From a 1999 article in Slate: Another Bulletin From the Deep Throat Desk
A difficulty with the Felt Hypothesis is that Woodward identified Deep Throat as a heavy smoker. Felt gave up smoking in 1943. In an earlier dispatch, Chatterbox said it was "possible the heavy-smoker bit was a phony novelistic detail that Woodward got wrong or invented." Apparently this thought has also occurred to at least one editor at the Washington Post. Here's Limpert in the August 1974 Washingtonian: An editor at the Post told us: "Woodward disguised Deep Throat. Woodward tried not to lie, but he tried to keep people off the track as much as possible. For instance, Woodward made a lot of Deep Throat smoking cigarettes, but I had the feeling that Deep Throat doesn't smoke."
Not knowing who the Post editor in question was, it's hard to assess whether that editor's "feeling" that Deep Throat didn't smoke was based on inside knowledge
GLIMPSES INTO THE LIVES OF WOODWARD AND BERNSTEIN FROM THE PEOPLE WHO KNOW THEM WELL
snip
Scott Armstrong, high-school friend of Woodward’s and researcher on The Final Days, sequel to All the President’s Men:
Woodward’s a complicated person, and Carl kind of pushed the limit—he disappeared for a very long time. He had a lot of other things going on in his life.
But Bob always saw the utility of what they had done and had affection and loyalty to Carl. Bob recognized that Carl had a certain destructive streak in him. At one point Bob said: “I’m just going to try to keep my business a bit more separate.”
In 1976 Bernstein married New York-based writer Nora Ephron, and in 1977 he left the Post. She filed for divorce in 1980 after his affair with Margaret Jay, wife of former British ambassador Peter Jay.
Bob Woodward:
I thought Carl made a mistake by leaving the Post and going to New York. We both needed the Post. The kind of opportunity I’ve had there to do what I wanted and still work for the paper was available to him, but he thought in terms of a more literary career. I think it was Nora’s influence.
Scott Armstrong:
I think what Bob’s really saying is he had to make a choice between the two sides of Carl. If Carl wanted to be in New York at parties and slip his hand down somebody’s pants behind the couch, that was Carl’s business, but Bob didn’t want to be involved.
Carl Bernstein:
Bob and I had this rough period, some of it during The Final Days. Then when Bob’s marriage [to second wife Francie Barnard] broke up [in 1978], I called him and said, “Are you all right?” We hadn’t talked in a while. I think he was glad to hear from me. We then became extraordinarily close and have been since. I don’t know how he characterizes it.
Liz Smith, gossip columnist, in her memoir, Natural Blonde:
The stories about Carl’s involvement with a married woman . . . were epidemic, but I discounted them. . . .
One day Nora rang me up and said in her characteristic determined kind of way: “Liz, I have a story for you. Carl and I are going to divorce! Please write it.” . . . I did write on December 19, 1979. . . .
One night at a party I ran into Carl and he forced me up against a wall, started weeping, and told me I had ruined his life.
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