Okay, this is a bit of a reach, but James West Davidson and Mark Hamilton Lytle have written up an article about the sources cited in the sequal to All the President’s Men, The Final Days. The book is After the Fact, and it may well be the source cited above by my electronic cousin, Mike King.
In that article (“Instant Watergate,” pp. 395-424), which is essentially a tutorial on historical methodology, they analyze the style of writing that Woodward and Bernstein use and the point of view from which the various characters are portrayed, and make some intriguing guesses as to whom was supplying information to the journalists. They can do this because The Final Days is written in a different perspective than their first book. The methodology is questionable, but it makes for a “good guess.”
They draw these conclusions:
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David Eisenhower and Patrick Buchanan were key sources for Nixon family and background material.
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Alexander Haig and Henry Kissinger did not talk to W & B for this book.
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White House attorney J. Fred Buzhardt was quite the gabber. Buzhardt was part of the crisis control team formed to counteract the revelations of the White House break-in. Buzhardt was also very close to Alexander Haig. His point of view is used the most extensively in The Final Days, and is probably the person W & B mention interviewing seventeen times in the making of the book. Buzhardt has admited to contributing information to W & B (as has David Eisenhower).
Buzhardt, by virtue of his close relationship to Haig, could have supplied some of the very sensitive Deep Throat information that points to Alexander Haig, and could be an excellent candidate for the mythical Deep Throat.
Except for one thing: he’s been dead since 1984.
That leads to another possibility, that Deep Throat is a compilation of reliable sources designed to protect the contributors and also to prevent any one person from being identified as a confidential source. This is an often-used journalistic, but not historical, technique. The invention of such a character would allow W & B to “spice up” the story with the parking lot scenes and the taxi switch-ups, making the book more exciting, but still allow them to report the facts as they learned them.
If I remember correctly (and I’m sure I’ll be proven otherwise in a hurry if I don’t), Deep Throat is not cited as providing any additional information for The Final Days, which would make sense if “he” were a mosaic character in the first book. He would be an unsuitable character for a book that purports to be a work of so-called “hot history,” which is how TFD is written.
My best guess: Deep Throat is Buzhardt, Buchanan, and Eisenhower, with perhaps a few others tossed into the mix as confirmation sources. We’ll just have to wait and see.
But remember, if Deep Throat never existed, he can’t really “die” either, can he?