If they gave a prize for the best-kept secret of the 20th century and beyond, surely the identity of “Deep Throat” – the anonymous source used by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to bring down President Richard M. Nixon and his co-conspirators in the infamous Watergate scandal of 30 years ago – would win, hands down.

For three decades, political junkies have tried unsuccessfully to expose Deep Throat, the knowledgeable insider who clandestinely met with Woodward and Bernstein like some spooky spy novel character to guide reporters through their investigation of the fallout from the Nixon-inspired break-in at Democratic committee headquarters in the Watergate Hotel.

Now comes news that Woodward recently advised his executive editor at the Post that Deep Throat is seriously ill. Former Post editor Ben Bradlee has acknowledged that he has written Deep Throat’s obituary so the paper won’t be taken by surprise, forced to scramble to cobble together a proper sendoff when the source checks out.

The development understandably has touched off a new round of speculation amongst that portion of the population that fondly recalls those halcyon days of political scandal and disgrace. Come the much-anticipated uncloaking, the news media will be so awash in Watergate Revisited it will make the mind-numbing two-week overkill leading to last weekend’s Super Bowl seem like child’s play.

I broached the subject of Deep Throat at the barbershop earlier this week as a brilliant diversionary tactic to avoid yet another mandatory lecture on The Evils of the Social Security System. My barber said that, for him, the first suspect who came to mind when he heard Deep Throat was gravely ill was the pope.

I told him I rather doubted that the man who would become Pope John Paul II would have prepared for the papacy by lurking in the shadows of an underground garage in Washington, D.C., waiting to counsel reporters working to nail Nixon. Not that there would have been anything wrong with that, of course.

A better candidate, I suggested, would be U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist, who also is seriously ailing. As an assistant attorney general in the Nixon administration he presumably would have been in a position to have known a lot of the stuff that “Throat” passed on to Woodward and Bernstein. And any guy who would have gold slash marks sewn on the sleeves of his judge’s robe to separate himself from the rest of The Supremes certainly would be capable of marching to the beat of a different drummer in such matters.

Other wild guesses by other amateur sleuths that I have encountered run the gamut from Nixon Vice President Gerald Ford to retired Army Gen. Alexander “I’m in Charge Here” Haig, to 1970s porn star Linda Lovelace. But some years ago, when Haig had notions of running for president, Woodward said the general was not Deep Throat. So, that eliminates Mr. Monumental Ego Guy.

In his memoir, “A Good Life,” published a few years back, Bradlee wrote that he has always believed it should be possible to identify Deep Throat simply by entering into a computer all the information about him in Woodward and Bernstein’s book, “All the President’s Men,” and then entering as much data as possible about the various suspects. Who was out of town when Woodward met with his source. That sort of thing.

Bradlee said the quality of Deep Throat’s information “was such that I had accepted Woodward’s desire to identify him to me only by job, experience, access, and expertise. That amazes me now, given the high stakes. I don’t see how I settled for that, and I would not settle for that now. But the information and guidance he was giving Woodward was never wrong. Never…”

Bradlee did not learn “Throat’s” identity until Woodward and Bernstein’s second book, “The Final Days,” was published. He got it one day during lunch break, on a bench in a city square, and, “I have never told a soul.”

Popular Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham apparently went to her grave without knowing The Big Secret, though you’d have thought that someone – perhaps Deep Throat his very own self – might have clued in that grand lady on her deathbed. Fair is fair, after all. And Lord knows, she was always a good sport about her reporters’ shadowy dealings.

“The fact that his [Deep Throat’s] identity has remained secret all these years is mystifying, and truly extraordinary,” Bradlee wrote. Boy, is it ever. But times marches on, and the moment of truth supposedly nears.

The envelope, please…

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net