Sen. Bob Bennett said Tuesday's revelation that a former FBI official was Deep Throat should finally end any suspicion that he was the source behind newspaper stories that helped bring down President Nixon in the Watergate scandal.

"If this turns out to be in fact true, why this will close the chapter on speculation about me," Bennett told the Deseret Morning News from Istanbul, where he and other members of Congress are attending a conference on Islam.

The Utah Republican said he didn't know W. Mark Felt, identified in a Vanity Fair magazine article written by his lawyer as the source used by The Washington Post in its coverage of Watergate.

"I have no idea whether Mark Felt really is or isn't Deep Throat. All I know is I am not and never have been," Bennett said. "Mark Felt sounds as good as any possibility to me. . . . This will open up a whole area for examination and historical re-examination."

The Washington Post confirmed Felt was Deep Throat after Bennett was interviewed.

Bennett knows firsthand what it's like to be known as Deep Throat. His name has surfaced repeatedly over the years as a likely candidate, including in a Rolling Stone article that was widely circulated.

Also, Nixon's former chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, wrote that Nixon himself believed Bennett was Deep Throat and cited a CIA memo that stated Bennett was "feeding information" to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward.

The memo, according to Haldeman's book, "The Ends of Power," went on to say that Woodward was "suitably grateful" for Bennett's help, which seemed to point "almost overwhelmingly to Bennett as Deep Throat."

Bennett, of course, has long denied he was Deep Throat.

But Bennett — who had left a job with the Nixon administration before the Watergate scandal and bought a Washington, D.C.-based public relations firm that had ties to the CIA — said he was a sometimes anonymous source for Woodward.

"He'd always call me" to check information before a story ran, Bennett said. "He always struck me, therefore, as a very professional guy."

Bennett said it wasn't a secret that he talked with Woodward.

Bennett was quoted by name in "All the President's Men," the Watergate book written by Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

"I was one of Woodward's sources. But my name was in the book. There was no attempt to hide it," he said.

When Bennett returned to Washington after being elected to the U.S. Senate in 1992, he said he called Woodward.

"I said, 'This is a voice out of your past. Let's get together and chat.' And we did."

Woodward told Bennett then he was "surprised the name had not come out yet" since some people at the paper had guessed who Deep Throat was.