No they are not, especially when they are intelligence sources. Do you really expect some CIA guy who's talking to a reporter to be quoted? Have you ever heard of "Deep Throat?"
And no, I don't mean the movie.
How about sources that do? They're not acceptable either, if they are critical, right sinkspur?
Excerpt from Coleen Rowley's Memo to FBI Director Robert Mueller ------
"The fact is that key FBIHQ personnel whose jobs it was to assist and coordinate with field division agents on terrorism investigations and the obtaining and use of FISA searches (and who theoretically were privy to many more sources of intelligence information than field division agents), continued to, almost inexplicably,5 throw up roadblocks and undermine Minneapolis' by-now desperate efforts to obtain a FISA search warrant, long after the French intelligence service provided its information and probable cause became clear. HQ personnel brought up almost ridiculous questions in their apparent efforts to undermine the probable cause.6 In all of their conversations and correspondence, HQ personnel never disclosed to the Minneapolis agents that the Phoenix Division had, only approximately three weeks earlier, warned of Al Qaeda operatives in flight schools seeking flight training for terrorist purposes!
Nor did FBIHQ personnel do much to disseminate the information about Moussaoui to other appropriate intelligence/law enforcement authorities."
See, sinkspur, the Bile is rising in many people who can't accept the corruption anymore. And you and several others expect us to just shut up and be good little sheep. Ain't gonna happen!
However, given the penchant of the lamestream press for making up things that CAN be checked out with relative ease, any and all reports from "unnamed sources" that cannot be independently verified must be taken with a grain of salt.
A large grain of salt.
One roughly the size of Mount Rushmore.