College kids take stab at uncloaking 'Deep Throat'
Professor William Gaines and his students say they have narrowed the list of suspects to seven, with an inner core of four or five best bets.
They hope to reduce that number to one by June 17 — the 30th anniversary of a foiled burglary of the Democratic National Committee's headquarters in the Watergate office building in Washington that triggered the scandal.
Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, the Washington Post reporters whose dogged coverage prodded Congress into investigating Watergate, later revealed that a government official had provided tips and leads. Their editor dubbed the source "Deep Throat," after the pornographic movie, and his true identity has bedeviled political junkies ever since.
As the anniversary nears, interest in the mystery has been increasing. Former White House counsel John Dean recently said he plans to publish an electronic book in which he will reveal his theory.
This will be Dean's third try. In 1975, he said Deep Throat was Earl Silbert, one of the original Watergate prosecutors, and seven years later he named Alexander Haig, Nixon's former chief of staff. Other suspects have included former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, various FBI officials, Dean himself — even TV journalist Diane Sawyer, once a White House press aide.
Everyone denies it.
Meanwhile, Gaines has been subjecting the question to the tried and true but labor-intensive methods of investigative reporting, poring over tens of thousands of pages of contemporary documents and entering reams of information into an electronic database.
For the student investigators, the work has been demanding, but also a welcome relief from the usual run of journalism classes.
"This is the first course I've felt passionate about," Justin Sacher said. "It's the reason I got into journalism, not to take courses in where the commas go."
Bernstein and Woodward have declined to identify Deep Throat until he is dead or gives permission — a stance Woodward reiterated when Gaines' team attempted to interview him: "Tell the students that a good investigative reporter protects his sources."
Deep Throat has been Gaines' staple seminar subject ever since the Pulitzer Prize-winning former Chicago Tribune investigative reporter began teaching three years ago.
"At first, we chased down a lot of naive leads," said Gaines, adding that he had intuitively suspected Bob Dole, a U.S. senator at the time of Watergate.
That thesis was proved untenable by a passage in Bernstein and Woodward's book "All the President's Men" that identified Deep Throat as a member of the executive branch.
Gaines and the students then scrutinized the book further, making a database entry for every time Woodward reported a meeting with Deep Throat.
That made it possible to eliminate many traditional suspects, including Kissinger, who was at a meeting in Paris on one occasion when Woodward said he met with Deep Throat.
Finally, Gaines and his students came across a revelation. Reviewing the Post's coverage of Watergate, they came across a story published Nov. 8, 1973, that attributed certain facts to "White House sources."
Recalling the incident in their book, Bernstein and Woodward cited Deep Throat as bringing them that same information.
"That narrowed the suspect pool from the whole executive branch to 72 top White House officials with access to the range of information Deep Throat had," Gaines said.
He and his students further reduced the list on geographical considerations.
Woodward and his source had an arrangement that when the reporter wanted to talk, he would move a flag on the balcony of his Washington apartment. Conversely, when Deep Throat wanted a meeting, he would mark a certain page in Woodward's newspaper, delivered to his building's lobby each morning.
"I went to Washington to see where Woodward lived in 1972," Gaines said. "It's a very congested neighborhood, with no place to park a car."
Gaines and his students reasoned Deep Throat had to live within walking distance of Woodward.
Seminar members also have been mining the few clues to Deep Throat's personality to be found in the reporters' book. They have contacted several of Nixon's aides, most notably Dean, quizzing them about the habits and foibles of their White House contemporaries.
Bernstein and Woodward said their source smoked and drank scotch. Deep Throat also was out and about at all hours, leading Gaines and his students to surmise that their prey must have been single or divorced at the time.
Seminar members have been slowly filling in personality-profile forms for the remaining suspects, whose names Gaines is reluctant to reveal before the research is completed. Suspects receive extra points, as it were, for certain characteristics, such as a law degree.
"In the book, Deep Throat talks like a lawyer," Gaines said.
Then there is the issue of height. Woodward and Deep Throat met in a garage, and once, when the reporter was late, Deep Throat left a message for him on a high shelf. Woodward, who is of above-average height, said he had to be on his tiptoes to reach it.
Which is why everyone in a recent seminar meeting perked up when one student pointed to a computer screen displaying biographical information about a suspect he has been tracing.
"Look at this!" he said. "My guy got a college scholarship to play basketball."