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OPINION: Levy coverage rife with anonymous sources
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June 10, 2002 Posted: 10:40:11 AM PDT
By MICHAEL DOYLE
WASHINGTON -- The Chandra Levy story revival reminds readers of the promise and peril of anonymous sources. Sometimes because they're so dangerously accurate, sometimes because they're so damnably wrong.
And always, because they can confound confirmation.
Anonymous sources returned big time with the discovery of Levy's remains May 22, but they've never really gone away. The Washington Post, for one, published 287 stories, columns and other items dealing with Levy in the past year. Of those, 144 relied at least partly on unnamed sources, a NEXIS database search shows.
At the New York Post, anonymous sources were cited in two-thirds of all stories filed by the paper's main Washington reporter covering the Levy case. Such sources have helped periodicals expose major elements of the case. They also can float ideas that are difficult to pin down or are downright acidic.
"I understand the press depends on sources, and they often need to be anonymous," said attorney Abbe Lowell, who formerly represented Rep. Gary Condit, D-Ceres. "But over and over again, we've learned that anonymity provides a level of irresponsibility that can also do harm."
Simply nailing down facts becomes tricky when anonymous sources are at play.
Consider, for one, the pressing question as to whether Condit has testified before a grand jury. Remember: The very nature of Condit's relationship to Levy is itself pegged to anonymous sources, as the 54-year-old congressman steadfastly refuses to confirm or deny reports that he told police he was sexually involved with the 24-year-old intern.
Overseen by two experienced homicide prosecutors, the grand jury is investigating Levy's disappearance 13 months ago as well as associated developments. Forced by House of Representatives rules, Condit made it publicly known through the Congressional Record in November that the grand jury had subpoenaed documents from his office.
Subsequent news accounts relying on anonymous sources elaborated that Condit himself had been subpoenaed to testify before the same grand jury. What happened next depends on which anonymous source you listen to.
The New York Post quoted "sources close to the investigation" as saying Condit went to the prosecutors' office but did not testify. The Washington Post quoted "sources" as saying Condit "appeared before" the grand jury, but that further details could not be learned. The San Francisco Chronicle quoted "sources" as saying "a Washington grand jury questioned Condit."
Federal rules prohibit law enforcement officials and grand jurors from talking about grand jury proceedings. However, witnesses and their lawyers aren't bound by the same restrictions; indeed, rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure explicitly states that "no obligation of secrecy may be imposed" on such people.
Nonetheless, the congressman's attorney declines to clarify the facts about Condit and the grand jury. Instead, in a response to a question from The Bee, attorney Mark Geragos said he's asked for an investigation about anonymous grand jury leaks.
"I think it would be disingenuous for me or duplicitous for me to now start talking about the grand jury material until I get results and an answer as to the grand jury investigation," Geragos said while appearing on the Fox News Channel. "As soon as I get an answer on the investigation, the internal investigation, I'd be happy to talk and reveal anything there."
That may take a very long time, if it happens at all. Investigations of grand jury leaks, while not unheard of, don't happen very often.
Anonymous sources can shape how investigations unfold. Last summer, for instance, two Washington police detectives and their supervisor prepared to sit down with Condit for a second interview. Lowell, who was then Condit's attorney, told supervisor Jack Barrett before the interview started that detectives should assume for the purposes of the interview that Condit had had an intimate relationship with Levy.
Lowell's motive was to avoid having a direct answer to an embarrassing question; an answer that Lowell was convinced would quickly leak out to the press through one of the myriad anonymous sources
And how does The Bee know this? Through an anonymous source.
As it happened, police ended up calling a third interview in part so they could ask Condit the direct question. Literally within minutes of police announcing that they'd held the third interview, news services and television stations were quoting anonymous sources asserting that Condit had told detectives he had a sexual relationship with Levy.
In other cases, anonymous sources cause problems not for those caught up in an investigation, but for those doing the investigating.
For instance, a local Washington television station initially reported a week ago that evidence found with Levy's remains suggested she had been bound. The anonymously sourced report sent police officials into a fury.
"If it is true, the individual who released it should be shot or put in jail," Executive Assistant Police Chief Terrance Gainer told The Washington Post. "That type of specificity could limit our possibility of solving this case and have a negative impact on the prosecution."
But within a day, anonymous sources were being quoted as offering even more elaborate details; as The Post reported, knotted leggings suggested Levy might have been tied up with her own clothes. Because police no longer put any energy into denouncing that particular anonymously sourced assertion, it has become assumed truth.
Thus, citing neither The Post nor anonymous sources, the Houston Chronicle by this week flatly asserted in one story that "knotted leggings were found ... raising speculation that she may have been bound before being killed." Without a named source, it is impossible to verify the details or, at least, verify them in a way that can be double-checked by others.
But in other cases, anonymous sources have steered reporters wrong.
The Washington Times, for instance, cited "a law enforcement source" in reporting a week ago that one of Levy's rings had been found along with her remains. By Wednesday, the paper's attribution had changed from the singular "source" to the plural "sources," but police shot down the observation anyway. No ring was found.
"We did not find a bracelet that she may have worn or her keys, and we have not found the ring," police spokesman Sgt. Joe Gentile said, offering his name up so other reporters could confirm his words.
The mutation of the word source to sources in the Times' stories suggests another journalistic danger: that readers might begin to think that reporters employ the plural term because it sounds better, even though only one source was talking, anonymously.
Doyle is a reporter in The Bee's Washington Bureau.