Leak House

Different sources deploy different strategems in leaking. As Betti Cuniberti reported in the Los Angeles Times in 1987, when Reagan administration officials couldn't get the president's attention on an issue, they'd leak something on the topic to the press knowing he'd read it in the newspapers and perhaps act. Jody Powell, President Jimmy Carter's press secretary, told Cuniberti that a leak from the national security adviser was less sexy than one from one of his staffers because a leak from the adviser would look like the party line but the one from the staffer would look like real dirt. So, if the leak was an authorized one, it should come from the underling, not the boss. Think tanker Stephen Hess told Cuniberti the Washington Post was the best vehicle for a political leak because it's the newspaper of politics, and the New York Times was a better venue for an international relations leak because the foreign embassies read it more closely.

In a July 1974 Commentary piece, Edward Jay Epstein brings a paranoid's unbreakable logic to the business of leaking. He diagnoses a blind spot, endemic to journalists, that

proceeds from an unwillingness to see the complexity of bureaucratic in-fighting and of politics within the government itself. If the government is considered monolithic, journalists can report its activities, in simply comprehended and coherent terms, as an adversary out of touch with popular sentiments. On the other hand, if governmental activity is viewed as the product of diverse and competing agencies, all with different bases of power and interests, journalism becomes a much more difficult affair.

Woodward and Bernstein didn't break the Watergate scandal, Epstein says, government investigators and government institutions did, who leaked the news to reporters.

Hess diagrams a more genial taxonomy of the leak in his 1984 book, The Government-Press Connection, which I've transcribed from Cuniberti's piece. Hess describes:

The Ego Leak: "Giving information primarily to satisfy a sense of self-importance." Powerless staffers are reliable sources of ego leaks.

The Goodwill Leak: "To accumulate credit with a reporter, which the leaker hopes can be spent at a later date." Probably the most popular type.

The Policy Leak: "A straightforward pitch for or against a proposal using some document or insiders' information as the lure to get more attention than might be otherwise justified." The Pentagon Papers are a good example.

The Animus Leak: "Used to settle grudges. Information is disclosed to embarrass another person." Politicians love to Animus Leak all over one another.

The Trial Balloon Leak: "Revealing a proposal that is under consideration in order to assess its assets and liabilities."

The Whistle-Blower Leak: "Unlike the others, usually employed by career personnel."

Bob Woodward, the ocean that refuses no river as long as it contains a leak, says we should care less about the source than the quality of the information contained in the leak. But if we assume that all leakers leak for a reason, in many cases the information they provide may be relatively insignificant while their motive for leaking might be the real story.