Leaks have long history, purpose in U.S.

Imagine you work somewhere deep in the bowels of a government agency. The head of your organization is publicly highlighting a narrative you know to be false, or you’re aware of corruption or illegal activity that’s being covered up.

And you believe it should be exposed.

Of course, the place you work has a policy for this. You’re to follow internal procedures, call attention to the problem and let the folks responsible for dealing with it do their job.

But maybe you don’t trust the process, or maybe you’ve tried it before without results. Or you’ve seen someone fired for challenging authority.

You want to tell us at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution about it, trusting that we will investigate and expose the problem. But you want to remain anonymous. Here’s one option: Send us documents that show what’s going on. Put them in the regular mail, or send them by anonymous email, and not from your work computer.

Make sure that we have no way to know who sent them. Be sure that there’s enough information included that we can verify the authenticity of the paperwork.

When that package arrives at our offices, you’ve joined a long, enduring and crucially important American tradition of “leaking” information.

Leaking has been a hot topic in the news lately.

Early last week, Reality Leigh Winner, 25, was charged with sending to the news media a classified government report about Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

At a hearing where she pleaded not guilty Thursday, prosecutors portrayed her as a potentially dangerous critic of President Donald Trump who had written of wanting to “burn the White House down.”

Also on Thursday, former FBI director James Comey admitted he had a friend leak to The New York Times information about his meetings and calls with Trump.

Now before you conclude I’m endorsing either of those leaks, let me just say this: Some leakers are patriots. Others are self-serving. It’s rarely clear until things unfold over time the motive and impact of any particular leak. And the AJC doesn’t cover the Washington national security apparatus firsthand, so we’re not in a position to independently verify all the details in these two leak scenarios.

Trump on Friday tweeted about Thursday’s congressional hearing: “Despite so many false statements and lies, total and complete vindication ... and WOW, Comey is a leaker!”

As you know, Trump has been no fan of leakers, at least lately.

“The real scandal here is that classified information is illegally given out by ‘intelligence’ like candy. Very un-American!” he said in a February tweet.

But Trump’s position on leaks is not much different than past presidents, including President Barack Obama

“Leaks are as old as the republic,” said Charles N. Davis, dean of the Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia. “Presidents have used leaks to their advantage, and condemned them when they weren’t to their advantage.”

He pointed out that Trump was just a few months ago applauding WikiLeaks for its damaging revelations about Hillary Clinton.

Leaks are the cost of democracy, an example of the continuing American tension over the public’s right to know what its government is up to and the need for secrecy in parts of government.

And while we tend to fixate on the high-profile leaks in Washington, similar scenarios play out in state and local government. Leaks and whistleblowers have helped us confirm facts in the Atlanta school cheating scandal, DeKalb County corruption stories and our investigation into deaths in state psychiatric hospitals.

Which brings us back to you, the person who wants to leak something to the AJC. You deserve to know how we’d handle it.

We don’t encourage anyone to break rules or laws to leak information. It’s a personal decision for the potential leaker, based on his or her own conscience. The leaker has to evaluate the risk of being fired or (far less likely) arrested if found out.

If you do leak to us, we’ll take it very seriously and do all we can to make sure you are not found out.

We consider it our obligation to readers to evaluate whether leaked material is of public concern, whether publishing it will cause harm, and above all, whether it’s true.

While a leaker may be breaking the law by sending the information to us, it isn’t illegal for us to publish the information. That’s a crucial distinction that the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld.

(That’s why those exposed by leaks always try to harshly criticize the leak or the leaker. Of course, they’re also usually trying to distract from what the information reveals.)

The hardest part: verifying the authenticity and accuracy of the information we’ve been provided while still protecting our source’s anonymity.

We wouldn’t turn the material over to government officials to verify it, as allegedly happened in the case of Winner.

“When we decide leaked material is important to use, we are extremely cautious The Atlanta JournalConstitution wants to explain openly to readers what we do and why. Discuss this column and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s coverage of other areas at editor Kevin Riley’s Facebook page, www.facebook.com/ ajceditor. to protect the identity of any source, even one who is anonymous to us,” said Shawn McIntosh, deputy managing editor at the AJC and the leader of our investigative team. “We would likely summarize the document, rather than providing government with a close copy of an original that carried identifying details. Even revealing the postmark on a mailed document is perilous.”

Georgia has a shield law that provides news media pretty strong legal grounding to protect sources who agree to be interviewed but not named. And when sources are entirely anonymous, such as when leaked materials are mailed to us, we can tell aggressive attorneys or angry government officials who contact us that we honestly don’t know the source of the documents. That lets us focus on getting them to answer for what the documents reveal, rather than arguing about whether they should know how we got them.

And sometimes an anonymous source shares documents that are public records; they’ve simply given us a lead that lets us find a needle in the haystack.

So as you can see, not all leakers are the same and not all leaks are created equal.

But if you’ve got one, our address is: 223 Perimeter Center Parkway, Atlanta, GA 30346.

My email is: Kriley@AJC.com

Reality Leigh Winner leaves the Federal Justice Center after her bond hearing on Thursday. U.S. Magistrate Judge Brian Epps denied her release on bond. He said the nature of the crime and other factors weighed against her release.