Who did it? And why? Leak of court draft captivates DC
WASHINGTON — Washington loves a whodunit. And the latest one comes with the stunning plot twist of a leak from the famously buttoned-up Supreme Court.
Politico’s publication last week of a draft opinion that said Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision establishing a constitutional right to abortion in the United States, was wrong from the start and should be overruled, has set off sleuthing from every corner of the capital.
Who could possibly be behind such a glaring breach of trust? And why did that person choose to leak the draft?
Washington, by nature, abhors a vacuum. So the two months before the court issues a final ruling will be filled with guesses, surmise, false starts — and maybe even the truth about who is behind the leak.
It’s an intrigue in the tradition of Watergate’s “Deep Throat” — one of Washington’s best-kept secrets for more than three decades.
The Supreme Court leak is “up there with the most important disclosures of this century and the last century — maybe ever,” said Danielle Brian, executive director of the private Project on Government Oversight.
While leaks spout daily in gossipy Washington, the explosive revelation of a draft opinion that would overturn the 1973 decision creating a nationwide right to abortion has captivated the city.
Chief Justice John Roberts has ordered an investigation into what he called an “egregious breach of trust.”
Amateur detectives have been eagerly trading theories on social media.
Is it even possible to keep
this kind of secret in Washington anymore?
“Of course not,” said Eric Dezenhall, a crisis communications expert who has watched decades of leaks play out in the capital.
“Very few people who leak truly just keep it to themselves,” he said. “There’s always a conversation that says, ‘You have to swear not to tell anybody this’ — and that’s the beginning of the end.”
Big secrets in Washington have a way of coming out.
The identity of Deep Throat, the source who guided Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in the Watergate investigation, wasn’t known until 2005, when a 91-year-old former FBI official, W. Mark Felt, revealed that he was the one who used to meet the reporters in an underground parking garage at 2 a.m. to share tips about how to unravel wrongdoing by President Richard Nixon and his allies.
The secret identities of many other truth tellers, leakers and whistleblowers of different stripes have been shorter-lived.
“Anonymous” — whose 2018 New York Times opinion piece and later book
bashing Donald Trump left the president fuming and on the hunt for the leaker — chose to reveal himself six days before the 2020 election, when Trump was seeking reelection.
When he stepped out of the shadows, Miles Taylor, a former Homeland Security chief of staff, called Trump “a man without character.”
In 2019, it was a CIA officer’s whistleblower complaint about Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy that led to the president’s impeachment. The whistleblower’s identity was kept confidential under federal laws that protect whistleblowers from retaliation. But conservatives widely circulated speculation about the officer’s identity.
Depending on the politics of the readers, the Supreme Court leaker has been alternately labeled a cultural hero or villain.
The idea that the leak was designed to ensure the final opinion would track with the first draft “might be too Machiavellian by half,” Dezenhall said. “It was probably exactly who you think it is — somebody who wanted to screw this thing up.”