.

In ethics, motives matter.