CONFIDENTIAL SOURCES STILL VITAL TO FREE PRESS.(Main)(Correction notice)

Byline: HARRY ROSENFELD

The revelation that Mark Felt, then the No. 2 man at the FBI, was Deep Throat, an important source in The Washington Post's Watergate expose, definitively buries naysayers who questioned his existence for some three decades.

Contrary to the array of skeptics, Deep Throat is a real man and was neither a composite nor a woman - all of which had been alleged.

Now, more light may be shed on Watergate as historians and persistent journalists backtrack the events that transpired in that national crisis.

Other consequences may be problematic. To me, as the editor at The Washington Post who was in charge of the day-to-day coverage of Watergate, the single most urgent and abiding …