"It's OK to leave things out to protect the identity of a source, but to add something affirmative that isn't true is to publish something you know to be an inaccuracy. I don't believe that's ethical for a reporter."

Thus spake Bob Woodward in 2002.

But that was then.

The reason for Woodward's 2002 "ethics" lesson was to make it perfectly clear to all "skeptics"* that what he'd said about Deep Throat was true:

As for skeptics who insist Deep Throat must be a composite, or that Woodward scattered deceptive clues along the trail to cover his tracks, the reporter himself insists Throat is a real person who will remain unidentified until he dies or signals permission. As for clues, Woodward indicates that people can believe the details in his description of Throat: a man in the executive branch who was a heavy smoker, a Scotch drinker and a gossip with a flair for cloak-and-dagger drama -- as well as a man who acted out of conscience.

(From Autumn via Wizbang.)

What are we to make of all this?

I'm beginning to think it's Woodward who's the composite.

Well?

Has anyone ever seen him and himself in the same room together?

*In the interest of full disclosure, yes, I'm still a skeptic.

UPDATE: Henry Kissinger (who knows more about Watergate than most living human beings) has also expressed skepticism:

"I have always believed and continue to believe that there was not one 'Deep Throat,'" former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said on Wednesday.

"And I suppose Mark Felt was one of several sources that were put into a composite portrait" in Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's book, "All the President's Men."

one of the great myths of Watergate [is] that it was uncovered by the press, in particular by Washington Post reporters Woodward and Bernstein.

....it caught the attention of a publicity-hungry federal judge, John Sirica, known as 'Maximum John' for the severity of his sentences -- and not, in any other circumstances, a justice likely to enjoy the approval of the liberal press. When the burglars came before him, he gave them provisional life sentences to force them to provide evidence against members of the Administration. That he was serious was indicated by the fact that he sentenced the only man not to comply, Gordon Liddy, to twenty years in prison, plus a fine of $40,000, for a first offense of breaking and entering, in which nothing was stolen and no resistance offered to police. This act of judicial terrorism, which would have been impossible in any other country under the rule of law, was to be sadly typical of the juridical witch-hunt by means of which members of the Nixon Administration were hounded, convicted (in some cases pleading guilty to save the financial ruin of an expensive defence) and sentenced.