[crocodiletears]

I've long-since stopped listening to anonymous intelligence officials. Any time you get their quotes, you've got to flip a coin to decide whether it's a legitimate leak,or an attempt to direct the media narrative without putting the organization's reputation on the line.

Anonymous officials ready to support any given narrative seem to be a dime a dozen anymore.

Unless the leaked information is accompanied by an insurmountably huge collection of documents outlining a complex tapestry of affiliations, interests, and events such as the alphabet agencies are want to produce, I typically assume it's the latter.

The NYT doesn't get a pass from me just because it used to be great, and do the work requisite to earn its sterling reputation.

I honestly wish I could provide citations where they've fallen here, but most of them come from The Intercept's podcast (Intercepted, I recommend it), where Scahill's opening rants regularly take aim at publications across the spectrum's use of anonymous officials, and the questionability of the claims they cite, and it would be far too exhausting and disheartening to record them all. As petty as some of them have been, it's just background noise, anymore.