Boys' Talk Sheds Light On Shadowy Source
By DAVID DALEY This story ran in the Hartford Courant July 28, 1999
This is, perhaps, the way one of the greatest modern secrets slips out: between precocious pre-teens talking politics at summer camp.
Chase Culeman-Beckman, a 19-year-old from Port Chester, N.Y., in an interview with The Courant, says Carl Bernstein's son, Jacob, let slip the identity of Deep Throat when the boys attended an exclusive day camp together back in 1988.
The name: W. Mark Felt.
Felt, the former associate director of the FBI, was second-in-charge of the nation's pre-eminent law enforcement agency during most of the Watergate investigation. Felt's name has long been included among the list of likely suspects to be the shadowy source who helped Washington Post reporters Bernstein and Bob Woodward unravel Watergate.
As recently as 1992, an Atlantic piece by James Mann named Felt the most likely candidate to be Woodward's secret source. Mann, in that article, says Woodward told him Deep Throat was from the FBI. In the mid-1970s, Washingtonian magazine editor Jack Limpert, in several pieces, also concluded that Felt had the information and motivation to be Deep Throat. Even President Nixon, captured on the White House taping system, wondered whether Felt was leaking.
But despite all the speculation over the years, certain to increase as the 25th anniversary of Nixon's resignation approaches on Aug. 9, Woodward, Bernstein and their editor Ben Bradlee have always refused to divulge their super source. This story - though a tale of kids at summer camp - is the first time a name has emerged from somewhere within the intimate Woodward- Bernstein-Bradlee circle.
Culeman-Beckman said the young Bernstein told him the information came straight from his dad.
``He told me, `I'm 100 percent sure that Deep Throat was Mark Felt. He's someone in the FBI,' '' Culeman-Beckman said.
There were denials from all corners Tuesday. Certainly, in Watergate lingo, there's still no smoking gun.
``No, it's not me,'' said Felt, now 86 and living in California, in a brief phone interview. ``I would have done better. I would have been more effective. Deep Throat didn't exactly bring the White House crashing down, did he?''
Bernstein laughed the story away, and said he didn't have time to call Jacob to ask him about it. ``I hate to ruin your story, but Jacob Bernstein has not a clue as to the identity of Deep Throat. Bob and I have been wise enough never to tell our wives, and we've certainly never told our children.''
Bernstein wouldn't rule out Felt as a candidate, however.
``Neither Bob nor I has engaged in any discussion beyond what we wrote in `All the President's Men,' '' Bernstein said, repeating Woodward's assertion that it's not Alexander Haig, and that they would identify the source upon his death.
``Is Mark Felt still alive?'' he asked.
The Guessing Game
So this in no way ends the great guessing game. But Culeman-Beckman's tale does add a new wrinkle to the Deep Throat mystery.
His story goes like this:
Culeman-Beckman and Bernstein's sons, Max and Jacob, became pals while attending a small,exclusive day camp in Bridgehampton, N.Y. It was the summer of 1988, and a presidential election was under way. Culeman-Beckman attended Greenwich Country Day School, an early alma mater for George Bush, the Republican nominee. Max and Jacob were young Democrats for Michael Dukakis, reared by their mother, the writer Nora Ephron, in the liberal bastion of Manhattan's Upper East Side. Chase was 8; he remembers Jacob being a year older.
So their conversation, this sunny day at the beach, turned quickly from baseball to politics.
``They were very precocious children, extremely bright. Upper East Side, private school, the works. Wise beyond their years,'' Culeman- Beckman said of the Bernstein boys. ``We were talking politics.They wanted to see Reagan out of office, and we started talking about the impeachment of the president.
``The one who told me was Jacob. It wasn't even a big idea as far as I recall. It wasn't like this intense secret. It just came out. He didn't preface it with anything. I don't know why he told me. I got the idea that at a young age, they really did not like their father.''
That afternoon, driving home with his mother, Culeman-Beckman said he'd learned about Deep Throat that day. His mom, Betsy, nearly drove off the road.
``I really thought he was going to talk about Linda Lovelace,'' she said, referring to the adult film actress. ``I had never heard the name Mark Felt before. It had no name recognition whatsoever.''
That's precisely what lends the tale credibility, says one Woodward and Bernstein detective.
``If he'd told him the name Henry Kissinger, John Dean, or even Alexander Haig, they were at least prominent public figures. Mark Felt, by 1988, was long retired and forgotten,'' said Adrian Havill, author of ``Deep Truth: The Lives of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.'' ``How the Bernstein kids would come up with that name boggles the mind.''
When Chase told his mom that he meant the Watergate source, she simply had him write down what he had been told. Though he never saw young Bernstein again, he never forgot that afternoon.
As a high school junior, Culeman- Buckman decided to research the matter himself for an advanced placement American history project at Rye Country Day School in New York. Earlier this summer, he updated his 20-page paper, and copyrighted his essay.
``I don't know which is more far- fetched,'' he said. ``For a child to be privy to such detail or to make something up like that.''
And Culeman-Beckman doesn't seem to have any apparent motivation for making the story up,either. His great love is sailing, not journalism and politics. His dad, Roger Beckman, is an executiveat Connecticut Natural Gas. He'll attend Rollins College in Florida this fall, in search of ``the endlesssummer.''
Still Speculation
Culeman-Beckman's research, like everyone else's playing this guessing game, is speculative. He notes, for instance, that in ``All the President's Men,'' Woodward refers to his secret source as ``my friend,'' and that Mark Felt's initials would match that.
Culeman-Beckman, with the advantage of having a name and working backward, pulls togetherevidence that suggests Felt had reason to leak to the Washington Post.
Nixon certainly wondered, as published transcripts of his White House tapes have shown. In an Oct. 19, 1972, meeting with chief of staff H.R. Haldeman, Felt is named as a likely leaker.
``Well, if they've got a leak down at the FBI, why can't [FBI director L. Patrick] Gray tell us what the hellis left? You know what I mean?'' Nixon said.
``We know what's left and we know who leaked it,'' Haldeman replied.
``Somebody in the FBI?''
``Yes sir,'' Haldeman said. ``Mark Felt.''
In February 1973, Nixon and aide John Dean fingered Felt again.
``The only person that knows - is aware of it - is Mark Felt, and we've talked about Mark Felt, and, uh, Iguess - ''
Nixon interrupts. ``What does it do to him, though? Let's face it. You know, suppose that Felt comesout and unwraps the whole thing? What does it do to him?''
``He can't do it,'' said Dean.
Nixon, in a response loaded with subtext considering Dean would ultimately testify against him during the Watergate hearings, said: ``But my point is: Who's going to hire him. He couldn't do it unless he had a guarantee from somebody like Time magazine saying, `Look, we'll give you a job forlife.' Then what do they do? Everybody would treat him like a pariah. The informer is not wanted in our society. Either way, that's the one thing people do sort of line up against.''
What Mark Felt Knew
Did Felt have the information that Deep Throat gave Woodward?
Indeed he did, as the No. 2 man at the FBI during the investigation. All reports from the FBI's investigative division went straight through Felt, an August 1974 Washingtonian piece reveals. Felt would have been one of the only people in Washington who could have told Woodward thatclandestine White House operative Howard Hunt played a role in planning Watergate, just days afterthe burglary. According to ``All the President's Men,'' that was one of the first pieces of information Deep Throat gave the reporters.
``The man's position in the executive branch was extremely sensitive. He had never told Woodward anything that was incorrect. It was he who advised Woodward on June 19 that Howard Hunt was definitely involved in Watergate,'' they write.
Later, they note that ``Deep Throat had access to information from the White House, Justice, the FBI, and CRP, the Committee to Re- elect the President. What he knew represented an aggregate of hard information flowing in and out of many stations.''
Exactly the kind of information a high-level FBI official would have access to, as many have concluded.
James Mann, a former Woodward colleague at the Post, noted in his influential Atlantic piece: ``FBI officials, in their investigations of Watergate, were collecting information about CRP and the White House. At the same time, they were working with prosecutors at the Justice Department and were trying to deal with, and fend off, efforts by Nixon and his aides to restrict the Watergate investigation.''
Moreover, adds Mann, who worked with Woodward on the Post's metro desk, it was widely known inside the paper that Woodward had a special source at the FBI.
In his memoir, ``The FBI Pyramid: Inside the FBI,'' Felt admits only to meeting once with Woodward. He denies being his Watergate source in the book, as well. What ``FBI Pyramid'' does make clear, however, is that Felt had a motive to leak, if he was so inclined.
As a 30-year FBI veteran, Felt had hoped to ascend to the bureau's directorship after the death of J. Edgar Hoover. But Nixon passed Felt over and appointed Gray instead, and then moved to cement White House control over the FBI and, especially, the Watergate investigation.
Days after the arrests, FBI agents believed the White House was making their investigation difficult, requiring that Dean sit in on interviews with witnesses, and keeping them from necessary documents.
Already suspicious that the White House intended to use the FBI for political purposes, Felt exploded in anger after, as White House tapes later revealed, Haldeman asked the CIA to request that the FBI drop its investigation into how $89,000 from a Mexican lawyer named Miguel Ogarrio ended up in one of the burglars' bank accounts.
``Look, I told Gray,'' Felt writes in his book. ``The reputation of the FBI is at stake. We must do something about the complete lack of cooperation from John Dean and CRP. It's obvious they're holding back - delaying and leading us astray in every way they can. We expect this when we areinvestigating organized crime, but we can't sit still and accept it from the White House and CRP.''
As Mann concludes, ``For a senior FBI official like Deep Throat, talking to Woodward and the Post about Watergate was a way to fend off White House interference with the investigation. The contacts with the press guaranteed that information developed by the FBI's Watergate investigative team would not be suppressed or altered by Nixon administration officials. And, more broadly, the leaks furthered the cause of an independent FBI unfettered by political control.''
`Let The Cards Fall'
Culeman-Beckman, for his part, just hopes his contribution to the Deep Throat mystery keeps the pressure on Woodward and Bernstein to reveal their super source.
``They've been cute about it long enough,'' he said. ``I just think if it's fair of them to dethrone a president, for all intents and purposes, and not tell anyone their source, I don't see why it's not fair for a person like myself to come forward, if I am in fact privy, and bring it to light. Let the cards fall where they may. There's a chance this could be answer to one of the greatest political mysteries of our time.''
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