A Bunch of White House Officials Explain Why They Leak So Much: It’s a ‘Mexican Standoff’
Axios reporter Jonathan Swan dropped a staggering report this weekend: a White House communications staff meeting, during which press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders blasted aides for leaking, was subsequently leaked by five people present at the meeting.
The private meeting was held in response to comments made at a prior meeting by White House aide Kelly Sadler, who said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was “dying anyway,” so his opposition to Trump’s CIA Director nominee didn’t matter.
We know all of this because it all leaked.
Swan, ever the enterprising reporter, took it upon himself to find out why this White House is the leakiest in recent history, and the product is a new report in which the administration’s “most prolific leakers” explain why they do it.
“To be honest, it probably falls into a couple of categories,” one White House official told Swan. “The first is personal vendettas. And two is to make sure there’s an accurate record of what’s really going on in the White House.”
Another senior White House official said the “most common substantive leaks are the result of someone losing an internal policy debate… By leaking the decision, the loser gets one last chance to kill it with blowback from the public, Congress or even the President.”
The official continued: “You have to realize that working here is kind of like being in a never-ending ‘Mexican Standoff.’ Everyone has guns (leaks) pointed at each other and it’s only a matter of time before someone shoots. There’s rarely a peaceful conclusion so you might as well shoot first.”
One former senior White House official, who Swan wrote “turned leaking into an art form” (and whose name definitely does not rhyme with Beve Stannon) explained the practice thusly: “Leaking is information warfare; it’s strategic and tactical — strategic to drive narrative, tactical to settle scores.”
And, if you thought like this all sounds like a fun game where the stakes are the survival of the modern democratic project, allow me to introduce you to Captain Asshole of Swan’s League of Leakers, a current White House official:
“To cover my tracks, I usually pay attention to other staffers’ idioms and use that in my background quotes. That throws the scent off me.”
Read the report here.
[image via screengrab]
