Mystery Leakers

[rodeodance]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100587.html
Mystery Leakers

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 22, 2005; 8:36 AM

Hey, kids, is it time to out some more confidential sources?

While the John Roberts confirmation battle is turning out to be, shall we say, not as inflammatory as might have been expected, another debate is heating up over all those reporters who relied on their informants in telling us the nominee would be Edith Clement, or Edith Jones, or whoever.

Since my column on the subject yesterday , questioning whether the Bush team was deliberately putting out disinformation, cyberspace has been buzzing about this, with some bloggers saying the reporters should blow the whistle on their inaccurate sources. (Keep in mind, though, that some of these outside Republican advisers may have been misled themselves, or just misinformed.)

Some noted a comment by NPR's Don Gonyea: "Late in the morning, a lot of reporters got calls from a confidential but persuasive source about Judge Clement." And MSNBC's Dan Abrams, while dealing with the Clement buzz, said he didn't "buy" it and speculated "that someone's leaking this, maybe as a diversion."

Kevin Drum says in the Washington Monthly: "It's obvious that a 'confidential but persuasive source' systematically called a bunch of reporters and deliberately misled them about who George Bush was planning to nominate to the Supreme Court. In fact, the calls were so systematic and deliberate that it was obviously part of a White House plan. (A fairly clever and effective one, I might add.)......