How Acceptable Was Anonymous Speculation About Snowden\'s Laptops?

It's the story that just won't quit: The tale of Edward J. Snowden and his leak of classified information about the United States government's secret surveillance of citizens.

Rife with skirmishes and subplots, overflowing with schadenfreude, one-upsmanship and bruised egos, it's also a matter of extraordinary national and global importance.

One of the latest developments is the question of whether Mr. Snowden â€" as was suggested in a Times article on June 24 â€" may have unwittingly provided classified information to China.

The Times article, the essence of which looked at the reasons that China allowed Mr. Snowden to leave Hong Kong, included this sentence about two-thirds of the way down: “Two Western intelligence experts, who worked for major government spy agencies, said that they believed that the Chinese government had managed to drain the contents of the four laptops that Mr. Snowden said he brought to Hong Kong, and that he said were with him during his stay at a Hong Kong hotel.”

Mr. Snowden denied that his laptops were compromised by the Chinese (or the Russians): “I never gave any information to either government and they never took anything from my laptops,” he said in an interview with Glenn Greenwald, the columnist for The Guardian who broke much of the biggest news over the past month as a chief recipient of Mr. Snowden's information.

In that piece, Mr. Greenwald took The Times to task for printing that “incendiary” speculation.

“In lieu of any evidence, The New York Times circulated this obviously significant assertion,” he said, by “citing two anonymous sources saying they ‘believed' this happened.”

He continued: “From there, it predictably spread everywhere as truth.” The New Yorker soon repeated it, citing The Times. “It was then used to demonize Snowden” in a wide variety of venues, Mr. Greenwald wrote. (The Huffington Post's Michael Calderone reported on this topic on Wednesday.)

Paul E. King, a Times reader in Fort Worth, said he was disturbed by what he read in Mr. Greenwald's column, and he raised good questions, wanting to know about The Times's standards on the use of anonymous sources. He also was concerned about the way such information in The Times can be manipulated for political purposes.  (For example, government sources have reason to want to portray Mr. Snowden as a traitor.)

I asked The Times's foreign editor, Joseph Kahn, about how the sourcing was handled and about Mr. Greenwald's criticism.

Mr. Kahn said that it's important to see this passage in the story for what it is: An exploration of what might have happened, based on experts who did not claim to have direct knowledge. He also noted that, in a front-page article last year, The Times detailed the ways in which the Chinese government is able to penetrate digital devices; such cyber theft is a common enough practice that American government and business officials traveling in China take extraordinary measures to prevent it.

The recent article, he noted, said that the sources “believed, not that they were told.” The Times provided further context and conditionality, he said, in the next sentence: “If that were the case, they said, China would no longer need or want to have Mr. Snowden remain in Hong Kong.”

“It's a couple of steps removed from a strong assertion,” he said.

Mr. Kahn was not the direct editor on the article and he said that foreign desk editors did not press the reporters to know their sources, nor did he think they needed to do so. That practice arises, he said, when an anonymous source is the basis for an article's premise or a central assertion.

“I don't think any of us saw this set of beliefs as being worthy of that high level of scrutiny,” he said. Because of a concurrent discussion of another, related article, Mr. Kahn does know who one of the two sources is and remains confident of that person's knowledge and reliability.

In retrospect, knowing how the passage has been exaggerated and spun, would Mr. Kahn have wanted to see it handled differently?

“It's Monday morning quarterbacking,” he said, but The Times could have added a sentence that made it clear that the sources did not have direct, specific information of what happened with Mr. Snowden's laptops.

Mr. Greenwald's argument is worth thinking hard about. Two sentences in the middle of a Times article on such a sensitive subject â€" though they may be off the central point â€" have the power to sway the discussion or damage a reputation.  What The Times writes can quickly, and sometimes harmfully, become pundit fodder.

“The way it gets picked up is hard for us to control,” Mr. Kahn said. “Obviously, we have to think about it.”

He's right. So is the reader, Mr. King, who wrote: “I read the Times for the truth. I can read publication of speculation almost anywhere.”