Thursday, Jun 02, 2005
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Julian Borger
WASHINGTON: As it turns out, the greatest secret in American political history was blown a long time ago by an eight-year old boy at summer camp on Long Island. Deep Throat, the boy boasted to his friend, was Mark Felt, the number two at the FBI at the time of the Watergate scandal. That boy had some reason to know. He was Jacob Bernstein, the son of Carl Bernstein, who with Bob Woodward broke the Watergate story for the Washington Post. Deep Throat was Mr. Woodward's secret source — and therefore the man who helped bring down President Richard Nixon.
Wave of denials
Eleven years later, in 1999, the other boy at that summer camp, Chase Culeman Beckman, went public with the claim. The story brought a brief revival in the Deep Throat industry, only to be smothered by a wave of denials. ``My son, Jacob, has no more idea of who Deep Throat is than the man in the moon,'' Carl Bernstein said, insisting his son had simply been repeating his mother's speculation. Contacted by the press, Mr. Felt wearily repeated the denials he had been issuing for 15 years since he first surfaced as a Deep Throat suspect, and the flurry of interest died away. But behind the scenes, Jacob Bernstein's claim had triggered a chain of events that ultimately led to the confession published on Tuesday in Vanity Fair. Mr. Felt's daughter, Joan, confronted him after the summer camp story emerged, but it took seven more years of cajoling by his family before Mr. Felt agreed to allow his story to be published. His family finally convinced the FBI loyalist that he would not be seen as a traitor, but as a ``great American hero'' as his grandson, Nick Jones, put it on Tuesday. In the wake of countless scandals, exposes and inquiries, Washington is a city with few big secrets left. But until Tuesday, Deep Throat's identity was the great exception. He first appeared in Mr. Woodward and Mr. Bernstein's book on Watergate — All the President's Men — and he was brought to life in the film of the book, by the actor Hal Holbrook, as a chain-smoking and irritable presence in the shadows in the summer of 1972, guiding the young Mr. Woodward to the heart of the scandal with the famous phrase: ``Follow the money.'' It has since become the motto of investigative journalists everywhere.
Early suspect
Mark Felt was an early suspect, as he was the top official at the FBI responsible for the investigation into the burglary at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate apartment complex. The botched break-in brought to light a campaign of illegal espionage and sabotage by the Nixon White House against its opponents, and a subsequent,disastrous cover-up.— © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
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