Now, the actor who played Bob Woodward in "All the President's Men" wonders whether Deep Throat would make a difference in today's political climate.

"I don't know if you'd be able to get a hearing now," Redford said in an interview Thursday. "If [President] Nixon had had control of both houses [of Congress], and the Supreme Court, and the bully pulpit, I don't know if that stuff would have ever come out."

Redford said the revelation that former Deputy FBI Director Mark Felt was Deep Throat, the secret informant who guided Washington Post reporters Woodward and Carl Bernstein through their probe into the Nixon White House, has him "waiting to see if anybody is going to connect where we were then and where we are now, because the same elements are absolutely in place, only they're worse. . . ."

"You can go right down the line [in the Bush administration], there's about 15 issues as strong or as big as the Watergate break-in was that have come and died out," Redford said, citing the fruitless search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the recently uncovered "Downing Street memo" suggesting Bush's officials tweaked intelligence to support their invasion plans.

"The [Bush] administration is successful at denying, and if they get caught, they just deny and move on, or they bait-and-switch and create some other crisis," Redford said. "There are guys out there digging and digging. There are stories appearing every single day. . . . But is it getting any traction with the public?"

It was 33 years ago today - June 17, 1972 - that burglars broke into the Democratic National Committee's offices in the Watergate Hotel in Washington. What was called "a third-rate burglary" at the time by Nixon's staff grew into a scandal of corruption, dirty tricks and taped Oval Office conversations that led to Richard Nixon's resignation in 1974.

In July 1972, Redford was on a train in Florida, staging a campaign-style "whistle-stop" tour to market "The Candidate," which he produced and starred in. Between stops, Redford chatted with reporters about the Watergate break-in, which was then being blamed on Cubans possibly linked to Fidel Castro.

"I picked up this vibe running through a lot of the members of the press, that it wasn't the Cubans," Redford said. "They said it probably was the same old story about Republicans and how they work."

The reporters lectured Redford that no newspaper would touch that story, in part because Nixon's re-election was a foregone conclusion and "nobody wants to get on the wrong side of that guy, because he's vindictive and mean and he has a switchblade mentality," Redford said. "I got really angry at the press, and said, 'That's the most cynical thing I've ever heard.' "

Back home in Utah, Redford scanned The Salt Lake Tribune for Watergate stories. "There's this little blurb in there, with a dual byline - it was Woodward and Bernstein," he said. "Then a few days later, there was another blurb, and another and another. Suddenly there were these dots being connected, raising the ante. And always by these two guys."

Months later, Redford read a magazine profile of the reporters - and was struck by the contrast between Woodward, a Republican WASP, and Bernstein, a Jewish liberal.

"They didn't like each other but they had to work together," Redford said. "I thought, those are the ingredients of a pretty dynamic little movie." Redford called Woodward and Bernstein, but the reporters stalled him for months.

Finally, Redford said he and Woodward "had this quiet, dark, shadowy meeting. He said, 'If we treated you a little rough, we didn't think it was you. . . . When we heard your name, we thought it was a phony set-up.' "

Woodward and Bernstein were writing a book about Watergate, and they made a deal that when the movie rights were sold, Redford would produce the film. After Warner Bros. won a bidding war for the rights to All the President's Men, the studio insisted Redford not just produce but star. Dustin Hoffman played Bernstein.

Redford once asked Woodward who Deep Throat was, but the reporter didn't tell him. "Some part of me did not want it to come out," Redford said, "because it was this great piece of melodrama in the middle of this movie."

Redford had speculated Deep Throat was someone in the FBI. "Nobody had heard of Mark Felt. I thought it may be Patrick Gray [Nixon's pick as FBI director], but on the other hand, why would he do that since he was a friend of Nixon's?"

In creating a Deep Throat for the film, Redford said "he should be a figure of dignity who was in real pain. He was tortured having to say these things. That's why I wanted Hal [Holbrook] - I felt he was an actor of great dignity and stature."

Redford is concerned the political parties didn't learn the right lessons from Watergate.

"The Democrats, rather than using it as a beginning to make sure it didn't happen again, they went to sleep instead," Redford said. "The Republicans were caught lying, partly because they didn't lie very well. Now, what they learned is that they have to lie better. It's so obvious they're lying - it's so transparent. . . .

"The question is: if that's the case, are they trying to make lying no longer a crime but a political asset? I don't know."

The revelation that Mark Felt was Deep Throat has brought renewed interest in Watergate, and in movies about the era. The Washington Post reported Thursday that Felt's family has signed a book deal - and sold the film rights to Tom Hanks' production company.

The story even carries its own cosmic coincidence: The street where Felt now lives in Santa Rosa, Calif., is Redford Place.

"I thought, 'Now things are getting a little too weird,' " Redford said.

spmeans@sltrib.com