Only four people know the secret identity of Deep Throat, Bob Woodward’s mysterious Watergate informant. And they're not telling.

HISTORY’S MYSTERY
More than 30 years ago five burglars were caught breaking into the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. Two years of investigations and Senate hearings lead to more than 40 criminal convictions, and the resignation of President Richard Nixon. The scandal and its cast of characters has become part of American history. But one character in particular continues to intrigue the public: the mysterious Deep Throat.

BUNGLED BURGLARY
A fledgling Washington Post reporter on the night shift named Bob Woodward was assigned to cover the break-in which happened in the early morning hours of June 17, 1972. It looked like a routine burglary. But at the arraignment, when Woodward heard one of the men arrested admit he worked for the CIA, Woodward realized the bungled burglary was probably not routine after all. It was a story that would make Woodward famous, and change the political landscape of America.

Over the next two years Woodward, and his partner Carl Bernstein, wrote some 400 Watergate-related stories which implicated many in the Nixon Administration, including Richard Nixon himself, in a wide-ranging attempt to cover up not only the Watergate break-in, but numerous other politically motivated dirty tricks.

SECRET SOURCE
The pair interviewed hundreds of sources and sorted through conflicting and often misleading information. But throughout the reporters investigations, Woodward claims he was guided by a mysterious informant, dubbed “Deep Throat” by Washington Post managing editor Howard Simons (a reference to an X-rated movie of that name.) As Deep Throat put it, the Watergate burglary was “just the tip of the iceberg.”

Deep Throat demanded anonymity and Woodward promised him that his identity would remain a secret as long as he was alive, or until he released Woodward from his promise. But Woodward did tell two other people—his partner Carl Bernstein, and Washington Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee. Bradlee waited until after Nixon’s resignation, then insisted that Woodward tell him Deep Throat’s identity, and Woodward did. Ever since, those four p

eople—Woodward, Bernstein, Bradlee, and Deep Throat—have kept the secret safe. But that doesn’t mean we can’t join in the speculation about Deep Throat’s identity.

GUESSING GAME
In June of 2002, the 30th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, there was a renewed flurry of speculation as to the identity of Deep Throat. A journalism class at the University of Illinois, led by former Pulitzer-Prize-winning investigative journalist William Gaines, narrowed the field to seven likely candidates after extensive research.

Former White House counsel John Dean published an e-book at Salon.com which revealed his best guess after 25 years of research—a list of five. (But Dean has publicly named Deep Throat twice before, and admits he was wrong both times.)
In two books about Watergate and in numerous public appearances, Woodward has dropped some intriguing clues. The University of Illinois journalism class, Dean, and others have used these clues, as well as travel records, personality profiles, and speculation as to who knew what when, to try to solve the 30-year mystery. But first, the questions:

• Was Deep Throat someone who worked in the White House? Because of the extensive and accurate inside information Deep Throat gave Woodward about Nixon’s White House, some think he must have worked for the president. John Dean insists that only someone on the inside could have known all the information Deep Throat gave to Woodward. The university journalism class agrees.

• But the clandestine nature of the relationship between the Woodward and Deep Throat seems to suggest a skill at what the spy community calls “tradecraft,” tricks of the trade taught to CIA agents. According to Woodward, he and Deep Throat would meet in an underground parking garage. Woodward would put a flower pot with a red flag in it on the balcony of his apartment when he wanted Deep Throat to contact him. Deep Throat contacted Woodward by marking the copy of the morning New York Times delivered to Woodward’s door. Was Deep Throat CIA?

• On the other hand, much of Woodward and Bernstein’s coverage seemed to parallel the FBI’s findings, and the Bureau’s discoveries found their way into their Washington Post stories with remarkable speed. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover died just seven weeks before the Watergate break-in, and it shocked many within the Bureau when Nixon appointed an outsider, assistant attorney general L. Patrick Gray, to become the FBI’s acting director. Was a disgruntled FBI officer getting revenge on Nixon by passing classified info to Woodward? Or did Nixon misjudge Gray’s loyalty?

WHO DONE IT?
The White House? The FBI? The CIA? Here are the most cited possibilities:

Patrick Buchanan, Nixon speechwriter. Voted “most likely” by the University of Illinois journalism class, and one of the five named by John Dean, Buchanan was in a position to know all of the information Deep Throat passed on to Bob Woodward. Though he was perceived as a Nixon loyalist, the staunch right-winger was upset with Nixon for recognizing Communist China.

Ron Ziegler, Nixon press secretary. Another White House insider considered a likely candidate by John Dean, Ziegler was privy to what was going on inside the Nixon White House. According to Dean, Ziegler was in Washington on all the dates Woodward says he met with Deep Throat.

Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s secretary of state. Paradoxically Kissinger was perhaps Nixon’s closest confidant in the White House. The Jewish Kissinger seemed to tolerate Nixon’s notoriously anti-Semitic views, even endorsing them on occasion. However, Kissinger’s support for Nixon served his own quest for power; he could have used the used the Watergate debacle to take care of some personal scores.

General Alexander Haig. Haig was military aid to Henry Kissinger at the National Security Council at the time of the break-in, and later Nixon’s chief of staff. He has strongly denied that he was Deep Throat, particularly during his unsuccessful bid for the 1988 Republican presidential nomination. Uncharacteristically, Woodward confirmed that Haig was not Deep Throat. Denials aside, Haig remains, in the opinion of many, a leading Deep Throat contender because of the access he had to White House secrets.

Leonard Garment, special counsel to Richard Nixon. Garment came under suspicion because he was known to be friendly with the press corps, and before joining the Nixon team he had been a liberal Democrat. Garment not only denies he was Deep Throat, but in a recent book, In Search of Deep Throat he names his pick, John Sears.

John Sears, deputy counsel to President Nixon. Leonard Garment says he favors Sears because he fits the partial description Woodward has given of Deep Throat as being a cigarette-smoking, Scotch drinker who was fascinated by the rumors and scheming of the Nixon White House. Sears claims he didn’t know Woodward until after Watergate, and has threatened to sue Garment.

L. Patrick Gray, appointed director of the FBI by Richard Nixon. Gray has been cited by some as a prime suspect because of his access to information about both the FBI and the White House. A 1992 CBS documentary said Gray was in Washington on all the dates Woodward gives for his clandestine meetings with the informant. Gray lived just four blocks from Woodward in a building with an underground parking garage. He was an early morning jogger and could have marked Woodward’s copy of the New York Times, and on the way to work could have seen the flower pot with the red flag on Woodward’s balcony.

Gray reportedly became disillusioned with the Nixon White House as the Watergate scandal unfolded. In spite of being a Nixon appointee, Gray’s testimony in front of the Senate judiciary Committee investigating Watergate was instrumental in pointing to White House involvement in the break-in.

Mark Felt, FBI deputy associate director. In July of 1999 the Hartford Courant ran a story which quoted a 19-year-old named Chase Culeman-Beckman, who claimed Carl Bernstein’s son Jacob had told him at summer camp in 1988 that Felt was Deep Throat. Bernstein says he and Woodward never told their family members Deep Throat’s identity.

Agents in the FBI thought Felt was Deep Throat, according to former Washington Post investigative reporter Ronald Kessler in a recent book, The Bureau, The Secret History of the FBI.
Felt clearly had reason to try to influence the course of the investigation, which the Washington Post stories certainly did. He had protested White House interference, and he may have resented not being appointed FBI director after the death of J. Edgar Hoover. But in a 1979 book, The FBI Pyramid: Inside the FBI, he denied that he ever leaked information to Woodward or anyone else.

Here are some other less-likely, but possible candidates:

WHITE HOUSE INSIDERS

Jonathan Rose, White House attorney. After extensive research John Dean was virtually certain that Rose was Deep Throat—until Rose threatened to sue if Dean named him, and an unnamed source convinced Dean that Rose could not be the one.
David Gergen, Nixon speechwriter. Attended Yale the same time as Woodward, but claims he does not remember Woodward from Yale. Gergen says he had only official contact with Woodward years later when he was a White House spokesman for President Reagan.
Raymond Price, Nixon speechwriter. Like Woodward Price was an alumni of Yale.
Stephen Bull, administrative assistant to Nixon. According to the University of Illinois class, Bull had access to all the information Deep Throat told Woodward, but he has denied being the informant.
Fred Fielding, assistant to White House Counsel John Dean. In his book The Ends of Power, Nixon Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman named Fielding as a likely Deep Throat candidate.
Gerald Warren, deputy press secretary. Warren had access to much of the same information as press secretary Ron Ziegler.
Fred LaRue, Nixon aide. A staunch Nixon defender, LaRue is considered a remote contender. LaRue denied he was Woodward’s informant and said he thought Deep Throat was a composite of several people. If his recent death does not elicit confirmation from Bob Woodward, he will leave the field of suspects slightly smaller.

FBI

Charles W. Bates, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s General Investigative Division. Woodward had cultivated an unidentified FBI source which he had used on previous stories, about Washington, D.C. police corruption, and the shooting of Alabama Governor George Wallace. Bates had authority over those investigations, as well as the Watergate break-in. However, he was reassigned to the San Francisco field office in the middle of the Watergate investigation.

Robert Kunkel, special agent in charge of the Washington field office. Kunkel worked on the Watergate investigation but is also an unlikely suspect since he was transferred to St. Louis while it was still going on.
CIA.

Robert F. Bennett, head of a CIA-affiliated public relations firm. In addition to serving clients such as Howard Hughes and the Mormon Church, the Mullen Company provided cover for CIA agents, including E. Howard Hunt, organizer of the Watergate break in. Since 1992 Bennett has been a Utah senator.

STILL A MYSTERY
In spite of the long list of Deep Throat suspects we may never know his identity. Many believe Deep Throat was a composite of several sources, or a fabrication. Bob Woodward insists that Deep Throat was real, and just one person. After Deep Throat dies, Woodward says, he will be released from his promise of secrecy. But one of the lessons of Watergate is that truth is sometimes the victim other motives.

copyright©Jim McCluskey 2002-2005

{Return to top}