The Public Editor\'s Sunday Column: Sources With Secrets Find New Outlets for Sharing

Sources With Secrets Find New Outlets for Sharing

AT the end of the 1975 thriller “Three Days of the Condor,” a C.I.A. researcher played by Robert Redford, with the code name Condor, stands in front of The New York Times building. His life in danger, he is trying to save himself by taking his tale of government malfeasance to The Times.

But they may not print your story, a C.I.A. deputy director taunts him. “They'll print it,” Condor insists. “How do you know?” comes the rejoinder.

With that, and a last shot of Condor looking over his shoulder, the film draws to a close.

These days, the game has changed. When news sources want to go public with a major revelation, they don't need The Times. Look no further than Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who exposed widespread government surveillance of phone records and Internet activity.

He took much of his story to Glenn Greenwald, a journalist and lawyer known for objecting to the excesses of government surveillance after 9/11 and for championing civil liberties. As a result, The Times found itself playing catch-up to this crusading columnist for the United States Web site of The Guardian, a British newspaper. The Washington Post, also given information by Mr. Snowden, broke an important piece of the story too.

Forty-two years after The Times published the Pentagon Papers - that crucial story that revealed the lies the American government had told its citizens about the Vietnam War - a news source has more choices. Still, The Times imprimatur is powerful, and its national security reporters are, for good reason, extremely well respected.

Peter Hutchings of New York City, one of many Times readers who wrote to me, asked: “Did Snowden contact The Times? If so, we readers need to know that The Times decided against running the story and why.”

Dean Baquet, the managing editor, told me last week that, to his knowledge, Mr. Snowden made no such contact. “It's an important story, and clearly I would have loved for us to have had it,” Mr. Baquet said. “But he chose to go to someone who had a clear point of view.”

That is undoubtedly a part of the answer, but not all.

Let's go back eight years. The first important piece of the National Security Agency surveillance story was revealed by the Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau in late 2005 - notably, not based on a big leak but on painstaking investigative reporting from many sources over many months. Its disclosures about government eavesdropping on Americans without court warrants were extraordinary enough to win a 2006 Pulitzer Prize. But The Times had held that story for more than a year at the urging of the Bush administration, which claimed it would hurt national security.

In a 2008 article for Slate, Mr. Lichtblau, who had chafed at the delay, described the surreal scene “as my editors and I waited anxiously in an elegantly appointed sitting room at the White House” to be greeted by officials including the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and the White House counsel, Harriet Miers.

Would Mr. Snowden want to risk another 13-month delay? Not when he had other options. Mr. Baquet told me that if The Times had been given the leaked information, “we would have worked fast as hell to get it published.” (It's not simply a matter of deciding to publish and then doing so, he said, noting that handling the voluminous WikiLeaks revelations in 2010 took several weeks, and that in the Snowden case, both The Guardian and The Post took time to consider national security concerns and did not publish all that was offered.)

A reader from Paonia, Colo., Ed Marston, expressed “sorrow and anger” to The Times: “Given Mr. Snowden's decision to shun The New York Times and go to The Guardian and Post due to your 2004 cover-up, is your reputation irretrievably damaged?”

Certainly not. The Times continues to do excellent journalism on many subjects, including national security. And, as the executive editor Jill Abramson said of the 2005 article, “The important thing is that we published that story.”

BUT the delay hasn't been forgotten. The video journalist Laura Poitras, who worked on the N.S.A. stories in both The Post and The Guardian, said the earlier delay by The Times influenced Mr. Snowden's decision on where to take his information. What's more, when a video or article released anywhere can go viral in minutes, the outlet is less important. David Corn, the Washington bureau chief of Mother Jones, which released the famous “47 percent” video of Mitt Romney, told The Times last week: “If the leak is big enough, it doesn't matter what platform you choose. If it has merit and wow factor, you will get your story out.”

The N.S.A. story certainly has that “wow factor.” Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers source, told The Associated Press: “There has been no more significant disclosure in the history of our country. And I'll include the Pentagon Papers in that.”

Mr. Baquet told me he disagrees, and Ms. Abramson said it is too early to say. But in what can safely be called an understatement about not having the story first, she said, “I will admit to some degree of disappointment.”

Some Americans shrugged off these blockbuster disclosures, apparently believing that the secret surveillance practices are acceptable if they serve to fight terrorism - and, after all, they are legal. Others think that their very legality is the most outrageous part of all.

Whatever their outrage or acceptance, Americans ought to know about the activities of their ever-more-secretive government. As Richard A. Clarke, a counterterrorism official under three presidents, wrote in The New York Daily News last week: “The argument that this sweeping search must be kept secret from the terrorists is laughable. Terrorists already assume this sort of thing is being done. Only law-abiding American citizens were blissfully ignorant of what their government was doing.”

I'm glad the truth came out, no matter who published it. Looking ahead, one might ask if every potential leak recipient has the resources to verify information and make responsible decisions about using it. Perhaps not, and that is a significant downside to what is over all a positive development.

In today's world, Condor wouldn't have to wonder if his story would see the light of day or how long it would take.

That new reality may pain The Times as a competitive news organization - and would have wrecked the ending of a classic movie. But in a democracy threatened by excessive secrecy and the criminalizing of news gathering, the more sunlight the better.

Follow the public editor on Twitter at twitter.com/sulliview and read her blog at publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com.  The public editor can also be reached by e-mail: public@nytimes.com.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on June 16, 2013, on page SR12 of the New York edition with the headline: Sources With Secrets Find New Outlets for Sharing.