Anti-hero is probably more like it. Did he talk to and direct Woodward & Bernstein("Follow the money!") because of duty to country or because he knew Nixon and Co. were aggressively stamping out the FBI's Hoover era autonomy?
Cut and pasted from today's Post: "He chased down lawbreakers of all kinds, using whatever means were available to the bureau, and was convicted in 1980 of authorizing illegal break-ins -- black-bag jobs, as they were known -- of friends of members of the Weather Underground. He was later pardoned by President Ronald Reagan."