Digging Up 'Deepthroat'

It's one of the most enduring political mysteries of the Beltway: Who ratted out Nixon for Watergate? The author's of the expose that led to the premature ejection from office of President 'Tricky Dick,' Woodward and Bernstein have honoured their source's anonymity and remained silent, but some things you can't keep buried. -ape GHWB is Deep Throat?

2/4/2005 11:14:55 AM From ADRIAN HAVILL: In my 1993 biography of Woodward and Bernstein, "Deep Truth," I argued that Deep Throat had to be a composite portrayal. No more. Yesterday's unveiling of Woodstein's [Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein] notes at the University of Texas is an appropriate time to let Poynter's readers know -- based on recent events and my own research at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland -- who I believe DT is and why. He's not one of the nearly 100 suspects who've already been named -- either by the University of Illinois investigative team or dozens of other Watergate scholars and experts. Certainly nearly everyone who reads Poynter was mystified when George W. Bush -- a President who arguably hates the press -- gave Bob Woodward seven hours of interviews which became the core of two best-selling and largely laudatory books. He also urged his cabinet to cooperate with Woodward and many did. The explanation: George Herbert Walker Bush, the president's father, is Deep Throat. Historians will immediately point out that Bush, the elder, wasn't in Washington between 1971 and 1973 but lived at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York where he was ambassador to the United Nations. Okay. But my examination of White House records at the National Archives show Bush attending many Washington state dinners and weekly cabinet meetings during that period. More importantly, he was in Washington nearly every weekend where he owned a house and where his son, Neil, attended St. Alban's prep school during the week. Seven of the eight meetings between Deep Throat and Woodward that are chronicled in "All The President's Men" take place on a weekend. Did Bush have motivation? You bet. It was Richard Nixon who urged Bush to leave a safe seat in Congress, hinting there would be a position as assistant Secretary of the Treasury waiting for him if he failed to win a Senate seat held by Ralph Yarborough. When Bush lost, Nixon reneged and asked him to take the U.N. slot instead but teased him by hinting he would be the replacement for Spiro Agnew in 1972. Instead, he was given the thankless task of heading the Republican National Committee in 1973. The elder Bush got his revenge in the end, by standing up at a cabinet meeting in August of 1974 and becoming the first person in Nixon's inner circle to ask the President to resign. How did they meet? Probably at the Pentagon where Woodward was stationed in the late 1960s. The former President made a 16-day visit to Vietnam in 1967 and briefed military brass upon his return. Certainly the two, both Yalies and both Navy men, could find common ground. Woodward claims never to have even interviewed the former President. At the same time, in his 1998 book, Shadow, he boasted that Bush had aides dropped off classified documents to his home which became the basis of a Washington Post front page story. Okay, so if Bob Woodward has never spoken to Bush 41, then why would the former President write him a chummy three-page letter in the late 1990s? The "Dear Bob" letter's 7th paragraph begins, "Watergate was your watershed. For you, it was an earthshaking event that made you a media star -- deservedly so . . ." When I presented this theory to Len Garment, a former Nixon aide, he demurred, saying that Bush wasn't the type of daredevil to skulk around in underground garages. Perhaps, but then who would have figured the former President to go skydiving in his eighties. Thus Texas may be the perfect repository for Woodstein's notes.