THE SOMETIMES-MESSY BUSINESS OF D.C. LEAKS
The revelation that former FBI Director James Comey had a friend pass an unclassified memo to the New York Times after he was fired has not only intensified the debate over Washington leaks, but also provided a glimpse behind the curtain at the secretive way the public’s business is conducted inside the Beltway.
Former FBI Director James Comey’s revelation Thursday that he was personally behind a bombshell New York Times story revealing the existence of his memo detailing a meeting with President Donald Trump offered a glimpse into the media’s use of anonymous sources.
A time-honored tactic of journalists, particularly in Washington, D.C., unnamed sources have helped provide a window into Trump’s turbulent first months in the White House. But it hasn’t been without questions about the credibility of reports based on anonymous sources and the news outlets behind them.
During his Senate testimony, Comey criticized some anonymous reporting as inaccurate.
Comey’s admission that he had indirectly been such a source brought into sharp focus a tension between the free press’ mission to shed a light on government — including failures or wrongdoing that officials may seek to cover up — and legitimate questions that arise when such information comes from hidden figures.
In many cases, whistleblowers with evidence of public corruption or malfeasance won’t come forward under any other circumstances. However, these sources have their own self-interest, political agendas or even grudges and vendettas.
The most famous unnamed source in American history — the Washington Post‘s “Deep Throat” of the Watergate scandal, later revealed as W. Mark Felt — was a high-ranking FBI official when he helped bring down President Richard Nixon.
But Felt carried baggage unknown to the Post‘s readers at the time: He was a devotee of controversial longtime FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Then-acting FBI chief L. Patrick Gray later accused Felt of trying to undermine him in order to secure the agency’s top job for himself.
In the Trump era, use of anonymous sources has handed ammo to the Republican president and his supporters to denounce negative coverage as “fake news.”
Trump’s allies have speculated these unnamed sources could be anti-Trump holdovers from President Barack Obama’s administration, disgruntled White House insiders or even just made up.
More generally, WikiLeaks and Russian hackers also have helped give “leaking” a negative connotation with some in the public by publishing or distributing pilfered classified material or stolen internal emails from organizations such as the Democratic National Committee.
It was with that brush that Trump sought to paint Comey following his Thursday testimony.
“Despite so many false statements and lies, total and complete vindication...and WOW, Comey is a leaker!” Trump proclaimed Friday on Twitter.
Comey explains his motives
During his testimony Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Comey, whom Trump fired on May 9, explained that he decided to disclose a memo he wrote about a conversation with Trump after the president posted on Twitter that there may be secret tapes of their talks.
“My judgment was I needed to get that out in the public square, and so I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter,” Comey said in response to a question from Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. “Didn’t do it myself for a variety of reasons, but I asked him to, because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel.”
The day after the New York Times published its May 16 story about the Comey memo, Robert Mueller, another former FBI director, was named special counsel for the ongoing investigation into possible collusion between Russia and Trump’s 2106 presidential campaign.
Comey told the panel that the friend who passed the memo along “is a professor at Columbia Law School.” Media reports later identified the friend as Daniel Richman.
Comey elaborated on his decision to take a roundabout route with the memo, in which Comey wrote that the president suggested he let go of an FBI investigation into Michael Flynn, Trump’s embattled former national security adviser.
“I worried it would be like feeding seagulls at the beach if it was I who gave it to the media, so I asked my friend, ‘Make sure this gets out,’ “said Comey, who described reporters camped outside his home.
Comey said the document was not classified and, as a private citizen, he felt he could share it with whomever he wished.
Leonard Downie Jr., a former executive editor of the Washington Post who worked with reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein on their landmark Watergate coverage, told The Arizona Republic, “I was very interested in the fact that Comey provided his own motivation: that he wanted a special counsel.”
Jeremy Mayer, an associate profes-
sor at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government in Virginia, said the episode shows, “First, that Comey is a seasoned Washington operator. He knows how to get good press coverage that makes him look good.
“The second is ... Comey was afraid it would come out and look worse, so he decided to admit to it and enhance his reputation for honesty,” Mayer continued.
“The third thing is that there is absolutely nothing illegal about what James Comey did. The document was not classified. The document was not covered by executive privilege.”
Anonymous report ‘not true’
Comey also criticized during the hearing some of the anonymously sourced reports about the investigation into the Trump campaign.
Specifically, he dismissed as mostly “not true” an explosive Feb. 14 New York Times story that cited “four current and former American officials” as confirming multiple contacts between the Trump campaign officials and Russian intelligence.
“The challenge — and I’m not picking on reporters about writing stories about classified information — is the people talking about it often don’t really know what’s going on. And those of us who actually know what’s going on are not talking about it,” Comey said during the hearing.
Downie said there is no problem with news outlets using anonymous sources “as long as the information is accurate” and the sources, and any possible motivations, are described as much as possible.
“Much of the information that is given to reporters by whistleblowers and leakers has some motivation behind it: They’re concerned about a policy, they’re concerned about whether the government is doing something wrong, they’re concerned about jockeying for position, they have political motives,” Downie said. “The motive doesn’t matter as long as the information is accurate and the reporter understands whether or not the motivation is coloring the information.”
Anonymous sources can be overused or misused, Downie said, when people tell reporters things that may or may not be accurate and the news organization doesn’t adequately check it out.
That may have been the case with the New York Times story that Comey criticized, he said. The Times is standing by its story.
“It should raise the issue of whether or not the Times checked carefully enough on that because there clearly are lots of people in government right now who are either jockeying for position within the Trump orbit, or are outside the Trump orbit and shooting at the Trump orbit,” Downie said.
How ‘Deep Throat’ helped
Woodward’s “Deep Throat” source, Felt, is an example where a source’s personal motivations may have come into play, Downie said.
“We never published anything only on Deep Throat’s say-so,” Downie said. “He was used by Woodward as a guide on a ‘right track’ or ‘wrong track’ kind of thing. Never was anything that he told Bob used in the paper.”
Nixon officials objected to the use of anonymous sources just as Trump officials do, but given the prevalent mediabashing in today’s political atmosphere, reporters need to be “more careful than ever,” he added.
During Watergate, the Post‘s editors knew who all the sources were and were able to make judgments.
“All the other sources except for Mark Felt were identified by Bob and Carl on notes that they had to type up on their interviews,” Downie said. “So we saw that they reached — increasingly, steadily — higher and higher into the White House.”
Protecting press credibility
Another expert on journalism ethics said that, as a general rule, anonymous sources should be avoided because “people can question the sources and the agenda.” But if used, journalists need to adhere to ethics and protocol in order to protect credibility.
“That’s all we have in journalism: Do you believe us or do you not believe us?” said Robert Hernandez, an associate professor of professional practice at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. “That’s part of what we saw in this election and this campaign. Credibility in news and journalism has been eroded and so we can’t have people question our integrity and our facts.”
Mayer, the George Mason University associate professor, agreed that the chorus of complaints from the right about “fake news” and media corruption puts more pressure on news outlets to make sure they are not overusing or improperly vetting unnamed sources.
“The broader question, rather than just focusing on anonymous sources, is does America, all in all, still basically trust the free press?” Mayer asked. “I think that’s an open question today in a way that it hasn’t been in maybe a century.”