Answer:

Deep Throat, the ghostly character who has haunted the journalistic imagination for over a generation, is Harold Rowe Holbrook Jr. In the film version of the Watergate expose All The President's Men, Holbrook is depicted as a pale white flickering figure in a surrealistic underground garage meeting the fledgling reporter Bob Woodward (played by Robert Redford). And, in these eerie late night meetings, he provides Woodward with the White House secrets that Woodward, together with his writing partner Carl Bernstein (played by Dustin Hoffman), uses to unseat the Nixon Government. Deep Throat was in a position to furnish these secrets, according to Woodward, because his "sensitive" position in the executive branch gives him access to both the secret operations of the Nixon White House and the inner sanctum of his re-election campaign.

Since Woodward steadfastly refused to provide any clues to the identity of the man in the underground garage to anyone, including the film's screenplay writer, William Goldman, Holbrook had to invent the attributes he bestowed on his shadowy character. The dialogue Goldman wrote for Holbrook is mainly based on Deep Throat's verbatim quotes in the book version of All The President's Men, but since Woodward agreed (p.71) "never to quote the man, even as an anonymous source," the quotes he attributes to him in the book presumably must be fictive. And Goldman has added his own fictitious lines, such as the celebrated "follow the money," which does not even appear in the book. So Holbrook's ashen underground man is fictional. But is the anonymous character on whom its based a real person or is he, like so many fictional products, an amalgam of many people?

Deep Throat does not appear in Woodward and Bernstein~s news stories in the Washington Post. These stories have other multiple sources for the disclosures attributed to a single source-- Deep Throat-- in the book All The President's Men. For example, the disclosure said at least "50 people" who worked for the White House and Nixon campaign were involved in spying and sabotage is attributed to "FBI reports" in the Washington Post (October 10, 1972, p A1), but in the book (p.134) it is attributed exclusively to Deep Throat. Similarly, the so-called "canuck letter" is attributed to "law enforcement sources" in the Washington Post (October 10, 1972, p A1) but in the book to Deep Throat(P.134). So there is alternative sourcing in the newspaper and book.

As it turns out, Deep Throat also was not included in the proposal Woodward and Bernstein submitted to their book publisher Simon & Schuster. And, according to David Obst, their literary agent, Deep Throat was not in the book they initially submitted. Obst noted: "In the original draft of their book, Deep Throat was not mentioned. In the second draft he suddenly appeared - and it was a better book for the addition, a much more exciting one.'' If so, this 'addition,' the inserted Deep Throat, became the sole provider of secrets that had been previously sourced to multiple sources and FBI documents.

Deep Throat's late appearance does provide the sort of intrigue that journalistic myths are made of. It also created a few internal contradiction. For example, the inserted Deep Throat is so concerned about surveillance that he sneaks messages into Woodward's home-delivered newspapers arranging the underground rendezvous. Then, he takes Woodward to a public bar for a drink, explaining they were unlikely to run into anyone they knew there forgetting about the surveillance?) Contradictions of course happen both in real and imaginary life.

Fortunately, the the fact-or-fiction issue is definitively settled by Woodward himself. On page 71 of All The President's Men (final version , he writes that Deep Throat's "identity was unknown to anyone else." How is it possible for Woodward to know that no one but him knows his identity. If Deep Throat was a real person, and acted liked other sources, he conceivably could have contacted other reporters, or even friends, and told them much the same information that Woodward describes such detail. He might even have met them in the same underground garage at different hours and slipped messages into their home delivered newspapers. The only way that Woodward can state with such certainty that he, and he alone, knows the identity of this character is that he is his exclusive creation. The wrong question, to ask then is :Who Is Deep Throat?