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Deep Throat Unmasked?; Remembering the Tsunami
Aired May 31, 2005 - 13:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CO-HOST: Deep Throat unmasked? This man claims to be the anonymous source who helped bring down the Nixon White House. We're live on the unraveling of the big mystery.
TONY HARRIS, CO-HOST: Bracing for destruction. New predictions for a heavy Atlantic hurricane season. We've got details.
PHILLIPS: The quest for immortality. Our Dr. Sanjay Gupta with the medical cutting edge for living longer.
HARRIS: From the CNN center in Atlanta, I'm Tony Harris, in for Miles O'Brien.
PHILLIPS: And I'm Kyra Phillips. CNN's LIVE FROM starts right now.
HARRIS: Could it be one of the most intriguing, most enduring, most inscrutable mysteries of the 20th Century solved at last? So we're led to believe.
"Vanity Fair" reports a 91-year-old former FBI official, W. Mark Felt, claimed he was Deep Throat, the shadowy source of the leaks that uncovered Watergate and doomed the Nixon presidency.
Felt supposedly confided to a lawyer friend in 2002, having kept his secret, even from his family, for decades.
But don't look to Woodstein for confirmation. The beneficiaries of Deep Throat's insights have sworn to keep their mouths shut until the person dies.
Says Carl Bernstein, "As in the past, we're not going to say anything about this. There have been many books, articles, and speculation about the identity of the individual known as Deep Throat. We've said all along that when that person dies, we will disclose his identity and describe in context and great detail our dealings with him. With all our confidential sources, we agree not to identify them until their deaths. Nothing has changed that. No one has released us from any pledge. It is our intention not to identify Deep Throat until his death."
Helping us digest all this is CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin. And that's -- wow, Jeffrey, that is a mouthful.
First of all, there's a whole generation out there that is familiar with this story but certainly doesn't know it in terms of its context. Take us back. Turn back the hands of time, if you would, and tell us just how important a story this was.
JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: I think what you have to remember is this story broke in 1972, which was just as the Vietnam War, the American portion, was winding down.
And the country was very frustrated, and very, you know, heart broken over the failure this war and how many people thought presidents, from -- for the past 10 years, had not been straight with the American people about -- about that.
So here comes this story that in 1972, a bunch of burglars break into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate building in Washington. And bit by bit, the story starts to unravel that the cover up of that -- that burglary, of why they were there and who they were and who paid them, had been orchestrated by the president of the United States.
And the only people who pursued the story and successfully unraveled this conspiracy were Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of "The Washington Post." And the only reason they were able to do it is because of this mysterious source with the unforgettable name, Deep Throat.
HARRIS: Yes. How is it -- a couple of questions come to mind now. How is it that that was the only paper, "The Washington Post," and the only reporters to pursue this story? Did it take awhile to develop?
TOOBIN: Well, I think -- you know, here we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of CNN this week.
HARRIS: Yes.
TOOBIN: The media world was very different in 1972. There were no cable networks. The news media was more deferential to presidents than it is now. There were not hundreds if not thousands, of web sites.
And there was, I think, a certain level of disbelief that a president of the United States would be involved in something so tawdry as this kind of cover-up.
So to a degree that really seems astonishing today, Woodward and Bernstein really did have this story to themselves for a long time. And I think -- you know, a lot of us in retrospect think, well, it was inevitable that Nixon would resign two years after the burglary. Not true at all. The story at many points stalled. And it looked like there were no more revelations.
And I think two things really changed that. One was Deep Throat keeping Woodward and Bernstein on track to what was going on.
HARRIS: Yes.
TOOBIN: And the second was the emergence of the White House tapes, which no one knew about until much later in the investigation, and that's where Nixon's own words came back to haunt him.
HARRIS: Keeping in mind that we're trying to explain this story to a whole generation here who may not know it in all of its complexity, the burglary. The burglars. I've heard it described as a second, third-rate burglary.
TOOBIN: That's right.
HARRIS: What were the burglars doing? What were they trying to uncover, to learn?
TOOBIN: Well, Tony, speaking of unsolved mysteries...
HARRIS: Yes.
TOOBIN: ... one of the true unsolved mysteries, beyond the identity of Deep Throat, is what were the burglars doing there? They were burglar -- they were putting in listening devices into this office, but this office wasn't even used very much by the Democratic National Committee and its chairman, Lawrence O'Brien.
So to this day, no one knows exactly why the burglary took place. What doomed Nixon, it's not so much the burglary -- and it's never been established whether Nixon knew of the burglary in advance, but what doomed Nixon was his efforts to cover up the connections between the burglaries and the Committee to Re-Elect the President, his people. That's what doomed Nixon. It was the cover-up, not the crime.
HARRIS: Jeff, I've got to ask you, the story's being reported in "Vanity Fair." W. Mark Felt says he's Deep Throat, you know. Do we buy this? This is kind of one source reporting it -- comes from -- you see what I'm getting at?
TOOBIN: Sure, absolutely. I mean, he could -- could he be lying? Could he be not telling the truth? Frankly, it's possible. But I doubt it.
There's been a tremendous cottage industry in trying to uncover who Deep Throat was over these past 30 years. And Mark Felt has always been near the top of the list of suspects. So he is someone that -- it makes a lot of sense to have been Deep Throat. And given -- I mean, I've now read the story. The story certainly, at least to me, has the ring of truth.
HARRIS: It does? OK.
TOOBIN: So even -- even if Woodward and Bernstein are not -- are not verifying it, because they have not been authorized to by Felt, presumably, it certainly does have the ring of truth. And I think this mystery really is solved.
HARRIS: Well, OK, Jeffrey Toobin, we appreciate it. Thanks for the time.
TOOBIN: OK, Tony. See you. HARRIS: Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Well, among the journalists who didn't have Deep Throat to turn to but who stayed on the story start to finish, Jack Nelson. He's D.C. bureau chief for "The Los Angeles Times." He joins me now on the phone.
Jack, before I get to Barry Sussman and your beliefs with regard to just the importance that Mark Felt played during this time, when you were with the "L.A. Times" during the Watergate scandal, were you wishing that you did have someone like Deep Throat or a source like that, talking to "The L.A. Times," or did you have sources that you felt were just as good?
JACK NELSON, FORMER "L.A. TIMES" REPORTER: Well, we had sources. If you talk about whether "just as good" you have to -- that's conceding that Deep Throat was all that good a source. And I don't necessarily buy that.
But the fact was -- and I'm a great admirer of Jeffrey Toobin. Woodward and Bernstein and the "Washington Post" did one hell of a job uncovering Watergate. There's no question about that.
But there were other stories -- there were other papers digging on that story. And one of them was "The Los Angeles Times." And it was myself and Ron Ostro and Bob Jackson. And we stayed on that story.
It just happened that these two young guys got out there and knocked on more doors than we did and happened to break more stories than we did. But there were other stories. "TIME" magazine, "Newsweek" did some stories on it, "Chicago Tribune." There were other papers that were after the story. It was just that these guys got out there and got in front of it.
But let's get back, though, to -- to Deep Throat. Jerry -- Jeffrey Toobin seems to accept it as a fact that he was a very important source.
PHILLIPS: But you disagree with that right, Jack?
NELSON: Well, I do -- I do disagree with it. And I disagree with it mainly because Barry Sussman, who was the editor in charge of the Watergate coverage, and he knew everything that was going on. He wrote something in 1997, on the 25th anniversary of the Watergate break-in. He wrote something that he put on the Internet.
And he said this -- he said he gets asked this question all the time, who is Deep Throat? He said, "That's the power of the myth. Over the years, an anonymous, bit player, a minor contributor, has become a giant." And he said, "The fact is that, whoever this was, whether it was Mark Felt or whoever it was," he said just did not have that much of importance in covering the -- in uncovering the whole Watergate scandal.
Now, so you ask, how did this myth get perpetuated? PHILLIPS: Well, probably the movie "All the President's Men," right? That's what kept it going.
NELSON: "All the President's Men." That's exactly right. Until that -- until that movie, you didn't hear anything about a Deep Throat. And I think it was a dramatic device, and I think it played right into the whole thing of this big myth.
You know, Bradley, Ben Bradley, the editor, and Bob Woodward both have said, of course, that they're never going to say who he was and everything, but Barry Sussman makes this point. He says that the "Post" editors routinely knew who the sources were.
But he said one day, about three months after the break in, Woodward came to him with a relatively minor story with an unusual request: "Said he'd tell me who the source was if I really wanted to know, but in this instance he would rather not." He said, "I had no problem with that." But to my recollection, that was the start of the Deep Throat Watergate involvement.
PHILLIPS: So Jack, if we talk about this myth of Deep Throat, like you say Barry Sussman writes about, the more importance -- I guess the greater importance of Deep Throat, do you think that the achievement of Woodward and Bernstein was sort of lessened by this? And other reporters like you and Ostro and others for "The L.A. Times"?
NELSON: Well, that's sort of interesting. That's the point that Sussman makes, that if it was true that Deep Throat was all this important, just feeding information to Woodward, then maybe what they did was not so important.
But he denies that. He said what Woodward and Bernstein did was just great reporting and that there was no single source like that. And he makes a very good case for it, I think.
He also said, you know, suppose Deep Throat was important as the myth has it. Does anyone believe for a minute that Bradley, not exactly a shrinking violet, would have been content to sit in the dark, while Nixon hater used to dive bomb and strike the White House very few days (ph)?
He said one thing about it was Deep Throat was very important, would Bradley wait until long after the last Watergate headline was written to get -- to find out his name. He claims it wasn't until '75 he found out his name. He said that would be stupid, wouldn't it? Bradley has his share of critics but I haven't heard anyone say he's stupid.
PHILLIPS: Good point. And also in '99, Felt even came forward and gave a quote to the Hartford paper, "I would have done better, if indeed, I were Deep Throat. I would have been more effective. Deep Throat didn't exactly bring the White House crashing down, did he?" Interesting point.
But let me, Jack, finally, ask you this: Woodward and Bernstein still saying they're not going to come forward and confirm that Mark Felt, indeed, is Deep Throat. Do you find that interesting?
NELSON: Well, I find it's very interesting that both these journalists who were intimately involved in this story, which their own editor says created this myth, are not willing to go on the record on it. I find that extremely interesting.
I also think it's interesting that Sussman made one other point. He said "The Post" managing editor at the time, Howard Simons, the driving force behind the Watergate coverage, never asked who Deep Throat was. Neither did a third editor, Harry Rosenfeld. They didn't ask for the same reason that he didn't ask. It's because Deep Throat was basically unimportant to our coverage. Now, that's what Barry Sussman, the Watergate editor said, and I think he makes a strong case.
PHILLIPS: Jack Nelson, working that story for the "L.A. Times." Continues to work that story. Thanks for your time, Jack.
NELSON: Okey-doke.
PHILLIPS: All right.
HARRIS: Just a bit of a quick recap here. "Vanity Fair" is reporting that a 91-year-old former FBI official, W. Mark Felt, is claiming that he was Deep Throat, as you know, the shadowy source of the links that uncovered Watergate and doomed the Nixon presidency.
We're working the story from all angles and bringing to CNN all of the people who were working the story and covering it and involved in it intricately at the time. One of those people, Leonard Garment, who was a presidential lawyer during the Nixon White House. And Leonard is on the phone with us.
Leonard, good to talk to you.
LEONARD GARMENT, FORMER PRESIDENTIAL LAWYER: Hello?
HARRIS: Leonard, are you there?
GARMENT: Yes, I'm here.
HARRIS: Good to talk to you. You were intricately involved in all of this at the time. And for a lot of year after the story broke, you were, am I correct in saying, considered as a possible person who was, in fact, Deep Throat?
GARMENT: A number of people were, including me.
HARRIS: Yes.
GARMENT: But I made clear from the beginning that it was not me.
HARRIS: So what...
GARMENT: And now -- and now, if this story is correct, it confirms the fact that I was not Deep Throat. HARRIS: It would. But Leonard, you raised the question. Do you believe the reporting that's being done by "Vanity Fair," that W. Mark Felt is...
GARMENT: I don't know.
HARRIS: What do you think?
GARMENT: I just don't know. I mean, "Vanity Fair" is a large, well resourced publication. I'm sure they've done a capital job. I haven't seen the story. All I know is what's reported very generally.
Mark Felt is a credible candidate for Deep Throat. He always was. He was one of my candidates in the book that I wrote.
HARRIS: That's true.
GARMENT: Kind of a runner-up to the one that I selected. But you know, close, but no cigar. And he sort of -- he fits -- but we still don't know. A number of people would fit the profile of Deep Throat. It remains for Woodward and Bernstein and/or Deep Throat himself to confirm.
HARRIS: Leonard, explain to us why -- and you mentioned it in the reporting that you did for your own book on this subject, why is Felt a credible Deep Throat?
GARMENT: Well, he was -- I forget exactly what, deputy associate attorney, director of the FBI. He had access -- the FBI did -- to all the information that was being developed in the Watergate investigation.
He had his own personal motivation, along with the bureau motivation, his motivation, being that he had -- I think -- expected to be named director of the FBI. And then instead Pat Gray was named. And Pat Gray himself was not a very popular figure within the FBI. The FBI itself was not very happy about the White House, in particular, the Nixon White House.
So there were many reasons why -- and there would have been this desire to make this information available, and to move this story along, and Mark Felt would fit that particular pattern. And other persons would fit the profile.
The most interesting thing to me was a -- was a letter that I received in 1999 when I was writing my own speculative book, from a young man named Chase Coleman Beckman (ph), who said that he knew who Deep Throat was.
And after some back and forth, sent me a memorandum, explaining -- stating his conclusions, his reasons. He thought it was Mark Felt. And he said that his source was Carl Bernstein's son, who was a camp mate of his. They rode the bus together at camp. And they were at camp together. And one day Carl Bernstein's son told him that it was a man named Mark Felt. And he always remembered that. Carl Bernstein himself said that that wasn't right, that he probably got that from -- from Nora Ephron, Mrs. Bernstein, and she didn't know who Deep Throat was. So the story dissolved. But the young man had it right, if, indeed, the story's confirmed.
That's about all I have to say.
HARRIS: Well, we appreciate that, Leonard. Perfect timing.
GARMENT: Thank you. Bye.
HARRIS: Leonard Garment, we appreciate it, thank you.
PHILLIPS: Straight ahead, it was one of the biggest disasters in recorded history, the Asian tsunami. Just ahead on LIVE FROM, three of the reporters who covered that event bring you their most memorable moment.
And also ahead, twisted kids show off their skills. How do they do that? We're getting flexible, later on LIVE FROM.
HARRIS: Speak for yourself.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIPS: Well, it's been five months since the monster tsunami battered parts of Southern Asia, leaving some 200,000 people dead and many more homeless. The event was one of the most devastating of our time and certainly one of the most memorable, as we look back at 25 years of history right here at CNN.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh my god!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That wave, it's a good 15, 20 feet tall, easy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get in! Get in! Get in!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This story was just massive. It was huge. It hit you on every level: emotional, physical, mental. And a big part of that were the kids.
SUHASINI HAIDAR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: These are children who are terrified, who have seen some horrific scenes. And the tragedy is that they will carry these with them all their lives.
I think at times like this, neutrality does get blurred, because on stories as big as this one, there's no question whose side you're on. Your job seems very hard to do. You just want to forget the story, put the camera down and go comfort these parents.
STAN GRANT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We came across a group of bodies in the distance. And from where I stood, I could see that they were children. No more than babies, really. And as you got closer, I saw that their arms were locked around each other. Somehow, these three little kids had hung together, hung together and died together.
And at those moments, you stop being a reporter. The tools of our trade, the objectivity and the distance that we need to be able to do our job effectively in most cases desert you. Being a reporter just doesn't cut it any more.
I remember standing there, looking at it, and I couldn't help think about my own children, because I have three little boys of my own.
ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We talked to children who are just shattered. It's -- the only thing they can talk about is what happened to them. They can't talk about anything else. And they -- they just stare at you or cry and just tell you over and over again how they managed to survive. And many of them don't remember how they survived.
The other surprising thing about children, of course, they really are very resilient. In the face of all of this devastation, they still have managed to smile.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PHILLIPS: But even television could not begin to convey the suffering of the people of South Asia. The screen was simply not big enough. That's actually taken from a book we're going to tell you about in a minute.
However, three of CNN's top international journalists did everything humanely possible to show that the world what happened. Atika Shubert, Aneesh Raman, they now join me, along with our Satinder Bindra.
And where did that quote from the top of the intro come from? Well, Satinder's book. He just published it: "Tsunami: Seven Hours that Shook the World."
So wonderful to have you guys here, safe and sound. That is for sure.
Satinder, a moment in your book, as we were reading through it, there are so many personal account of covering the tsunami. But the one moment we seem to remember the most was when you were trying to head to part of the region. You had no resources. It was absolutely crazy. You were so frustrated you ran out the street and you flagged down a van.
Tell us what happened at that point.
SATINDER BINDRA, AUTHOR, "TSUNAMI": Well, I did more than flag it down. Because when I tried to stop other car, people had other things on their mind, you know, so many thousands of people dead. And they just sped by.
So I walked right in the middle of the street, spread my arms wide, and this van screeched to a halt. I quickly opened the side door and went right in, and this family was petrified. They thought this was a carjacking. And I quickly pull out my CNN I.D. And I said, "Please, I need your help."
And surprises of the surprises, they said, "Yes, you're a guest in our country. We'll drive you anywhere you need."
PHILLIPS: Absolutely amazing. So you made it to your live shot, and you were able to start covering the disaster.
BINDRA: Yes, and that was really important, because we landed with equipment that needed to be powered up from a car, so we needed a car battery. And we needed other equipment that had to be charged from the car itself.
So they were very kind. They stood in the blazing sun for hours on end, this family, and they helped us. And that's how the first picture of Galle (ph) really got out. That's how we could tell people of this terrible train tragedy there, as well, in which more than 1,000 people have been killed.
PHILLIPS: And you talk about the thousands and thousands of people that were killed. All three of you have incredibly memorable moments, not only of the disaster but of the characters and the people that you met and the stories that you told.
Atika, tell us about Uda (ph).
SHUBERT: Uda (ph) was a young boy. He was about 8 years old. And we met him on the third day after the disaster.
We went to a hospital in the middle of Banda Aceh, which was -- almost half the city was wiped away by the tsunami. And in the middle of this hospital, there were scores of people dead, dying, and extremely ill.
In the middle of all this was Uda (ph). He was a young boy, sitting there, crying. He was holding his eye. And we tried to talk to him. All he could talk about was the water. He didn't even remember how he got to the hospital.
And he'd been adopted by two women who were there separately, who didn't know who he was, but they found him crying at the morgue. So they simply adapted him, made him a part of their family.
And he was one of many characters through which we tried to tell the story of the tsunami. Because it was just such a huge disaster, that the only way we could really tell it was by focusing on these individual characters...
PHILLIPS: And their stories...
SHUBERT: ... telling their stories of what happened to them.
PHILLIPS: Do you know, by chance, what happened to Uda (ph) and where he is now? SHUBERT: No, I don't. And we've tried -- tried to track him down and find out through the people that were at the hospital. We did find that he did leave with those two women. And we understand that he was safe and that he was healthy. We're still trying to find out exactly where he is. He has not found his parents, so far as we know.
PHILLIPS: All right. We're going to wait for the follow up on that one, OK?
Aneesh, Hanna Chi (ph), somebody that has not left your mind.
ANEESH RAMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: She embodied New York. She was this 25-year-old child of Chinese immigrants. It was on Phi Phi Island. It was her first Christmas away from home.
And her parents we met after they had spent the week searching monastery after monastery, looking at picture after picture of just dead bodies and sitting with them the night that they found her, the night that they recognized her in a picture is unforgettable.
To be that intimate with someone's grief, was something that they allowed because there was an anger in them, as well, that this had happened, that this had happened in 2004, that this couldn't have been prevented. And that this should be prevented in the future.
She was headed to the zenith of her life, just one of these people that I could relate to in so many ways. And to see the suffering of the parents. I think in Phuket, it was just so viscerally emotionally. It was people who were not in their homeland, dealing with this untold tragedy.
And like Atika said, the first few days was just this black hole of devastation, endless in its scope. And each of these individual stories just was gut-wrenching. And for those of us who were there, I think it was this -- this sense of importance to tell the world about Hanna Chi (ph), to tell the world about what had happened there and really bring home the specifics of who was affected.
PHILLIPS: And we'll never forget Baby 81. You even write a chapter on this story in your book.
BINDRA: Well, yes, Baby 81 became a worldwide figure. On December 26, this baby was swept away from the arms of his mother and then, remarkably and miraculously, someone found this baby alive, floating on an old piece of tire.
The baby was taken to hospital, and this hospital was awash in bodies, thousands of them. So a nurse just named the baby "81" because the baby was the 81st patient to be admitted that day.
Shortly that day, as word got around the baby was in the hospital, there were no parents, eight parents started fighting for the baby. So many kids had been lost. Twelve thousand children were killed in Sri Lanka. And Baby 81 suddenly became a symbol of hope. The fighting was eventually settled in court. Baby 81 found his rightful parents. And now Baby 81 is leading a normal life. His name is Abhilash.
PHILLIPS: Abhilash. Do you know what that means?
BINDRA: Hope.
PHILLIPS: Hope.
I guess one of the final questions I have, was there ever a point that each one of you thought, "Wow, I don't think I can take this anymore?" I mean, emotionally, do you remember a point, Aneesh?
RAMAN: For me, when we were there, we were so consumed with the story and you were living it. I mean, there was no separation between those who were covering and those who were enduring the suffering.
But you're sort of working so constantly that the enormity of it really didn't sink in, to me, until the end of the first week.
There was a story I had -- I had told of a mother who had gone back to the last place that her daughter worked, which was now this sort of sea of just utter destruction. And it was four days later, and she just went there every day, sitting on this simple blanket, looking out on that emptiness, hoping that her daughter might return. And at that point, it was clear she would not.
And someone told that story back to me, a story that I had been telling to the viewers. And when they told it back to me, it actually hit home. And I broke down in the hotel room and realized what it was that I was truly saying.
Because it was easy, I think, in the throes of that moment, in the hours that we were pooling, to really lose a sense of how severe this was for people, and for their emotional states. And so that, for me, was sort of the moment where it all hit.
PHILLIPS: Yes. You know what? Unfortunately, I'm getting the wrap and I'm sitting here, so enthralled, listening to the three of you. And I know we have to move on. Can we continue talking after the newscast? And we'll have to do a part two and a part three.
And Satinder, your book is amazing. Of course, we have to plug that. And Atika Shubert, Aneesh Raman, Satinder Bindra, thank you so much. And we're big fans of all three of you, as you know.
BINDRA: Thank you.
PHILLIPS: We always love to have you on LIVE FROM. And we appreciate you being here with us today live.
SHUBERT: Thank you.
PHILLIPS: Well, June 1 marks our official 25th anniversary. That's why the three of our journalists are here. We're talking about 25 years. And Wednesday night, CNN's going to bring you a special look at the top stories that we've witnessed in the last quarter century. "DEFINING MOMENTS: 25 STORIES THAT TOUCHED OUR LIVES." That begins at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 Pacific.
And what's your most memorable news event over the last 25 years? Send us your memories and read what others had to say on our web site at CNN.com.
We'll have more LIVE FROM right after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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Aired May 31, 2005 - 13:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CO-HOST: Deep Throat unmasked? This man claims to be the anonymous source who helped bring down the Nixon White House. We're live on the unraveling of the big mystery.
TONY HARRIS, CO-HOST: Bracing for destruction. New predictions for a heavy Atlantic hurricane season. We've got details.
PHILLIPS: The quest for immortality. Our Dr. Sanjay Gupta with the medical cutting edge for living longer.
HARRIS: From the CNN center in Atlanta, I'm Tony Harris, in for Miles O'Brien.
PHILLIPS: And I'm Kyra Phillips. CNN's LIVE FROM starts right now.
HARRIS: Could it be one of the most intriguing, most enduring, most inscrutable mysteries of the 20th Century solved at last? So we're led to believe.
"Vanity Fair" reports a 91-year-old former FBI official, W. Mark Felt, claimed he was Deep Throat, the shadowy source of the leaks that uncovered Watergate and doomed the Nixon presidency.
Felt supposedly confided to a lawyer friend in 2002, having kept his secret, even from his family, for decades.
But don't look to Woodstein for confirmation. The beneficiaries of Deep Throat's insights have sworn to keep their mouths shut until the person dies.
Says Carl Bernstein, "As in the past, we're not going to say anything about this. There have been many books, articles, and speculation about the identity of the individual known as Deep Throat. We've said all along that when that person dies, we will disclose his identity and describe in context and great detail our dealings with him. With all our confidential sources, we agree not to identify them until their deaths. Nothing has changed that. No one has released us from any pledge. It is our intention not to identify Deep Throat until his death."
Helping us digest all this is CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin. And that's -- wow, Jeffrey, that is a mouthful.
First of all, there's a whole generation out there that is familiar with this story but certainly doesn't know it in terms of its context. Take us back. Turn back the hands of time, if you would, and tell us just how important a story this was.
JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: I think what you have to remember is this story broke in 1972, which was just as the Vietnam War, the American portion, was winding down.
And the country was very frustrated, and very, you know, heart broken over the failure this war and how many people thought presidents, from -- for the past 10 years, had not been straight with the American people about -- about that.
So here comes this story that in 1972, a bunch of burglars break into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate building in Washington. And bit by bit, the story starts to unravel that the cover up of that -- that burglary, of why they were there and who they were and who paid them, had been orchestrated by the president of the United States.
And the only people who pursued the story and successfully unraveled this conspiracy were Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of "The Washington Post." And the only reason they were able to do it is because of this mysterious source with the unforgettable name, Deep Throat.
HARRIS: Yes. How is it -- a couple of questions come to mind now. How is it that that was the only paper, "The Washington Post," and the only reporters to pursue this story? Did it take awhile to develop?
TOOBIN: Well, I think -- you know, here we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of CNN this week.
HARRIS: Yes.
TOOBIN: The media world was very different in 1972. There were no cable networks. The news media was more deferential to presidents than it is now. There were not hundreds if not thousands, of web sites.
And there was, I think, a certain level of disbelief that a president of the United States would be involved in something so tawdry as this kind of cover-up.
So to a degree that really seems astonishing today, Woodward and Bernstein really did have this story to themselves for a long time. And I think -- you know, a lot of us in retrospect think, well, it was inevitable that Nixon would resign two years after the burglary. Not true at all. The story at many points stalled. And it looked like there were no more revelations.
And I think two things really changed that. One was Deep Throat keeping Woodward and Bernstein on track to what was going on.
HARRIS: Yes.
TOOBIN: And the second was the emergence of the White House tapes, which no one knew about until much later in the investigation, and that's where Nixon's own words came back to haunt him.
HARRIS: Keeping in mind that we're trying to explain this story to a whole generation here who may not know it in all of its complexity, the burglary. The burglars. I've heard it described as a second, third-rate burglary.
TOOBIN: That's right.
HARRIS: What were the burglars doing? What were they trying to uncover, to learn?
TOOBIN: Well, Tony, speaking of unsolved mysteries...
HARRIS: Yes.
TOOBIN: ... one of the true unsolved mysteries, beyond the identity of Deep Throat, is what were the burglars doing there? They were burglar -- they were putting in listening devices into this office, but this office wasn't even used very much by the Democratic National Committee and its chairman, Lawrence O'Brien.
So to this day, no one knows exactly why the burglary took place. What doomed Nixon, it's not so much the burglary -- and it's never been established whether Nixon knew of the burglary in advance, but what doomed Nixon was his efforts to cover up the connections between the burglaries and the Committee to Re-Elect the President, his people. That's what doomed Nixon. It was the cover-up, not the crime.
HARRIS: Jeff, I've got to ask you, the story's being reported in "Vanity Fair." W. Mark Felt says he's Deep Throat, you know. Do we buy this? This is kind of one source reporting it -- comes from -- you see what I'm getting at?
TOOBIN: Sure, absolutely. I mean, he could -- could he be lying? Could he be not telling the truth? Frankly, it's possible. But I doubt it.
There's been a tremendous cottage industry in trying to uncover who Deep Throat was over these past 30 years. And Mark Felt has always been near the top of the list of suspects. So he is someone that -- it makes a lot of sense to have been Deep Throat. And given -- I mean, I've now read the story. The story certainly, at least to me, has the ring of truth.
HARRIS: It does? OK.
TOOBIN: So even -- even if Woodward and Bernstein are not -- are not verifying it, because they have not been authorized to by Felt, presumably, it certainly does have the ring of truth. And I think this mystery really is solved.
HARRIS: Well, OK, Jeffrey Toobin, we appreciate it. Thanks for the time.
TOOBIN: OK, Tony. See you. HARRIS: Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Well, among the journalists who didn't have Deep Throat to turn to but who stayed on the story start to finish, Jack Nelson. He's D.C. bureau chief for "The Los Angeles Times." He joins me now on the phone.
Jack, before I get to Barry Sussman and your beliefs with regard to just the importance that Mark Felt played during this time, when you were with the "L.A. Times" during the Watergate scandal, were you wishing that you did have someone like Deep Throat or a source like that, talking to "The L.A. Times," or did you have sources that you felt were just as good?
JACK NELSON, FORMER "L.A. TIMES" REPORTER: Well, we had sources. If you talk about whether "just as good" you have to -- that's conceding that Deep Throat was all that good a source. And I don't necessarily buy that.
But the fact was -- and I'm a great admirer of Jeffrey Toobin. Woodward and Bernstein and the "Washington Post" did one hell of a job uncovering Watergate. There's no question about that.
But there were other stories -- there were other papers digging on that story. And one of them was "The Los Angeles Times." And it was myself and Ron Ostro and Bob Jackson. And we stayed on that story.
It just happened that these two young guys got out there and knocked on more doors than we did and happened to break more stories than we did. But there were other stories. "TIME" magazine, "Newsweek" did some stories on it, "Chicago Tribune." There were other papers that were after the story. It was just that these guys got out there and got in front of it.
But let's get back, though, to -- to Deep Throat. Jerry -- Jeffrey Toobin seems to accept it as a fact that he was a very important source.
PHILLIPS: But you disagree with that right, Jack?
NELSON: Well, I do -- I do disagree with it. And I disagree with it mainly because Barry Sussman, who was the editor in charge of the Watergate coverage, and he knew everything that was going on. He wrote something in 1997, on the 25th anniversary of the Watergate break-in. He wrote something that he put on the Internet.
And he said this -- he said he gets asked this question all the time, who is Deep Throat? He said, "That's the power of the myth. Over the years, an anonymous, bit player, a minor contributor, has become a giant." And he said, "The fact is that, whoever this was, whether it was Mark Felt or whoever it was," he said just did not have that much of importance in covering the -- in uncovering the whole Watergate scandal.
Now, so you ask, how did this myth get perpetuated? PHILLIPS: Well, probably the movie "All the President's Men," right? That's what kept it going.
NELSON: "All the President's Men." That's exactly right. Until that -- until that movie, you didn't hear anything about a Deep Throat. And I think it was a dramatic device, and I think it played right into the whole thing of this big myth.
You know, Bradley, Ben Bradley, the editor, and Bob Woodward both have said, of course, that they're never going to say who he was and everything, but Barry Sussman makes this point. He says that the "Post" editors routinely knew who the sources were.
But he said one day, about three months after the break in, Woodward came to him with a relatively minor story with an unusual request: "Said he'd tell me who the source was if I really wanted to know, but in this instance he would rather not." He said, "I had no problem with that." But to my recollection, that was the start of the Deep Throat Watergate involvement.
PHILLIPS: So Jack, if we talk about this myth of Deep Throat, like you say Barry Sussman writes about, the more importance -- I guess the greater importance of Deep Throat, do you think that the achievement of Woodward and Bernstein was sort of lessened by this? And other reporters like you and Ostro and others for "The L.A. Times"?
NELSON: Well, that's sort of interesting. That's the point that Sussman makes, that if it was true that Deep Throat was all this important, just feeding information to Woodward, then maybe what they did was not so important.
But he denies that. He said what Woodward and Bernstein did was just great reporting and that there was no single source like that. And he makes a very good case for it, I think.
He also said, you know, suppose Deep Throat was important as the myth has it. Does anyone believe for a minute that Bradley, not exactly a shrinking violet, would have been content to sit in the dark, while Nixon hater used to dive bomb and strike the White House very few days (ph)?
He said one thing about it was Deep Throat was very important, would Bradley wait until long after the last Watergate headline was written to get -- to find out his name. He claims it wasn't until '75 he found out his name. He said that would be stupid, wouldn't it? Bradley has his share of critics but I haven't heard anyone say he's stupid.
PHILLIPS: Good point. And also in '99, Felt even came forward and gave a quote to the Hartford paper, "I would have done better, if indeed, I were Deep Throat. I would have been more effective. Deep Throat didn't exactly bring the White House crashing down, did he?" Interesting point.
But let me, Jack, finally, ask you this: Woodward and Bernstein still saying they're not going to come forward and confirm that Mark Felt, indeed, is Deep Throat. Do you find that interesting?
NELSON: Well, I find it's very interesting that both these journalists who were intimately involved in this story, which their own editor says created this myth, are not willing to go on the record on it. I find that extremely interesting.
I also think it's interesting that Sussman made one other point. He said "The Post" managing editor at the time, Howard Simons, the driving force behind the Watergate coverage, never asked who Deep Throat was. Neither did a third editor, Harry Rosenfeld. They didn't ask for the same reason that he didn't ask. It's because Deep Throat was basically unimportant to our coverage. Now, that's what Barry Sussman, the Watergate editor said, and I think he makes a strong case.
PHILLIPS: Jack Nelson, working that story for the "L.A. Times." Continues to work that story. Thanks for your time, Jack.
NELSON: Okey-doke.
PHILLIPS: All right.
HARRIS: Just a bit of a quick recap here. "Vanity Fair" is reporting that a 91-year-old former FBI official, W. Mark Felt, is claiming that he was Deep Throat, as you know, the shadowy source of the links that uncovered Watergate and doomed the Nixon presidency.
We're working the story from all angles and bringing to CNN all of the people who were working the story and covering it and involved in it intricately at the time. One of those people, Leonard Garment, who was a presidential lawyer during the Nixon White House. And Leonard is on the phone with us.
Leonard, good to talk to you.
LEONARD GARMENT, FORMER PRESIDENTIAL LAWYER: Hello?
HARRIS: Leonard, are you there?
GARMENT: Yes, I'm here.
HARRIS: Good to talk to you. You were intricately involved in all of this at the time. And for a lot of year after the story broke, you were, am I correct in saying, considered as a possible person who was, in fact, Deep Throat?
GARMENT: A number of people were, including me.
HARRIS: Yes.
GARMENT: But I made clear from the beginning that it was not me.
HARRIS: So what...
GARMENT: And now -- and now, if this story is correct, it confirms the fact that I was not Deep Throat. HARRIS: It would. But Leonard, you raised the question. Do you believe the reporting that's being done by "Vanity Fair," that W. Mark Felt is...
GARMENT: I don't know.
HARRIS: What do you think?
GARMENT: I just don't know. I mean, "Vanity Fair" is a large, well resourced publication. I'm sure they've done a capital job. I haven't seen the story. All I know is what's reported very generally.
Mark Felt is a credible candidate for Deep Throat. He always was. He was one of my candidates in the book that I wrote.
HARRIS: That's true.
GARMENT: Kind of a runner-up to the one that I selected. But you know, close, but no cigar. And he sort of -- he fits -- but we still don't know. A number of people would fit the profile of Deep Throat. It remains for Woodward and Bernstein and/or Deep Throat himself to confirm.
HARRIS: Leonard, explain to us why -- and you mentioned it in the reporting that you did for your own book on this subject, why is Felt a credible Deep Throat?
GARMENT: Well, he was -- I forget exactly what, deputy associate attorney, director of the FBI. He had access -- the FBI did -- to all the information that was being developed in the Watergate investigation.
He had his own personal motivation, along with the bureau motivation, his motivation, being that he had -- I think -- expected to be named director of the FBI. And then instead Pat Gray was named. And Pat Gray himself was not a very popular figure within the FBI. The FBI itself was not very happy about the White House, in particular, the Nixon White House.
So there were many reasons why -- and there would have been this desire to make this information available, and to move this story along, and Mark Felt would fit that particular pattern. And other persons would fit the profile.
The most interesting thing to me was a -- was a letter that I received in 1999 when I was writing my own speculative book, from a young man named Chase Coleman Beckman (ph), who said that he knew who Deep Throat was.
And after some back and forth, sent me a memorandum, explaining -- stating his conclusions, his reasons. He thought it was Mark Felt. And he said that his source was Carl Bernstein's son, who was a camp mate of his. They rode the bus together at camp. And they were at camp together. And one day Carl Bernstein's son told him that it was a man named Mark Felt. And he always remembered that. Carl Bernstein himself said that that wasn't right, that he probably got that from -- from Nora Ephron, Mrs. Bernstein, and she didn't know who Deep Throat was. So the story dissolved. But the young man had it right, if, indeed, the story's confirmed.
That's about all I have to say.
HARRIS: Well, we appreciate that, Leonard. Perfect timing.
GARMENT: Thank you. Bye.
HARRIS: Leonard Garment, we appreciate it, thank you.
PHILLIPS: Straight ahead, it was one of the biggest disasters in recorded history, the Asian tsunami. Just ahead on LIVE FROM, three of the reporters who covered that event bring you their most memorable moment.
And also ahead, twisted kids show off their skills. How do they do that? We're getting flexible, later on LIVE FROM.
HARRIS: Speak for yourself.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIPS: Well, it's been five months since the monster tsunami battered parts of Southern Asia, leaving some 200,000 people dead and many more homeless. The event was one of the most devastating of our time and certainly one of the most memorable, as we look back at 25 years of history right here at CNN.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh my god!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That wave, it's a good 15, 20 feet tall, easy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get in! Get in! Get in!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This story was just massive. It was huge. It hit you on every level: emotional, physical, mental. And a big part of that were the kids.
SUHASINI HAIDAR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: These are children who are terrified, who have seen some horrific scenes. And the tragedy is that they will carry these with them all their lives.
I think at times like this, neutrality does get blurred, because on stories as big as this one, there's no question whose side you're on. Your job seems very hard to do. You just want to forget the story, put the camera down and go comfort these parents.
STAN GRANT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We came across a group of bodies in the distance. And from where I stood, I could see that they were children. No more than babies, really. And as you got closer, I saw that their arms were locked around each other. Somehow, these three little kids had hung together, hung together and died together.
And at those moments, you stop being a reporter. The tools of our trade, the objectivity and the distance that we need to be able to do our job effectively in most cases desert you. Being a reporter just doesn't cut it any more.
I remember standing there, looking at it, and I couldn't help think about my own children, because I have three little boys of my own.
ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We talked to children who are just shattered. It's -- the only thing they can talk about is what happened to them. They can't talk about anything else. And they -- they just stare at you or cry and just tell you over and over again how they managed to survive. And many of them don't remember how they survived.
The other surprising thing about children, of course, they really are very resilient. In the face of all of this devastation, they still have managed to smile.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PHILLIPS: But even television could not begin to convey the suffering of the people of South Asia. The screen was simply not big enough. That's actually taken from a book we're going to tell you about in a minute.
However, three of CNN's top international journalists did everything humanely possible to show that the world what happened. Atika Shubert, Aneesh Raman, they now join me, along with our Satinder Bindra.
And where did that quote from the top of the intro come from? Well, Satinder's book. He just published it: "Tsunami: Seven Hours that Shook the World."
So wonderful to have you guys here, safe and sound. That is for sure.
Satinder, a moment in your book, as we were reading through it, there are so many personal account of covering the tsunami. But the one moment we seem to remember the most was when you were trying to head to part of the region. You had no resources. It was absolutely crazy. You were so frustrated you ran out the street and you flagged down a van.
Tell us what happened at that point.
SATINDER BINDRA, AUTHOR, "TSUNAMI": Well, I did more than flag it down. Because when I tried to stop other car, people had other things on their mind, you know, so many thousands of people dead. And they just sped by.
So I walked right in the middle of the street, spread my arms wide, and this van screeched to a halt. I quickly opened the side door and went right in, and this family was petrified. They thought this was a carjacking. And I quickly pull out my CNN I.D. And I said, "Please, I need your help."
And surprises of the surprises, they said, "Yes, you're a guest in our country. We'll drive you anywhere you need."
PHILLIPS: Absolutely amazing. So you made it to your live shot, and you were able to start covering the disaster.
BINDRA: Yes, and that was really important, because we landed with equipment that needed to be powered up from a car, so we needed a car battery. And we needed other equipment that had to be charged from the car itself.
So they were very kind. They stood in the blazing sun for hours on end, this family, and they helped us. And that's how the first picture of Galle (ph) really got out. That's how we could tell people of this terrible train tragedy there, as well, in which more than 1,000 people have been killed.
PHILLIPS: And you talk about the thousands and thousands of people that were killed. All three of you have incredibly memorable moments, not only of the disaster but of the characters and the people that you met and the stories that you told.
Atika, tell us about Uda (ph).
SHUBERT: Uda (ph) was a young boy. He was about 8 years old. And we met him on the third day after the disaster.
We went to a hospital in the middle of Banda Aceh, which was -- almost half the city was wiped away by the tsunami. And in the middle of this hospital, there were scores of people dead, dying, and extremely ill.
In the middle of all this was Uda (ph). He was a young boy, sitting there, crying. He was holding his eye. And we tried to talk to him. All he could talk about was the water. He didn't even remember how he got to the hospital.
And he'd been adopted by two women who were there separately, who didn't know who he was, but they found him crying at the morgue. So they simply adapted him, made him a part of their family.
And he was one of many characters through which we tried to tell the story of the tsunami. Because it was just such a huge disaster, that the only way we could really tell it was by focusing on these individual characters...
PHILLIPS: And their stories...
SHUBERT: ... telling their stories of what happened to them.
PHILLIPS: Do you know, by chance, what happened to Uda (ph) and where he is now? SHUBERT: No, I don't. And we've tried -- tried to track him down and find out through the people that were at the hospital. We did find that he did leave with those two women. And we understand that he was safe and that he was healthy. We're still trying to find out exactly where he is. He has not found his parents, so far as we know.
PHILLIPS: All right. We're going to wait for the follow up on that one, OK?
Aneesh, Hanna Chi (ph), somebody that has not left your mind.
ANEESH RAMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: She embodied New York. She was this 25-year-old child of Chinese immigrants. It was on Phi Phi Island. It was her first Christmas away from home.
And her parents we met after they had spent the week searching monastery after monastery, looking at picture after picture of just dead bodies and sitting with them the night that they found her, the night that they recognized her in a picture is unforgettable.
To be that intimate with someone's grief, was something that they allowed because there was an anger in them, as well, that this had happened, that this had happened in 2004, that this couldn't have been prevented. And that this should be prevented in the future.
She was headed to the zenith of her life, just one of these people that I could relate to in so many ways. And to see the suffering of the parents. I think in Phuket, it was just so viscerally emotionally. It was people who were not in their homeland, dealing with this untold tragedy.
And like Atika said, the first few days was just this black hole of devastation, endless in its scope. And each of these individual stories just was gut-wrenching. And for those of us who were there, I think it was this -- this sense of importance to tell the world about Hanna Chi (ph), to tell the world about what had happened there and really bring home the specifics of who was affected.
PHILLIPS: And we'll never forget Baby 81. You even write a chapter on this story in your book.
BINDRA: Well, yes, Baby 81 became a worldwide figure. On December 26, this baby was swept away from the arms of his mother and then, remarkably and miraculously, someone found this baby alive, floating on an old piece of tire.
The baby was taken to hospital, and this hospital was awash in bodies, thousands of them. So a nurse just named the baby "81" because the baby was the 81st patient to be admitted that day.
Shortly that day, as word got around the baby was in the hospital, there were no parents, eight parents started fighting for the baby. So many kids had been lost. Twelve thousand children were killed in Sri Lanka. And Baby 81 suddenly became a symbol of hope. The fighting was eventually settled in court. Baby 81 found his rightful parents. And now Baby 81 is leading a normal life. His name is Abhilash.
PHILLIPS: Abhilash. Do you know what that means?
BINDRA: Hope.
PHILLIPS: Hope.
I guess one of the final questions I have, was there ever a point that each one of you thought, "Wow, I don't think I can take this anymore?" I mean, emotionally, do you remember a point, Aneesh?
RAMAN: For me, when we were there, we were so consumed with the story and you were living it. I mean, there was no separation between those who were covering and those who were enduring the suffering.
But you're sort of working so constantly that the enormity of it really didn't sink in, to me, until the end of the first week.
There was a story I had -- I had told of a mother who had gone back to the last place that her daughter worked, which was now this sort of sea of just utter destruction. And it was four days later, and she just went there every day, sitting on this simple blanket, looking out on that emptiness, hoping that her daughter might return. And at that point, it was clear she would not.
And someone told that story back to me, a story that I had been telling to the viewers. And when they told it back to me, it actually hit home. And I broke down in the hotel room and realized what it was that I was truly saying.
Because it was easy, I think, in the throes of that moment, in the hours that we were pooling, to really lose a sense of how severe this was for people, and for their emotional states. And so that, for me, was sort of the moment where it all hit.
PHILLIPS: Yes. You know what? Unfortunately, I'm getting the wrap and I'm sitting here, so enthralled, listening to the three of you. And I know we have to move on. Can we continue talking after the newscast? And we'll have to do a part two and a part three.
And Satinder, your book is amazing. Of course, we have to plug that. And Atika Shubert, Aneesh Raman, Satinder Bindra, thank you so much. And we're big fans of all three of you, as you know.
BINDRA: Thank you.
PHILLIPS: We always love to have you on LIVE FROM. And we appreciate you being here with us today live.
SHUBERT: Thank you.
PHILLIPS: Well, June 1 marks our official 25th anniversary. That's why the three of our journalists are here. We're talking about 25 years. And Wednesday night, CNN's going to bring you a special look at the top stories that we've witnessed in the last quarter century. "DEFINING MOMENTS: 25 STORIES THAT TOUCHED OUR LIVES." That begins at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 Pacific.
And what's your most memorable news event over the last 25 years? Send us your memories and read what others had to say on our web site at CNN.com.
We'll have more LIVE FROM right after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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