If Deep Throat was Mark Felt, then Woodward was lying. About Deep Throat, of course.

And if Woodward was lying, considering that Deep Throat was Woodward's (and Bernstein's) construct, then why the fuss about Deep Throat?

I'm just not buying. (It's their game.)

Yawn.

But what has Bernstein to say? Here's the Post:

"Felt's role in all this can be overstated," said Bernstein, who went on after Watergate to a career of books, magazine articles and television investigations. "When we wrote the book, we didn't think his role would achieve such mythical dimensions. You see there that Felt/Deep Throat largely confirmed information we had already gotten from other sources."

The idea that Deep Throat is a fake -- or, at least, a composite constructed from several different sources -- is probably the single most widely held theory. Even Woodward's former literary agent, David Obst, has said the shadowy supersource was invented for the sake of showbiz: ''Without Deep Throat in All The President's Men, there's no book or movie,'' he wrote in his memoirs, adding that Deep Throat showed up in the manuscript only after the publisher rejected the first draft as too dull.

How convenient.

MORE: A few months ago, Jonah Goldberg issued a put-up-or-shut-up challenge:

Anyway, there are more questions and more answers to all of this. But I think history deserves a full accounting. Watergate prompted a generation of preening journalists to lecture America from a pedestal. The least Deep Throat can do - or, the least the leading Deep Throat suspects can do - is to let us know whether the journalists belonged on that pedestal in the first place.

Felt, who lives in Santa Rosa, is said to be in poor mental and physical health because of a stroke. His family did not immediately make him available for comment, asking the news media to respect his privacy "in view of his age and health."

MORE: While the search for literary devices may be a debatable venture, Leonard Garment (former Counsel to the President) devoted a book to Deep Throat a few years ago, titled (appropriately) In Search of Deep Throat. Here's why he rejects Mark Felt:

Even before Bernstein's emphatic dismissal, I was not convinced about Felt. Woodward and Bernstein did have sources at the FBI; All the President's Men as much as said so. Further, at the FBI -- and therefore, let us assume, Mark Felt -- knew many things about the Watergate investigation that it was conducting. But the investigation was not the only one or even the most important subject of Deep Throat's conversations with Woodward. Instead, Deep Throat's unique contribution was to talk with Woodward about the Nixon White House. Deep Throat knew about the clockwork craziness in that place. He knew the sound of Nixon angry; he knew things about the character of various people involved in the cover-up.

This type of information was not accessible to a member of the Bureau, even on in a high position there. More, Deep Throat's insights into people at the White House had the authority of personal experience; that was precisely why Woodward relied so heavily on him.

The fact that no one -- including Felt -- provides a match for the "character" described is all the more reason to believe that Deep Throat was a composite character. (For the record, I have long suspected that John Dean was a primary Woodward and Bernstein source, and that Deep Throat was -- at least to a certain extent -- a diversionary contrivance.)

I do like "Deep Throat" as a name, though! It's appropriately evocative of the underlying sex scandal.

UPDATE: Len Colodny asks a lingering, unanswered question:

How did Deep Throat know of the tape gap and its deliberate erasure prior to its discovery by White House staff?

I doubt anyone ever will.

AND MORE: Sean Hackbarth, Dean Esmay, and Joe Gandelman have all weighed in with thoughtful observations. (Dean speaks of a "long, nasty, and irresponsible trend toward greater and greater use of annonymous sources," Sean calls for "significant introspection by investigators, both old school and new," and Joe mentions the ironic timing of Deep Throat's unmasking just as anonymous sources are "coming into disfavor....")

I hate to sound so cynical, but the "Deep Throat" character failed to make sense to me for years, and still fails to make sense.

What are we to make of the Felt non-matching match? Was the Deep Throat character himself a harbinger of a new fake-but-accurate standard?

Too many unanswered questions for comfort....

AND MORE: Ace of Spades calls the Felt disclosure "Probably the biggest news of the day that I could give a rat's ass less about." Unfortunately, life's circumstances have forced me into a position of having to give a rat's ass....

(The elasticity of "Deep Throat" will doubtless demand more.)

AND MORE: Aside from the issue of whether there's a match between Felt and the "Deep Throat" book character, there are a couple of troubling issues:

Why wouldn't the number two man at the FBI simply have gone to a grand jury with evidence of wrongdoing instead of a young reporter?

Considering the FBI's knowledge of the prostitution ring, why would Felt have failed to disclose the FBI's knowledge of this to Woodward, or to the accused Watergate defendants?

If Felt was indeed Deep Throat, "whistleblower" is hardly the appellation I would use.

AND EVEN MORE: Here's Rick Moran, concluding his excellent analysis at RightWing Nuthouse:

....until proven otherwise, I will continue to believe in multiple Deep Throats.

It ain’t over yet.

Whether Deep Throat is "over," and who cares are likely to remain unanswered questions.

(Deep Throat has a phony enough smell to it that I really can't disagree with either approach.)

MORE: Here's former Washington Post Editor Barry Sussman (writing a classic piece for Watergate's 25th Anniversary):

The most frequently-asked Watergate question is, "Who is Deep Throat?" I was the Washington Post's editor in charge of the Watergate coverage and I still get asked that a lot, even though it is a quarter-century since the break-in at Democratic headquarters.

That's the power of myth: Over the years an anonymous bit player, a minor contributor, has become a giant.

For me, half the answer to the Deep Throat question is that I don't know who Deep Throat is. The other half is that it really doesn't matter. Interesting, yes, in that it would solve a mystery. Important to the Post's Watergate reporting, no.

Deep Throat barely figured in the Post's Watergate coverage. He was nice to have around, but that's about it.

The logic behind the Deep Throat myth is confounding. On the one hand, Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein deserve credit for helping uncover the Watergate scandal. No one disputes that. On the other hand, the basic legend is that one of them, Woodward, did little more than show up with a bread basket that Deep Throat filled with goodies.

Anybody see the conflict here? It can't work both ways. The greater the importance of Deep Throat, the less the achievement of the two reporters.

In the Post's big stories before and after that moment the link of the burglars to the White House, the flow of money from the Nixon re-election committee to the burglars, the existence of Donald Segretti as a dirty trickster Deep Throat had no role whatsoever.

....Deep Throat was basically unimportant to our coverage.

(Emphasis added.)

MORE! (yes, there's still MORE!): Via Glenn Reynolds (who's been on top of this since yesterday, BTW), I found this gem from G-SCOBE, whom I'd count as another among the justifiably unimpressed:

The Washington Post's wall-to-wall treatment smacks of self love and journalistic hero-worship - a huge media circle jerk, in keeping with the theme.

Gee. Can I say that?

And then there's Bill Quick (also via InstaPundit), who's less than impressed by Mark Felt's integrity:

...he would probably have set up Watergate itself, if J. Edgar had ordered him to do it.

he was a very powerful executive who could have made a huge impact by going public as soon as he objected to the goings on in his organization. Did he? No. He chose a route so sleazy that even the men whose careers he helped make gave him a nickname borrowed from a dirty movie. Did he come forward after the presidential downfall he worked to effect had been accomplished? No. He remained at the FBI because his career there was more important to him than helping to salve the national wounds that have continued to fester ever since. The character he most resembles is the phantom sniper who, according to 40 years of conspiracy theories, got away with the assassination of John F. Kennedy: he hides in the shadows to bring down a U.S. president, then disappears without ever having to account for his deeds. He's a creature of the dark, a dishonorable self-aggrandizing weasel, a well-connected coward, a snitch.

Too mean to say about a ninety-year-old? No. Think of the scorn and abuse that has been heaped on Linda Tripp. What's different? She had the guts to come into the sunlight. This guy comes blinking out into the spotlight decades after the fact, and he actually has the nerve to bask there like a contented reptile. Doesn't anybody have a sharp stick they want to use?

(Via InstaPundit.)

Maybe Deep Throat was really a composite character all along. We don't know because we tolerate a culture of anonymous sourcing and journalistic dissembling.

UPDATE: Thanks to all who linked this post. And that means you, Dean Esmay! And you at Evolution Selections! And you, Doug Petch!