The Watergate Scandal is the story of political corruption at the highest levels of the American government, and of the journalistic crusade that brought it to light. But it’s also a story of bureaucratic revenge, of what happens when the most powerful political leaders in the country antagonize officials in its premiere domestic intelligence agency. The latter part of the story is typically elided in retellings, precisely because of its disturbing implication that Nixon’s corrupt presidency might have survived had he read the politics of the FBI better.

FBI Director James Comey’s decision to reveal fresh details of the Bureau’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server while secretary of state, and the subsequent leaks from Bureau sources casting suspicion on Clinton and defending Republican nominee Donald Trump from allegations of Russian influence, do more than threaten the Bureau’s reputation. They threaten American democracy as much as any of Trump’s authoritarian proposals.

Felt has gone down in history as an idealist lawman radicalized by Nixon’s lawlessness rather than a disgruntled federal official, but it’s possible he was simply both. Felt joined the FBI in 1942, and so was present for the Bureau’s worst illegal excesses––the warrantless break-ins, wiretaps and spying, the surveillance of the president’s political enemies––under Hoover, its longtime director. None of this bothered Felt––he considered Hoover a hero, even defending the FBI Director’s decision to spy on and attempt to blackmail Martin Luther King Jr. with the details of King’s extramarital affairs.

It’s no coincidence that several of the men who engineered the break-in were former Hoover-era FBI agents––they had the necessary experience in black bag jobs. “You are either going to have an FBI that tries to stop violence before it happens or you are not,” Felt told Face the Nation in 1976, defending his authorization of warrantless break-ins against the Weather Underground. “I don’t say it’s not legal, I say it’s extra-legal,” he explained.

Two years later, Felt and his deputy Ed Miller were under indictment for their involvement in “extra-legal” actions, swept up the post-Watergate and post-Vietnam backlash against unrestrained executive power. He was later pardoned, along with the Watergate burglars, by President Ronald Reagan, who argued that “America was at war in 1972.” Although the Vietnam War would rage until 1975, as Weiner notes, “the FBI’s targets were not agents of foreign powers.” The pardon was warranted simply on the grounds that Felt had described in 1976: The FBI was trying to protect the country, and so anything it did was justified.

The backlash against Nixon’s lawlessness helped lead to new and crucial restraints on the powers of the federal agencies charged with national security. But in recent years, technological advances, political shifts and the popular reaction to transnational Islamist terrorism have rendered many of those restraints obsolete. On Friday, Comey announced that the the Bureau was reviewing whether emails related to the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server might be preserved on the computer belonging to the former husband of a Clinton aide. That move, coming less than two weeks before the presidential election, suggests that some at the FBI once again feel untouchable.