My only regret is that Mark Felt did not rat out Nixon because he was ticked off about rapprochement with China or detente with the Soviets.

Rather more prosaically, Felt leaked details of the Watergate investigation to the Washington Post only because he had lost a job promotion ? making him the Richard Clarke of the Watergate era. This will come as small consolation to the Cambodians and Vietnamese tortured and slaughtered as a direct result of Nixon's fall. Oh, well. At least we got a good movie and Jimmy Carter out of it.

Still, it must pain liberals to be praising an FBI man who ordered illegal searches of their old pals in the Weather Underground in the early '70s. For those searches, Felt was later prosecuted by the Carter administration.

Ironically, only because of Watergate ? which Felt helped instigate ? could a nitwit like Jimmy Carter ever become president ? a perch from which Carter pardoned draft dodgers and prosecuted Mark Felt. No wonder Felt kept denying he was "Deep Throat."

Also ironic is that Felt's free-love, flower-girl daughter was estranged from her father for decades on account of her rejection of conventional bourgeois institutions like marriage. Now she is broke ? because of her rejection of conventional bourgeois institutions like marriage. (Too bad she didn't follow Pop's advice to "follow the money.")

She lives in a house bought for her by her father (evidently skirting the standard "as long as you live in my house you'll live by my rules" lecture) and said she decided to reveal her father as Deep Throat to try to make some more money. "I'm still a single mom," she explained, "I am not ashamed of this." She ought to be. See, the idea of marriage is to get a man other than your own father to support you while you raise children. (Guess what she does? That's right! She's a teacher!)

At Felt's trial, Nixon gave powerful testimony in Felt's defense. He was convicted anyway. About six months later, Reagan pardoned Felt. Nixon sent Felt a bottle of champagne (which Nixon selected from his now-infamous "Wine List") to celebrate his pardon with a note saying, "Justice ultimately prevails."

All this time, Nixon had suspicions about Felt being Deep Throat. Others may attribute Nixon's kindness toward Felt to Nixon's high principle and class. I prefer to think of it as sadism.

Of course, in Felt's defense, he wasn't Deep Throat. There was no Deep Throat. Now we know.

As most people had generally assumed, the shadowy figure who made his first appearance in a late draft of "All the President's Men" was a composite of several sources ? among them, apparently, Mark Felt. But in telling the glorious story of "How The Washington Post Saved America," it was more thrilling to portray Deep Throat as a single mysterious individual, spilling his guts to Bob Woodward.

Now that Woodward and Felt are both claiming Felt was Deep Throat, the jig is up. The fictional Deep Throat knew things Felt could not possibly have known, such as the 18 1/2-minute gap on one of the White House tapes. Only six people knew about the gap when Woodward reported it. All of them worked at the White House. Felt not only didn't work at the White House, but when the story broke, he also didn't even work at the FBI anymore.

Deep Throat was a smoker and heavy drinker, neither of which describes Mark Felt.

Woodward claimed he signaled Deep Throat by moving a red flag in a flowerpot to the back of his balcony and that Deep Throat signaled him by drawing the hands of a clock in Woodward's New York Times. Continued...