Mark Felt

I suppose this tags me as a flat-earther, but I still don't think Mark Felt was Deep Throat. Just to review the bidding: (a) he wasn't in the first draft; (b) he appeared only after the editor said the authors needed more story arc; (c) the timing doesn't work. As to (c) specifically, for example, Deep Throat is said to have disclosed that there was an erased tape--but Felt had left the FBI six months before the supposed erasure.

What we do know is that Woodward dined out for a generation in an elaborate cat-and-mouse game that must have added formidable sums to his already sleek exchequer. And Vanity Fair outed him just months before Woodward's own book on the subject finally hit the stands.

I don"t doubt that (a) there was a Mark Felt; and (b) he did meet with (and squeal to) Woodstein; and that (c) Felt himself, by the time he was aged and infirm, believed himself to be Deep Throat. But the Deep Throat has far more to do with the needs of plot and narrative than it does to the sticky demands of raw fact.

Addendum: At least this guy agrees with me.