Deep Throat, the anonymous insider source who provided Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein the evidence needed to link Richard Nixon and his staff to the Watergate scandal, has resurfaced in the news as of late, sparking a round of renewed speculation as to Deep Throat’s identity.

First, on February 4, Woodward and Bernstein’s notes on the Watergate affair – except those disclosing the identity of Deep Throat – were made public at the University of Texas. Woodward and Bernstein received $5 million for them in 2003.

Second, and more interestingly, former White House counsel John Dean, himself implicated in the Watergate scandal, wrote an editorial in the February 6 Los Angeles Times claiming to know that Deep Throat is seriously ill (Woodward and Bernstein have promised to reveal Deep Throat’s identity when Deep Throat dies). Unfortunately, Dean’s main evidence is another claim that Woodward “has advised his executive editor at the Washington Post that Throat is ill,” which Dean — in the kind of twist that cannot be made up — claims to know through a secret source whose identity he will not disclose. Woodward has since told CBS News that there is no reason to think that Deep Throat’s demise is imminent. Nevertheless, Dean’s assertions have set off a wave of speculation as to the man behind the 70s porno title.

The only things that Woodward and Bernstein have divulged about Deep Throat is that he is a man who liked to smoke and drink Scotch (which narrows it down to every man alive in the 1970s), and that since the Watergate scandal he has had to publicly lie about his identity. So, in the modern-day journalistic spirit of meaningless speculation rather than hard-hitting Woodward-Bernstein style investigation, here is a rundown of some candidates for Deep Throat, with deeply arbitrary and unscientific probabilities attached to each one.

Fred Fielding: Bill Gaines, a professor of investigative journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has fingered Fred Fielding as Deep Throat after years of research. Gaines, who meticulously compared Deep Throat’s assertions to what different members of the Nixon White House could have known at the time, asserted in a CBS News article that “Fred Fielding, who was the first deputy to John Dean in 1972, was the character known as Deep Throat...We found that he had practically all of the information that Deep Throat conveyed.” Furthermore, according to the university’s website devoted to this assertion, Fielding “emerged practically unscathed from the Watergate scandal,” going on to serve in the Reagan administration, taking a job as a high-powered Washington lawyer, and, eventually, serving on the 9-11 Commission. Fred Fielding is also a Scotch drinker, an occasional Marlboro smoker, and a dude.

Probability: 40%.

Mark Felt: Felt, a former FBI official, is a “leading candidate.” According to CNN.com, “White House tapes from 1972 recorded Nixon aide H.R. Haldeman telling the president that most of the leaks were coming from Felt. Also, the Hartford Courant newspaper reported that a 19-year-old it interviewed in 1999 said Bernstein's son, Jacob, had told him that Felt was Deep Throat.” And would an unnamed 19-year-old lie?

Probability: 26%.

Henry Kissinger: Nixon’s Secretary of State, an enormously public figure, is often accused of being Deep Throat because of his proximity to Nixon. There are other justifications, though. John Ehrlichman, a top Nixon aide who spent time in prison for his connection to the Watergate affair and who died in 1999, was “absolutely convinced” that Deep Throat was Kissinger. Walter Anderson, a friend of Ehrlichman’s, made these statements in Editor and Publisher, a journal on the newspaper industry. Moreover, Kissinger has a famously deep, German-accented baritone, which would justify the name “Deep Throat.” (He was also an early 70s porn princess)

Probability: 16%.

Al Haig: A frequently cited suspect, Al Haig joined the Nixon White House as an aide to Kissinger and took over as Chief of Staff in 1973. According to the Washington Post Online, “The notion of Haig as Deep Throat was made popular in a 1991 account of the Watergate scandal entitled Silent Coup: The Removal of a President. The book's authors, Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin, contended that, while Bob Woodward was a communications officer in the Navy in 1969 and 1970, he had the opportunity to brief then Brigadier General Haig, a member of the National Security Council.” Unfortunately, Woodward and Bernstein have publicly ruled out Haig as a candidate, but there are many possibilities. That they actually said “Al Haig is not not Deep Throat,” for example, or that it was opposite day.

Probability: 6%.

George H.W. Bush: Adrian Havill, who in 1993 claimed that Deep Throat was a composite of several sources, now believes that Deep Throat was actually the elder Bush, according to BBC News. Unfortunately, this is a pretty stupid theory, since at the time Bush was living in New York as the US ambassador to the United Nations. There is one sliver of evidence, however, in the form of a direct quote the Washington Post attributed to Deep Throat: “Read my lips: massive abuses of the Constitution.”

Probability: 1.1%.

Hillary Clinton: Not as far-fetched as it sounds. In 1974, the 26-year-old Hillary D. Rodham served on the Impeachment Inquiry staff of the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, the entity charged with trying Nixon for impeachment in the House of Representatives. Plus, she has ambition, and taking down Tricky Dick can be seen as yet another step (much like marrying Bill) in her lifelong quest to ascend to the presidency and ruin the good all-white-male thing we’ve got going. Yes, the Post reporters said Deep Throat was a man and liked to drink Scotch and smoke; but maybe they meant that she could drink and smoke like a man.

Probability: 0.6%

Chelsea Clinton: Like her mother, smart, sassy, and ambitious. But was she born yet?

Probability: 0.07%.

In the end, only a handful of people really know the man behind the Deep Throat mystery. For the rest of us, there can be no certainty until he is dead and no longer needs protection from the media and the administration he helped bring down. One thing is certain, however: the real identity of “Harry Reems,” the male lead in the 1972 porno Deep Throat.

His actual name is Herbert Streicher.