An American Mystery : KCRW will broadcast two Watergate specials, including the new ‘Who Is Deep Throat?’

It was almost inevitable. So strong was listener response at KCRW-FM (89.9) to last summer’s airing of the “25th Anniversary Watergate Special”--a five-hour National Public Radio adaptation of a Discovery Channel/BBC series, hosted and narrated by Daniel Schorr--that station officials say they had to rebroadcast it.

Only this time, instead of a Monday-Friday spread, it’s going to be a seven-hour marathon from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving.

As a hook to provide context, deepen understanding and perhaps sustain interest is that nagging leftover question from the Watergate era--and title of a new two-hour KCRW special to run in 30-minute blocks in between the original five Watergate episodes: “Who Is Deep Throat?”

Who is that most elusive of Watergate players--a key source of famed Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, that intrepid pair who tied the break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in June 1972 to the Nixon White House, and helped bring down a president?

“It’s the great American mystery,” says Ruth Seymour, KCRW general manager and “Throat’s” executive producer. “And that started me thinking about going back and interviewing as many of the president’s [Nixon] men as we could get, who they thought Deep Throat was.”

Or, as several suggest on the show, was Deep Throat a composite? Or perhaps he didn’t exist? Or if he did, how much did he matter anyway?

Hosting “Deep Throat” and asking questions of the participants is Harry Shearer--actor, comic, writer, Watergate junkie and Nixon impersonator, as well as the voice of several characters on Fox’s “The Simpsons.” He’s also host and producer of “Le Show,” a weekly Sunday morning satirical program on KCRW, marking its 15th year at the station, that jabs everything from politics to entertainment.

“Talking to all these people was remarkable,” Shearer says. “The thing that struck me most about it is that so many of them still really hate each other. The people who left [the White House] earlier still hate those who left later, and the people who did less jail time are hated by those who did more jail time.”

John Dean III, former White House counsel who testified before the Senate that he told Nixon there was a “cancer” growing on his presidency, and who spent four months in prison for his role in the Watergate cover-up, is here. So is John D. Ehrlichman, Nixon’s assistant for domestic affairs who spent 18 months in jail, and Gen. Alexander M. Haig Jr., Nixon’s last chief of staff, who has been suggested as a possible Deep Throat.

Also interviewed are Schorr, prominent on Nixon’s “Enemies List”; Nixon scholar Stanley Kutler, author of the just-published “Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Oval Office Tapes”; and Seymour Hersh, former investigative reporter on Watergate for the New York Times.

Be advised that the KCRW program does not offer up the answer to the identity of Deep Throat. Rather there’s a bevy of answers and speculations. After all, Woodward, Bernstein and their editor, Ben Bradlee--the three who are known to know who Deep Throat is, besides Deep Throat himself--will not reveal the anonymous source until after his death. All three declined to appear on the show, though KCRW is airing an interview done with Bernstein for a separate event.

Seymour is “convinced--I am certain of it” that it’s Leonard Garment, the only Democrat in Nixon’s inner court, who was counsel to the president in 1973 and 1974. Garment, interviewed by Shearer, vociferously insists he’s not Deep Throat.

Having edited the interviews, associate producer Will Lewis subscribes to the composite theory, albeit with a “main” Deep Throat.

And Shearer? “At this point,” he says, “I have less firm notions” on Deep Throat’s identity “than I guess [I had] when I started.”

Signing Off: Veteran KFWB-AM (980) newsman and anchor Vince Campagna has done his last shift. He was to have bid farewell to listeners at 12:30 a.m. today.

He leaves after 45 years of broadcasting, 29 of them at the all-news station. “After 29 years, it’s about time to hang it up,” he said cheerily from his car phone the other day.

“When I came to KFWB in 1969, the world was on fire with news,” Campagna, 64, recalled, then ticked off the stories that provide him with so many memories. “The incredible Charles Manson; the Hillside Strangler; any time there’s an earthquake, we’re on top of it; the floods and fires of Southern California; and all the major national stories. Kent State; all the things that happened around Watergate; the Gulf War; election nights. . . .”

From 1988 to 1995, Campagna was also KFWB’s entertainment critic.

“From his daily anchoring, to his production of news specials, to his well-known movie reviews,” noted KFWB program director Greg Tantum, “one always knew Vince cared equally about the subjects on which he was reporting and the audience. Perhaps more important than his professional accomplishments is the fact that Vince is one heck of a human being.”

Thanksgiving Fare: With most people this day spending time with turkeys, and family and friends, radio is mostly background--if it’s on at all. But there’s some holiday stuff--not stuffing--airing later this weekend.

“KNX Drama Hour” on KNX-AM (1070) runs an episode of nostalgia from the 1950s sitcom “Our Miss Brooks” Saturday at 9:30 p.m. Starring Eve Arden as high school teacher Connie Brooks and Gale Gordon as the school principal, the show is titled “Where to Go for Thanksgiving.”

Sunday at 3 p.m., classical music station KKGO-FM (105.1) takes note of the holiday on “American Spirit,” the Concert Music Network series, by featuring performing musical families. Felix and Leonard Slatkin, John Corigliano Sr. and Jr., and Rudolf and Peter Serkin, who are fathers and sons, join father and daughter Claude and Pamela Frank, brother and sister Gil and Orli Shaham, and brothers Richard and John Contiguglia in playing the music of Beethoven, Brahms, Dvorak and Khachaturian.

BE THERE

“The 25th Anniversary Watergate Special” and “Who Is Deep Throat?” air 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday on KCRW-FM (89.9).