Deep Throat is ailing and his identity will be revealed soon 2/6 [View All]

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I have little doubt that one of my former Nixon White House colleagues is history's best-known anonymous source — Deep Throat. But I'll be damned if I can figure out exactly which one.

We'll all know one day very soon, however. Bob Woodward, a reporter on the team that covered the Watergate story, has advised his executive editor at the Washington Post that Throat is ill. And Ben Bradlee, former executive editor of the Post and one of the few people to whom Woodward confided his source's identity, has publicly acknowledged that he has written Throat's obituary.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-sources6feb06,0,1365197.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions


http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-purist6feb06,0,4893837,print.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
Not since the Watergate era has the media's use of confidential sources been so heatedly debated as it is today. Unfortunately, several recent decisions by judges outside California suggest the lessons of that era have been forgotten. Chief among them is the reminder of how an independent press can and must serve as a check on government power.

In 1973, the Washington Post, relying on information obtained from a confidential source, exposed criminal conduct by people at government's highest levels, resulting in the resignation of the president. It is less widely known that Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were subpoenaed that year by individuals demanding they identify "Deep Throat" and produce all the information they had gathered about the break-in at the Watergate Hotel.