Reader's guide to an opaque Washington Post story on the Russian thing

When you grant anonymity you are making a wager: that WHAT is said is more newsworthy than WHO tried to say it. That is a bet you can lose.

Just finished a 5th reading of https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-administration-sought-to-enlist-intelligence-officials-key-lawmakers-to-counter-russia-stories/2017/02/24/c8487552-fa99-11e6-be05-1a3817ac21a5_story.html … The Post appears to be signaling that to whom it granted anonymity is the real story.

1/ On a 6th read my best guess: FBI told Reince he could say the story was overdrawn. Instead he said: there's nothing to it. That's a lie.https://twitter.com/jayrosen_nyu/status/835339980927078400 …

2/ But the FBI can't say it's a lie for the same reason it wouldn't knock down the Russia contacts story when Reince asked: ongoing probe.

3/ Knowing this, Reince enlisted others to back up his falsely totalizing comments. The Post knows he's lying but cannot say how it knows.

4/ The Post reporters are frustrated. The people they're writing about have names in one paragraph, then appear as "officials" in the next.

5/ Reince appears to be arbitraging the difference between what he says as Reince and what he tells them as "a White House officials said."

6/ Post reporters are trying to prevent him from doing that while still writing down and sometimes using what "White House officials" said.

7/ It's possible Reince is in the same position Spicer was in with the crowd sizes on Day One. Under direct orders to lie for the boss.

8/ But whereas Spicer had to humiliate himself to comply, Reince is trying to play a subtler game, enlisting others and "doubling" himself.

9/ With this story the Post is also saying: look at how far they've gone to knock down this report about Russian contacts with Trump people.

10/ And: they've been super duplicitous with us but we can't show you the full range of that because we agreed not to name some people. END.