In Defence of Unnamed Sources

The sacking of a veteran CIA officer for having links with the press has added yet more worrying heat to an issue that I blogged on earlier this year. I was tempted to write on this at the weekend when the sacking was first reported but was concerned that there was insufficient evidence linking the sacked officer to the alleged offence. Mary McCarthy was alleged to have been the source for a story written by Dana Priest of the Washington Post on CIA secret prisons across Europe, an allegation she has now denied.

Last week could not have been a very good one for 61-year-old McCarthy, who was sacked days before she was due to retire at the end of a distinguished and interesting career during which she had been a senior National Security Council official and adviser to the President. She was fired for having unauthorised contacts with journalists, not for leaking the story. She was reportedly forced out after anyone with any knowledge of the story was given a lie-detector test. But her lawyer says she had no access to the information in the Post report, so could not have leaked it.

One of the things that made me hesitant to write on this issue was that although there must have been an initial source for Priest’s story, there were a number of unidentified sources confirming the story. So it was possible that if McCarthy was a source for the story, she was one of those who confirmed elements of the story rather than the main source.

The CIA said she "knowingly and willfully shared classified intelligence." Her lawyer says she has never admitted leaking any secrets and "did not have access to the information she is accused of leaking". Rather belatedly, you might feel, an unnamed CIA source, who presumably does have permission to talk to the press, has confirmed to the Post that McCarthy is “not believed to have played a central role in the Post's reporting on the secret prisons”.

I’m going to leave the facts of the case there because I don’t feel too comfortable talking publicly about journalistic sources, whether my own or other people’s. Working in the same field as Priest, I know well the problems she faces as she tries to get to the truth while at the same time protecting her sources. Last week she experienced the highs and lows of our trade. On Monday, she was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her work. By Friday, someone alleged to have been one of her sources had been uncovered and sacked.

There has been a great deal of discussion in the US media in particular over the use of unnamed sources. The practice has come under fire from the administration and its supporters, the implication being that someone who wants to hide their identity probably isn't telling the truth.

The very opposite is the truth. The sources who provide information in the murky world of intelligence and defence are putting their careers, their reputations and very often their pensions at risk. They don’t do it lightly. They do it because they believe that something is going wrong and it needs to be addressed.

They are of course grown-ups, who are not being forced to give up the information, but as journalists we owe them strict confidentiality. That not only means that we don’t give up their names, whatever the pressure, but also that we do not write our stories in a way that might lead the authorities to find them. If the organisation from which the leak comes is going to polygraph everyone who might have leaked the story to the press there is not much a journalist can do about it. But the fact that the CIA needed to do that shows that the sources for Priest’s story were well-hidden.

I came under a lot of fire from the right-wing blogs for destroying the copies of the Downing St Memos. There were claims from some critics that I destroyed them so I could make up their content. But I destroyed them for one reason and one reason alone, to protect the source, as I explained here.

Articles critical of governments and official bodies, whether they be the armed forces, the intelligence services or the MoD/Pentagon, often rely on confidential sources. We don’t just accept the source’s word unthinkingly, there are always checks and balances to be made to ensure we get to the truth.

But when an unnamed source appears it is there not to hide the truth. It is there so that you the reader can get to the real truth, rather than the doctored “truth” that those in government would too often prefer that you read. There will be those who say that these sources are breaking the law, that leaking secrets puts lives at danger. I don’t defend leaks that endanger lives and I would not write anything that did put lives at risk.

But whoever leaked the secret prisons story didn’t leak anything that endangered lives. Quite the reverse. It is the mentality that seeks to justify such secret prisons that is the greatest danger to democracy and the way we live our lives. The unnamed source who exposes such things does far more for society, and for democracy, than those more timid souls who stay quiet.

Comments

[Melinda Barton]

Thank you for writing this. Obviously, the Plame affair has made a lot of people very anxious about anonymous sourcing and the capacity for abuse there. This reminder of the vital role that anonymous sources play in preserving the people's right to know comes at just the right time. While any journalist must proceed cautiously in granting anonymity, we should never lose sight of our duty to protect those sources that risk everything in service of the truth.

[doc99]

DOJ ongoing investigation clearly goes way beyond McCarthy.

[Giovanni de Briganti]

The case for granting individual anonymity to sources is compelling, but should not be viewed in isolation.
The indiscriminate anonymity that is routinely granted to government or corporate spokesmen, especially in the UK, is the other side of the same coin. Lobby rules are another pitfall. Both practices are insidious, and leave journalists very vulnerable to institutional "spin", yet they are accepted unquestioningly.
Surely, if you routinely grant anonymity to institutional spokesmen, you must grant the same anonimity to all other sources, as a simple matter of fairness and balance.
This is why, at the end of the day, journalistic soul-searching on the theme of "to name or not to name" is basically pointless.

[Chuck Unsworth]

Maybe we should take a pace back from the detail and look at the overall picture.

The growing pressure on journalists to reveal their sources is certainly part of ongoing and deliberate attempts to stifle comment - 'news management' if you will. Apart from threats of legal action, all sorts of other pressures are routinely brought to bear on journalists and publishers. These range from threats of 'excommunication' to direct threats of personal injury. Sources always have to make difficult personal decisions about what they are prepared to reveal and the (often enormous) risks attached. Of course, good journalists will always make sure that they have a number of confirmations of the facts of their articles.

But I think journalists should be allowed not to reveal sources if they so choose, and suffer whatever consequences may arise. There are innumerable laws in most countries concerning State Secrets, Libel, Copyright and so on which are - or can be - employed to call journalists or commentators to account for their utterings. And in a court these people may be compelled to reveal their sources.

What is noticeable and sinister is that many governments choose to ignore or bypass the existing legal systems, in favour of other influences. This 'expedient' approach is morally and legally dubious.

Journalism is not an easy or particularly honourable trade (with great respect to Mick and his colleagues), nor is politics. But we have (the vestiges of) a large legal system which may be used to try these matters, and which has more than ample legislation in its armoury.

Put simply, if an article is in clear breach of any of these legal precepts, governments should use the judicial system to remedy the matter. Journalists should account for their actions - as any other citizen - in a court of law. After all, why should they be regarded differently in the eyes of the law?

Let's for a moment accept the contractual obligations that may apply in the McCarthy case. Let's also set aside the practical difficulty of identifying the daily employment of one's friends or casual acquaintances. The notion that individuals should be required to conform with a principle of 'authorised' or 'not authorised' contact with journalists is both heinous and crass. This is tantamount to a concept of 'approved' or 'not approved' journalists. And the story above is a graphic reinforcement of exactly that.

What this ultimately will do is to divide the news media into state approved or not-approved bodies. That is the gilded entrance to a steep and totalitarian path.

[William Murray]

Unnamed sources? That is where Senator "Tailgunner" Joe McCarthy started his hunt for communists! We know how free the press was with him! Give me a break. With the plethora of “whistle-blower” protection laws and an inordinate number of ambulance chasing solicitors here in the States there is no need to remain “unnamed” save only to further some political aim.

[doc99]

from today's Wall Street Journal

"We're as curious as anyone to see how Ms. McCarthy's case unfolds. But this would appear to be only the latest example of the unseemly symbiosis between elements of the press corps and a cabal of partisan bureaucrats at the CIA and elsewhere in the "intelligence community" who have been trying to undermine the Bush Presidency. . . .

"The deepest damage from these leak frenzies may yet be to the press itself, both in credibility and its ability to do its job. It was the press that unleashed anti-leak search missions aimed at the White House that have seen Judith Miller jailed and may find Ms. Priest and Mr. Risen facing subpoenas. And it was the press that promoted the probe under the rarely used Espionage Act of "neocon" Defense Department employee Lawrence Franklin, only to find that the same law may now be used against its own "whistleblower" sources. Just recently has the press begun to notice that the use of the same Espionage Act to prosecute two pro-Israel lobbyists for repeating classified information isn't much different from prosecuting someone for what the press does every day--except for a far larger audience.

"We've been clear all along that we don't like leak prosecutions, especially when they involve harassing reporters who are just trying to do their job. But then that's part of the reason we didn't join Joe Wilson and the New York Times in demanding Karl Rove's head over the Plame disclosure. As for some of our media colleagues, when they stop being honest chroniclers of events and start getting into bed with bureaucrats looking to take down elected political leaders, they shouldn't be surprised if those leaders treat them like the partisans they have become."

[Mick says: I wouldnt expect the Wall Street Journal to say anything else. But it is depressing to see journalists affecting to be "honest chroniclers" yet at the same time being so thoroughly dishonest. I would agree that some of the uses of unnamed sources in the US have been suspect, as in the Judith Miller case, and indeed the Plame case. But in both those cases, the use of unnamed sources referred initially to officials who were scarcely trying to take down elected political leaders, simply trying to bolster a dishonest one. The use of secret prisons (Priest's story) was designed, dishonestly to circumvent US law, while the interception of domestic communications without going through the correct judicial process (Risen's story) was a clear breach of US law. No-one is suggesting that either story was not true, indeed the investigation into the secret prisons has effectively confirmed the first, while the administration has bluntly admitted the Risen story is true. People have to decide whether they want a press that is exposing illegality by governments or one that is not. But it is difficult to see how media outlets that oppose the exposure of such criminality could possibly claim to be "honest chroniclers".]

[Rich]

"There has been a great deal of discussion in the US media in particular over the use of unnamed sources. The practice has come under fire from the administration and its supporters, the implication being that someone who wants to hide their identity probably isn't telling the truth.

"The very opposite is the truth. The sources who provide information in the murky world of intelligence and defence are putting their careers, their reputations and very often their pensions at risk. They don’t do it lightly. They do it because they believe that something is going wrong and it needs to be addressed."

Yes but lets not overlook that those same intelligence and military people can use anonymity to spread propaganda and disinformation in order to further a political agenda.

That said, I disagree with poster Chuck who argues that anonymity can is used only to further a political objective. The American Congress certainly does not have a good track-record in protecting Federal whistleblowers. Such indifference can only discourage those with important stories from coming forward.

[Chuck Unsworth]

For clarity let me point out that at no stage and in none of the above have I ever argued that anonymity can be used to further any objective, let alone any political ojective. It may indeed be so, but I have not expressed that view. Perhaps Rich is confusing me with your other correspondent, William Murray.

With profound respect to Mr Murray, I'm not too sure whether I should be flattered or outraged....

What I had set out was that whistleblowers must, perhaps regrettably, take their chances, whilst journalists must equally make decisions as to reveal or protect their sources. But let us not kid ourselves about individual motives.

And it is fair to say that reporters are just that - reporters. It's up to the readership to decide whether they believe what is being presented to them. It's up to those being reported upon to decide whether they are content - or whether to take action against the journal and/or reporter.