This is a very curious thing. I read the article, but I'm not exactly clear on why one is great and noble but the other is not. There's some undercurrent that I would paraphrase as 'limiting the harm' of the leaks by being selective, but that's premised on the idea that the public has no right to know and be informed of what its leaders are doing because diplomacy requires hypocrisy? Or something, at least.

I mean, when we get down to this sort of romanticized leaker's code or whatever you what to characterize this as, it seems like truth isn't seen as important, only the leaker's goal and how leaks can be managed via the press. But I would submit that this is no longer functioning very well. I mean, does anyone even believe content-free leaks any more? If you have anonymous officials saying they know things based on circumstantial evidence they won't let you see, can you really believe them knowing it's more than likely part of this gentlemanly leaker's code to plant information in the media?

I mean, just look at this for a recent example which discusses this vis a vis credibility quite extensively: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/12/cias-absence...

The thing is, there's no reason to speculate here. We can infer how Podesta got hacked, based purely on public evidence. There's this nice DKIM-validated email, shortly before the leak ends: https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/34899

We know it hasn't been modified because it's signed not once but twice, by two separate DKIM keys, specifically: d=1e100.net; s=20130820; (Google) and d=hillaryclinton.com; s=google;

In it is a bit.ly link to a fake Google password phishing page on an email that claims there were hacking attempts on the account. Bit.ly stats placed that link as having been clicked on twice in the relevant time frame. Staff are in that email thread saying it's real and he has to change passwords immediately and offering to help him do so.

There were, of course, also reports that the Clinton's home email server might have been hacked. But they scrubbed that server and the only things that were ever made public were put out by the FBI, redacted from paper copies. It's not clear what was left of it to examine given that what little was turned over was turned over in printed form, preventing any real analysis thereof. I'm not aware of any actual, public leaks of this information, though it is easily conflated with either the Podesta email dump or the DNC leaks available on Wikileaks. Doubly so when you see emails like the one above which was forwarded to Podesta's Gmail account from a private Clinton domain. So it leaked via the Podesta phishing, whereas the DNC leaks were said to be an insider.

One wonders if they ever thought to question Charles Delavan, who told everyone the above phishing email was real? True, this could easily be an innocent (but very harmful) mistake. It looked rather convincing other than being at the wrong domain (I didn't check for JavaScript that might have hidden this, IIRC IE had some exploits of that sort) and the bit.ly link, neither of which is that hard to miss. But it's some wonder we don't see any investigation into bit.ly, the domain it forwards to, etc. in all these talks, but rather lots of chatter from insiders telling us there's a lot of evidence we're not permitted to see.