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It's the sort of thing spooks and feds do, not White House aides. Why then was it not so obvious for the last three decades?

Well, perhaps because Woodward denied that it was anyone in the intelligence community, which would tend to take you off the scent of "spies" and agents. And he and Bernstein always implied that Deep Throat was an admistration official.

Or perhaps because there was so much misleading or contradictory information put out over the years by the principles that one is forced to conclude that (1) what Woodward and Bernstein was telling us was intentionally obscured with falsehoods in order to protect their source or (2) Deepthroat was a composite of many sources, and hence there was a grain of truth in all the apparant contradictions, or (3) Deepthroat was made up. I think Felt's emergence eliminates that last one.

I still subscribe to theory 2, as Felt would have access to all the facts of the investigation but not access to the inner workings and motivations within the oval office. He could tell what happened after it happened, perhaps who did it. But the why part of it ... that took an insider. And Felt was not an insider, as evidenced both by his not getting the top job at FBI and in his loathing of Nixon.