Boys At Camp May Have Uncovered `Deep Throat'

This is, perhaps, the way one of the greatest modern secrets slips out: between precocious boys talking politics at summer camp.

Chase Culeman-Beckman, 19, of Port Chester, N.Y., says Carl Bernstein's son, Jacob, let slip the identity of Deep Throat when the boys attended a day camp in 1988.

The name: W. Mark Felt.

Felt, the former associate director of the FBI, was second-in-charge of the law-enforcement agency during most of the Watergate investigation. Felt's name has long been included among the list of likely suspects to have been the shadowy source who helped Washington Post reporters Bernstein and Bob Woodward unravel Watergate.

In 1992, an article by James Mann in Atlantic named Felt the most likely candidate to have been Woodward's secret source. In the mid-1970s, Washingtonian magazine editor Jack Limpert 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 information.

But despite all the speculation over the years - which is 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. The tale of boys at summer camp is the first time a name has emerged from within the 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 yesterday.

"No, it's not me," said Felt, now 86 and living in California. "I would have done better. I would have been more effective. Deep Throat didn't exactly bring the White House crashing down, did he?"

Carl Bernstein laughed the story away, and said he didn't have time to call his son 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 would not 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.

Culeman-Beckman and Bernstein's sons, Max and Jacob, became pals while attending a camp in Bridgehampton, N.Y., in 1988. Culeman-Beckman was 8; he remembers Jacob being a year older.

"The one who told me was Jacob," Culeman-Beckman said. "It wasn't even a big idea as far as I recall. It wasn't like this intense secret. It just came out."

Adrian Havill, author of "Deep Truth: The Lives of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein," said: "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. How the Bernstein kids would come up with that name boggles the mind."