Somewhat surprising in the hullabaloo surrounding W. Mark Felt's outing as Deep Throat has been that not one outlet I've scanned has yet brought up the fact that Felt was previously outed six years ago in the Hartford Courant by a former playmate of Carl Bernstein's son.
As Timothy Noah reported in Slate at the time, the then-19 year old Chase Culeman-Beckman had met Jacob Bernstein at summer camp in 1988, when the pair were just eight years old, and that the younger Bernstein reported with 100% certainty that Felt was Throat.
I was in the "Herons" group along with about fifteen other 8, 9, and 10 year olds ... One Friday in July we went on a trip to Long Beach, Sag Harbor, and Jacob, Max and I ended up sitting in the sand precociously talking about politics. It was an election year and I was in favor of George Bush because he had gone to the Greenwich Country Day School where I was attending, while Jacob and Max were for Michael Dukakis, although I do not remember why. At some point, the conversation turned to Nixon and Watergate ... which I knew little, if nothing, about. During the conversation Jacob told me: "Deep Throat was Mark Felt, he's someone in the FBI. I'm 100% sure."
But as a separate Salon piece of the time points out, Culeman-Beckman was more than just a second hand gossip. He also seized upon a very simple -- and in retrospect, obvious -- clue to Throat's identity: that Woodward had always referred to his source as "My Friend." Initials -- M.F., the same as Mark Felt.
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