And the identity of 'Deep Throat' is ... er ... um ...

Let the guessing begin. Again.

Ron Ziegler? He was Richard Nixon's embattled press secretary, best known for his tart denials of any malfeasance in the White House, usually delivered with the look of someone with a mouth full of sauerkraut.

Jonathan Rose? He was a White House attorney who certainly had access to enough information.

Pat Buchanan? In some circles, the fiery former Nixon speechwriter is the latest favorite suspect for the identity of "Deep Throat," the garage-slinking White House source who helped two journalists unravel the greatest political scandal in American history.

If it's another anniversary of the Watergate break-in – and it is, No. 30 – then it must be time to figure out who is the most celebrated anonymous source in American journalism. Again.

Different times have produced different favorites – Al Haig, Nixon's former chief of staff; or L. Patrick Gray III, a former Justice Department official turned head of the FBI.

Now comes Mr. Buchanan, who was a Republican loyalist while in Nixon's speechwriting shop, but who has always had a morally righteous, iconoclastic streak: He was once expelled from college for punching a police officer in a traffic dispute, and, more recently, abandoned the Republican Party to run for president on the Reform Party ticket.

Two of the people who know who Deep Throat is, Watergate reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, aren't saying, of course. They have themselves turned a no-comment comment over the years into an art form.

Yet this week, two sources (who aren't anonymous and whom we'll announce in a moment) have put Buchanan on their short list of informants portrayed in the book and movie "All the President's Men." On many counts, the three-time presidential candidate matches the reporters' trail of clues, dropped like cookie crumbs in their book and subsequent public comments. He chain-smoked and drank Scotch, two traits that have been identified with the source. He had a high enough position in the White House, moving from speechwriter to special assistant.

He also lived within walking distance of Mr. Woodward's Washington apartment near Dupont Circle. That's critical in the minds of journalism students from the University of Illinois – one of the sources that has tried to winnow down who the informant might be – because Woodward signaled Deep Throat by placing a flag in a flowerpot on his balcony, which faced an inside courtyard.

Driving by, the source could not have seen it from the street. He would have had to walk. In arranging their signals, which included Deep Throat placing notes inside Woodward's home-delivered newspaper, "You would think they would make it easy on themselves," says William Gaines, a journalism teacher at the University of Illinois.

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