[nopardons]

You're correct about the " code ". Novak has said, that when he called Pame-Wilson an " opperative ", he meant that term ( as everyone in D.C. knew ...but not US ! ), was that she was a " HACK " .

[Wolfstar]

I believe Tom Clancy took a shot at explaining the code in one of his novels, although I don't remember which one. For example, there is some kind of sliding scale of adjectives used to hint at just how close or far the source is from the inner circle in a case. "A source familiar with..." is not as inside as someone described as "a source close to..." or "an official close to" for example. It's all BS, in my opinion, because almost all stories these days are attributed to anonymous sources, even when there is no need for a source to be anonymous. Unfortunately, most people in the general public don't have a clue as to just how fraudulent many news stories are — sigh.