A man claiming to be the famed "Deep Throat" has come forward:

NEW YORK May 31, 2005 — A former FBI official claims he was "Deep Throat," the long-anonymous source who leaked secrets about President Nixon's Watergate coverup to The Washington Post, Vanity Fair reported Tuesday.

W. Mark Felt, 91, who was second-in-command at the FBI in the early 1970s, kept the secret even from his family until 2002, when he confided to a friend that he had been Post reporter Bob Woodward's source, the magazine said.

"I'm the guy they used to call Deep Throat," he told lawyer John D. O'Connor, the author of the Vanity Fair article, the magazine said in a news release.

Felt was initially adamant about remaining silent on the subject, thinking disclosures about his past somehow dishonorable.

"I don't think (being Deep Throat) was anything to be proud of," Felt indicated to his son, Mark Jr., at one point, according to the article. "You (should) not leak information to anyone."

Felt is a retiree living in Santa Rosa, Calif., with his daughter, Joan, the magazine said. He could not immediately be reached for comment by The Associated Press. His family members disagreed with their father, feeling that he should receive accolades for his role in Watergate before his death.

The existence of Deep Throat, nicknamed for a popular porn movie of the early 1970s, was revealed in Woodward and Carl Bernstein's best-selling book "All the President's Men." In the hit movie based on the book, Deep Throat was played by Hal Holbrook.

But his identity of the source whose disclosures helped bring down the Nixon presidency remained a mystery.

Among those named over the years as Deep Throat were Assistant Attorney General Henry Peterson, deputy White House counsel Fred Fielding, and even ABC newswoman Diane Sawyer, who then worked in the White House press office. Ron Zeigler, Nixon's press secretary, White House aide Steven Bull, speechwriters Ray Price and Pat Buchanan, and John Dean, the White House counsel who warned Nixon of "a cancer growing on the presidency," also were considered candidates.

Carl Bernstein has apparently released a statement saying that he is sticking by his pledge, and that of Bob Woodward, not to identify Deep Throat until his or her death.

It is plausible that Mr. Felt could be Deep Throat. The fact that he was second-in-command at the FBI would certainly have allowed him access to the types of information that was disbursed to Woodward and Bernstein by Deep Throat. Enough time has passed, the main actors in the Watergate drama are either dead or not in a position of power to be able to punish him, and any statute of limitations that might see him prosecuted for the leaking of the information has probably passed, such that Mr. Felt probably concluded that it was not a huge risk to himself by revealing his claim to be Deep Throat.

However, Mr. Felt has provided no real plausible proof for his claim, and until that happens - and it is corroborated - his claim must be met with a healthy degree of skepticism.

Update: John Podhoretz writes: "Let me be the first to say: WHO???????????????"

More over at MSNBC. Chris Matthews claims he isn't surprised at all.