2005-10-28T16:55:00.000-07:00

HEY, I WAS THE ONE WHO OUTED
"DEEP THROAT"!

I have often joked that the supermarket tabloids are always a few weeks ahead of the mainstream press when it comes to serving up delicious dish. In the case of the recent news about former FBI second-in-command W. Mark Felt Sr. being the mysterious Watergate source Deep Throat, the mainstream press is more than three years behind the tabs.

My name is Dawna Kaufmann, and I'm a freelance true crime reporter for the tabloids. Normally I cover murder trials and kidnapping cases, having written extensively about Scott Peterson, JonBenét Ramsey and other high-profile tragedies. But I'm also intrigued by political scandals and have investigated the Kennedy assassinations and Bill Clinton's impeachment woes. Naturally, Watergate was a fascinating area of interest to me. And as eager as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were to maintain the secret of Deep Throat's identity, I was equally resolved to finding it out.

In April 2002 I wrote a story for GLOBE entitled Deep Throat Exposed!, which was mentioned in the July 2005 Vanity Fair article about Mark Felt. While the author, John D. O'Connor did a fine job with the piece, he didn't go into enough detail about my role. Days after the story broke, a journalist for the U.K. Guardian interviewed Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, who practically made a pretzel of himself, patting his own back and citing his team's impeccable researchers. "We fact-checked this thing through alternate and overlapping sources," he boasted. "The chief fact checker had been through it dozens and dozens of times to fill in the gaps."

Well, gee, they neglected to contact me, and that goes for O'Connor as well, although he had both my phone number and email address. My GLOBE editors were also not approached. I realize why -- they knew darned well we'd scoop their story, working on a weekly paper as we do. Still O'Connor's account would have been better with my input and, in all honesty, I have such regard for the importance of the story I might have held off going to press myself just to ensure its integrity. Oh, who am I kidding?! Anyway, while I hope O'Connor wins a Pulitzer for his story, I think I should get custody of the prize at least one weekend a month.

In writing my article I had an off-the-cuff phone discussion with the senior Mr. Felt where I believe he confessed to me. Certainly he made two admissions, which were significant in giving me the comfort to go ahead with my story, and for our corporate attorneys to greenlight the piece.

Granted Mr. Felt had advanced stage dementia, as his daughter Joan made clear to me before she pleasantly handed over the phone to him. At one point Mark spoke about his dead wife Audrey as if she were still alive, and at another he mentioned living with his son, when I knew he lived with Joan. When I asked him point-blank whether he was Deep Throat he gave me the pat response he had given others over the years: "I would have been more effective. Deep Throat didn't exactly bring the White House crashing down, did he?"

In our phone talk, Felt also claimed not to remember Bob Woodward, although he said the name sounded familiar. I took that as him trying to dissuade me from asking further questions. But being a trained tabby, I decided to treat him as if he knew that I knew he was You-Know-Who, so I bluntly asked if he was Jewish. He chortled and boomed, "No, but Hoover sure thought I was!" Knowing the anti-Semitic tendencies of the FBI under the leadership of Director J. Edgar Hoover, and the Oct. 1972 audio-taped discussion between Richard Nixon and his aide Bob Haldeman where they fumfer about Felt's allegiance and religion, I could see how Felt, viewing his career glass ceiling through the prism of a misidentified faith, might have had reason for anger. Frustration, motivation; it made sense to me.

I went further and stated that I believed he was holding back the truth because he feared he might be arrested---a rational idea given his previous indictment over illegal bugging of Weather Underground suspects, for which he was later pardoned---or that he'd lose his government pension. He quietly sighed, "Yeah, I guess that's true." That's the kind of statement a trial lawyer would hop on as an admission of guilt. I just saw it as an honest expression.

Over the years there have been guesses about Deep Throat's identity, ranging from the usual suspects--Henry Kissinger, Al Haig, and Fred Fielding--to the more humorous ones--Pat Buchanan and Katharine Graham--to a composite character or a complete fantasy. John Dean has had more differing opinions than Nixon had enemies. Ex-Los Angeles Times reporter Jim Mann selected Felt in a 1992 Atlantic Monthly piece, and both Tim Noah of Slate and David Daley of the Hartford Courant confronted him in 1999. Salon even got Daley to admit he was lied to, as well as commentary and at least one mea culpa from a few experts (http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2005/06/01/DT_reax/). But no one else got the reaction from Mark that I did, perhaps because of the way I phrased my questions and the element of luck to have connected with a part of his inner memory that lacked guile.

Joan Felt told me she didn't know whether her father was the Bob Woodward-Carl Bernstein source -- she had been a hippie in Mexico, disinterested in politics, during the time when Deep Throat's secrets were shared with Woodward. She didn't even know who Woodward was, until he paid her dad a surprise visit in 1999, arriving in a limo from Sacramento to take Mark Felt out to lunch and ply him with martinis. I offered that Woodward was likely trying to determine if Felt was of sound mind enough to release him and Bernstein from their decades' long promise of silence. Now it seems that Woodward's own account has verified that he understood Felt wasn't competent and that the two Pulitzer Prizers needed to keep waiting until after the elderly man's death to reveal his identity. It was Woodward's call to make since he had been the sole contact with Deep Throat during the Watergate era, having cultivated a mentorship with Felt dating back to 1970.

To further prove what a political neophyte Joan Felt was and remains, in an email she copied me last Feb., she told O'Connor, whom I only knew was an attorney and not someone writing a magazine piece, that I had apprised her of something she didn't realize -- that there were only three individuals who knew Deep Throat's identity: Woodward, Bernstein and the Washington Post's ex-executive editor Ben Bradlee. Only recently, on CNN's Larry King Live, Woodward stated that he had also told his then-girlfriend/now-wife author Elsa Walsh, and according to the Vanity Fair piece Mark Felt, in the late 1980s, revealed himself to his ladyfriend Yvette La Garde, who then spilled the beans to her son and daughter-in-law.

Joan told me that her brother, a pilot in Florida named W. Mark Felt Jr., had their dad's notes and had read through them with the view of possibly turning out a book. But, she said, the notes weren't very informative and didn't confirm that Felt Sr. was Deep Throat. I wasn't surprised, I said, given that his 1979 autobiography, The FBI Pyramid, written after he left the Bureau and no doubt carrying some angst, was so vanilla as to be completely uninteresting and included his denial of being the provocative tattletale. It was ghost-authored by intelligence community babysitter Ralph de Toledano, who has always turned out a lot of words but few of pith. In a recent TV interview where he claimed shock that Felt was Deep Throat, de Toledano griped that he was brought in by the publisher to get the ex-Gman to impart some gossipy tidbits, but couldn't break through the grey flannel bulletproof vest. That was more indication to me that Felt, a stalwart and loyal employee even after he left with a broken heart, still didn't feel comfortable telling tales out of school. At least overtly. Obviously, he had much to reveal but apparently didn't put it in writing.

Last month it was announced the Felt family has signed a book and movie deal, the former with PublicAffairs, the latter with Tom Hanks' production company Playtone, for which the actor will likely star. Since I'm guessing there won't be a lot of juicy first-hand material for the family to use, any marketing of a project would have to include this post-revelation period of time. And that would indeed make a nifty book and/or movie -- to see this handsome character turned into a Folk Hero to most sane Americans, and a rat-fink to goofballs like G. Gordon Liddy and Chuck Colson. I'll be the first in line to read or see it. It would be especially delicious if Julia Roberts played me in the film since we are nearly doubles. (I won't run my photo here and dash this delusion.)

In my 2002 conversation with Joan, and one several months ago, I suggested that it wasn't wrong to market her dad's experience, assuming he was Deep Throat. I told her that there's a new generation to educate about her father's important place in history, and that the time to go public is now, while he can still enjoy the acclaim. When I think of Mark on the porch on May 31st, beaming and waving at reporters, knowing he probably has difficulty talking or thinking, I'm pleased for him and his whole family.

I also told Joan there could be real money in exploiting their story, and there's no shame in getting it. Since I was from the tabloids, maybe that gave my comments extra relevance. For the record though, I never paid any Felt or anyone for my GLOBE article, nor was that requested. It's just not the kind of story that warrants an open checkbook -- such payment would require Mr. Felt witnessing Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt in a tropical love nest, and hopefully taking photos. Still, when Joan gave her press conference and mentioned she had told her father that his confession could bring in funds to pay off her son's law school bills, to which he agreed, I know I was the muse for that.

My GLOBE article didn't go into heavy politics; it was just breezy background on Watergate, with the bombshell identification of Felt as Deep Throat. Mostly it focused on a then-21-year-old student sleuth named Chase Culeman-Beckman who, in 1988, claimed to have heard Felt's name from Jacob Bernstein, Carl's son with movie director Nora Ephron. Jacob had allegedly heard one of his parents drop the name. Chase's imaginative, even cinematic, speculation involving code-breaking and considerable research, was the kind of charming story our tabloid readers appreciate. Ephron has since written a piece for huffingtonpost.com (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/nora-ephron/deep-throat-and-me-now-i_1917.html) where she stated that she guessed long ago that Felt was D.T., and told everyone who asked. She insisted that Carl never confirmed or confided in her, which is more consideration than I would have given a guy who reportedly cheated on her and on whom she doesn't need to remain linked financially since she probably earns twenty bucks to his every one. I have to surmise she's telling the truth.

My story made plain---even though it's not communicated in the Vanity Fair piece---that I also had an on-the-record former FBI source, author William W. Turner, who knew Felt during their posting at the Bureau, and who wrote about him likely being Deep Throat in his 2001 book Rearview Mirror: Looking Back at the FBI, the CIA and Other 'Tails.' I also spoke with a number of other former FBI agents on background to learn the atmosphere at the Bureau at the time Felt was there and afterward, and interviewed a few authors of Watergate books and articles, one of whom thought my outing of Felt was nuts, and who really should have sent me flowers by now. I was somewhat miffed that the Vanity Fair piece hit without warning -- I would have liked to have been considered as its writer, and mentioned to Joan in 2002 and this year that I could help tell her family's story, but O'Connor spelled my name right, both first and last, which is cause for celebration. And seeing as how Woodward was also super-scooped---ouch!---I have no complaints. Woodward should have seen it coming. O'Connor's piece tells of phone conversations and emails between the Felt camp and the Washington Poster, trying to get him to partner up on the big reveal. When the topic went dry, and pitches elsewhere didn't pan out, O'Connor made the deal on his own with Vanity Fair.

Bernstein, who is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, admitted on the Larry King show that he was blindsided by O'Connor's article and rather indiscreetly disclosed that the author was paid $10,000. He also said it was unclear who owns the subsequent rights to the story. Woodward's solo-bylined book The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate's Deep Throat was released on July 6th, with a last-moment section titled A Reporter's Assessment by Carl Bernstein. I can only envision there was a "business discussion" after the CNN show in the underground parking garage, attended by Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein and a tire iron.

It could be that Woodward, who is said to be as notoriously cagey as his feebee buddy, doesn't want to share in the glory or monetary gain with the Felt family. The Village Voice's Press Clips' columnist, Sydney H. Schanberg, assessed this nicely (http://villagevoice.com/news/0525,schanberg,65146,6.html), when he wrote that Woodward's book deal was undoubtedly into seven digits, while Felt's own contracts are far more modest, and that Woodward's entire career trajectory was the result of Felt's beneficence, for whatever reason. Schanberg, who is in a good position to judge journalistic ethics and the value of book and film properties, suggests that more clarification of Woodward's financial dealings "might be a healthy thing." I would add that a tip of Bob's hat to Felt would be appropriate for someone whose tips put money into that hat.

Here's the funny part: Felt was pissed off, having spent 32 years waiting for a job he lost to an outsider he believed was unsuited for Intelligence work. L. Patrick Gray, who Nixon appointed as acting director instead, put Felt in charge of investigating who was leaking to Woodward and Bernstein. Felt kept reporting back that he couldn't find it out, and when Gray asked Felt if he were the culprit, Felt said no, and Gray not only believed him but resisted Nixon's suggestions on five occasions to polygraph Felt. So Felt was right -- Gray was unfit for duty! We'll never know Gray's view because he died (of embarrassment?) the day Woodward's book came out. I'll bet CIA superspook James Jesus Angleton figured it all out and drank and smoked himself to death at the appalling ineptitude.

Whatev -- it's been amusing watching this American flag unfurl. I've always valued Deep Throat as a true patriot, who saw an out-of-control White House and helped to rein in it. I can only hope Mark Felt's actions will inspire a modern-day whistle blower to do a similarly courageous deed and drop a dime on the current Oval Office occupants. In fact, if you're out there, gimme a call. Again, I doubt the tabloids will pay but maybe I can see to it your photo is on the page opposite Pamela Anderson's, so when you fold them together...

--Dawna Kaufmann

==================================

From GLOBE, April 23, 2002

"DEEP THROAT" EXPOSED!

It's perhaps the most enduring mystery in American history: Who was "Deep Throat"? --the code-named secret source who leaked explosive details to reporters covering the Watergate break-in during the 1970s, leading to the downfall of the scandalous Nixon administration.

Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein wrote about clandestine meetings with the shadowy Beltway insider, but vowed to keep his identity under wraps until after his death. To date, they've refused to reveal the name. And while journalists around the world have guessed at the stranger's identity, there's never been real confirmation... until now.

Thanks to a young lad's curiosity and ability to put together clues ---and recently backed by a former FBI agent--- "Deep Throat" can be identified as W. Mark Felt, the deputy associate director of the FBI, who served under legendary boss J. Edgar Hoover, but was passed up for promotion when the top G-man died.

In an exclusive interview with GLOBE, Chase Culeman-Beckman, 21, a Cornell University undergraduate, tells how he came to see Felt as the cryptic candidate. "Back in 1988, I attended a children's camp with Jacob Bernstein, Carl's son. Very nonchalantly, he said his dad had told him that 'Deep Throat' was an FBI employee named Mark Felt. It didn't mean much to me because I was so young and hadn't been born during the Watergate crisis. But I mentioned it to my mother when she came to pick me up, and she nearly drove off the road. I never saw Jacob again, but I never forgot that conversation."

Soon after, precocious Chase read his first book, the 1974 Woodward-Bernstein classic All the President's Men, which also became a movie in 1976. The book details how on June 17, 1972, five burglars broke into the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., on a mission to photograph material to help President Richard M. Nixon's re-election bid. As the investigation widened, with Deep Throat's help, Woodward and Bernstein became star reporters, exposing a trail of abuses that led right up into the Oval Office, ultimately ending with the Aug. 9, 1974, resignation of Nixon and the imprisonment of several of his close associates. Deep Throat got his nickname from a Post editor who cited a then-popular porno film.

"On the first page of chapter four," Chase says, "Woodward refers to his secret source as 'My Friend,' which has the same initials as Mark Felt. That intrigued me and over the years I gathered more details and kept working it like a puzzle. I had read that Woodward had a background in Naval Intelligence and a passion for writing cryptograms when he studied at Yale, so that kept me inspired.

"In Woodward and Bernstein's next book about Watergate, The Final Days, there was no mention of Felt or Deep Throat. I searched through the text, doing things like writing down the first letter of every chapter, running a ruler down the left- and right-hand margins of every page to find the words 'Mark Felt,' and even held up each page in the mirror to see if there was some kind of backwards clue, but I came up with nothing.

"Then one day as I was examining the book cover, it dawned on me that the first and last letters from each of the first two words in the title spelled out FELT. I began playing around with the left-over letters, and came up with the words SAY IN HAD. Rearranging those words, I came up with FELT HAD SAY IN. I added the title and it read FELT HAD SAY IN THE FINAL DAYS. I didn't know if that was coincidence, or Woodward and Bernstein's idea of an inside joke -- something where they could later say, 'It was in front of your eyes all along!'"

The young sleuth's theory got a boost when transcripts of Nixon's taped conversations with his aides were released and there were two references to Mark Felt as an FBI agent with a proclivity for press leaks. Culeman-Beckman turned his research into an advanced placement American history project, and later copyrighted it.

In 1999 there was a bit of publicity about Chase's work and Carl Bernstein was asked about it. Laughing it off, he stated that he hadn't shared the information with his then-wife, Nora Ephron, let alone their son. Mark Felt, who was then 86 and living in Connecticut, told reporters he wasn't Deep Throat, and joked that if he had been, he would have been more effective in bringing down the White House.

There the matter remained, until the recent publication of a blockbuster book called Rearview Mirror: Looking Back at the FBI, the CIA and Other 'Tails,' by ex-FBI special agent William Turner, which adds credibility to Culeman-Beckman's discovery.

"In the 1950s I served in the bureau's Seattle office with Mark Felt and later observed him as he moved up the ladder," Turner tells GLOBE. "By the '70s, he was in the number two spot under Hoover, being groomed to take over eventually. He saw the directorship as the natural culmination of his 30-year career.

"In May 1972, Hoover died and Mark expected Nixon to appoint him director. But the next month, Watergate broke, diverting Nixon's attention. Felt was effectively running the bureau, knew how it was handling the unfolding investigation, and stayed in daily contact with White House lawyer John Dean.

"Mark also used his influence to lobby his pals in the press to help him land the job, and some of his best contacts were at the Washington Post. But in 1973, Nixon's interim director William Ruckleshaus caught Felt leaking stories and forced Mark into retirement, dashing his dreams. I'm convinced he decided to settle the score by becoming Woodward and Bernstein's secret informant."

Over the decades, people played the Deep Throat guessing game, pointing the finger at Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and other Watergate-era figures, but to Turner's mind, the clues have always added up to Mark Felt. "In the book, All the President's Men, Deep Throat is described as very tall. Hoover was 5'10" and there's a photo of him standing next to Mark who seems to be about six inches taller," he says.

"And in the movie, where Woodward and Bernstein were played, respectively, by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, the Deep Throat character was played by Hal Holbrook, who looks remarkably similar to how Mark Felt looked back then -- both of them tall and thin, with a shock of silvery-gray hair. Redford, who also produced the film and was buddies with Woodward prior to the book being written, helped him focus it cinematically, so it's conceivable that Woodward had influence on the casting of the Deep Throat character."

GLOBE called Mark Felt who is now 88 and living with his adult daughter Joan in Santa Rosa, Calif. He again denied being Deep Throat but admitted he didn't remember much, including whether he knew Bob Woodward -- despite that Felt had admitted so in years gone by. Felt suffers from advanced age-related dementia, according to Joan, who says that while he has a vague recollection of being in the FBI, he can't recount details.

Joan, who's a Spanish studies professor at the Sonoma State, had two rather tantalizing tidbits, though. "About two years ago, Bob Woodward, who had been in Sacramento on business, stopped by our home unannounced, in a limo with a driver. We live a couple hours away, so it was a surprise that he showed up, but he whisked my father off to a private lunch. Dad's memory wasn't as bad then as it is now, but it still wasn't great, and I never learned what they discussed.

"Not being very politically astute, I didn't appreciate who Woodward was, or the impact of his visit, until my friends told me. Now I wish I knew more.

"I don't know if my father is Deep Throat, but I hope he is. During Watergate, I was a hippie who hated Nixon and I probably would have considered Deep Throat an American hero, if I gave it any thought.

"Whether Woodward believes my Dad is Deep Throat I also don't know, but if he does and asked to be released from his pledge of silence, I can only guess he didn't get that permission since he hasn't made a public announcement. Maybe he thought my father wasn't in his right mind to grant that request.

"Last August," continues Joan, "a reporter from the Washington Post named Ronald Kessler contacted my father. He's writing a book that should be out soon, and I expect he'll mention that some consider Dad to be Deep Throat. I doubt Dad was of much use to him.

"I suppose when Dad passes away, we'll learn the facts one way or the other. Meanwhile my brother and I are reviewing Dad's files to see if we can find anything concrete."

Turner says that if Deep Throat, or someone close to him, came forward now, there'd likely be a huge publishing deal for a "tell-all" book. "It would be a bestseller," he says. "The public is hungry to find out the truth."

Culeman-Beckman says he's pleased that recent events have seemingly corroborated his theory, but wishes Woodward and Bernstein would just come clean. "They've been cute about it long enough," he says. "If it's fair of them to dethrone a president, for all intents and purposes, and not tell anyone their source, it's fair for me to bring my research to light.

"Let the cards fall where they may. There's a chance this could be the answer to one of the greatest political mysteries of our time."

To which Bill Turner adds: "I commend Chase Culeman-Beckman for his dedication and fresh method of analysis. Maybe the FBI should hire him."

--Dawna Kaufmann

"Deep Throat," Vanity Fair and Me