And he has fielded scores of calls over the years from reporters yearning to out him as the famous source who urged Washington Post reporters to follow the money. Now, it appears, Bennett can stop the denial.

Vanity Fair magazine reports in its July issue that former FBI official W. Mark Felt has admitted to providing the groundwork for Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. The disclosure was confirmed later Tuesday by the two reporters and former Washington Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee. It doesn't surprise Bennett.

''I've known all along that I was not'' Deep Throat, Bennett said Tuesday by phone from Istanbul, Turkey, where he is attending a conference. ''There are at least three people on the planet who know I'm not Deep Throat: me, Bob Woodward and Deep Throat.''

That wasn't the case in the mid-1970s, when Bennett was fingered as the mysterious source by Rolling Stone, which Bennett says never even called to get a confirmation or denial. The allegation snowballed and newspapers across the country quoted the magazine.

"It ended up on the front page of the New York Times - that I was Deep Throat," Bennett recalled, almost 28 years after the story appeared. "And then when the [Rolling Stone] article came out, and people read it, they realized it was total nonsense. By that time the damage had been done."

The Rolling Stone story reportedly prompted Woodward to issue his first denial that Bennett was Deep Throat. But Bennett was one of Woodward's sources during the scandal.

Bennett - who at the time headed the Robert R. Mullen & Co. public relations firm that was a cover for the CIA - admits leaking information to Woodward, whom Bennett praises to this day.

Though questions about Bennett's role in the Post stories have waned in recent years, the senator has continued to hit many short lists of candidates for the historic role of Deep Throat. The source, named after a notorious porn flick of the time, was depicted in Woodward and Bernstein's book All The President's Men as a scotch-drinking, chain-smoking, mysterious man. Bennett, as a devout Mormon who doesn't drink or smoke, didn't fit the former two descriptions - though many a conspiracy theorist intimated those character traits were just a way to shift focus away from him.

Bennett's son Jim says he never believed his father was the secret source who helped bring down a president.

"I think we gave him enough of a benefit of a doubt."

tburr@sltrib.com