ON ANONYMOUS SOURCES

The ways the secret world speaks when it talks to reporters

Henry Kissinger with Phan Dan Lam, chief of the South Vietnamese delegation, during peace negotiations on the Vietnam War in Paris in 1972. / Photo by Central Press/Getty Images.

As some readers may have heard by now, Cover-Up, a documentary about my career in journalism more than two years in the making, had a successful world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival last Friday. The directors and producers, Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus, are serial prize winners in the business and of course they quizzed me on film about my exposé about the role of the Biden White House in the September 2022 destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, one set of which had been providing Russian gas to Germany—and fueling Germany’s economic recovery—since 2011.

The 5,200-word report I published here in February 2023 generated an enormous response, including questions from the media here and abroad about my reliance on a single unnamed source. That reliance made it easier for the major media—including the New York Times—to ignore or cast doubt on the story and focus instead on the on-the-record categorical denials by senior press officials in the White House and a CIA spokesperson. Just two weeks before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, President Joe Biden had warned President Vladimir Putin during a televised White House news conference that if he attacked, as he was then threatening to do, the United States would “bring an end to” the pipelines and deprive Russia of billions of annual income.