“As the 30th anniversary of Watergate nears, student investigators at the University of Illinois have concluded that Deep Throat, the White House source who helped journalists unravel the greatest political scandal in American history, was most likely conservative commentator Pat Buchanan,” The Chicago Tribune reports.

Since 1999, journalism professor William Gaines and his students have set about unmasking the elusive informant. Building on the work of their predecessors — and examining information ranging from thousands of pages of FBI records to interviews with members of the Nixon administration — this year’s class unanimously fingered Buchanan, a White House speechwriter during the Watergate era.

Gaines, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former reporter, cautioned that the class had not proved Deep Throat’s identity but made a logical inference based on its research. Working from an original list of 72 suspects, the students finally narrowed it to seven, then voted.

In addition to Buchanan, other likely candidates are speechwriter David Gergen, now a prominent journalist; White House attorney Jonathan Rose; head speechwriter Raymond Price; Stephen Bull, administrative assistant to President Richard Nixon; Fred Fielding, assistant to White House counsel John Dean; and Gerald Warren, deputy press secretary.

Buchanan may strike some as a surprising choice, because he was known as a Republican loyalist. But Tom Rybarczyk, one of the U. of I. students, notes that at the time, Buchanan was miffed at Nixon for having recognized communist China.

Oh c’mon. Do these students honestly believe that Pat Buchanan would be so “miffed” at the Nixon Whitehouse for recognizing foreigners — in this case the Communist Chinese — that he’d sell out his President? Or that he’d be so frightened by the prospects of U.S. global entanglement that he’d do anything in his power to sabotage it…?

Pat Buchanan? Preposterous.

Now Justin Raimondo, on the other hand…