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Look I haven't a clue what Gavin Williamson, or of course Another Mystery Person, said to Steven Swinford but generally: there seems to be some confusion about how leaking happens, so a brief boring thread
What ministers almost never do is ring you up going 'HOO BOY GUESS WHAT HAPPENED IN THIS NSC MEETING' (to take a random example). Nor do you generally ring them up going 'ok so what happened in the NSC meeting'.
& I think once in 13 years as a lobby hack someone rang me up saying 'there's a brown envelope in X place in the Commons, I think you'll find the contents interesting' & it was a leaked copy of a draft white paper. ONCE. So; it ain't like in films.
What happens ALL THE TIME is a sort of jigsaw ID. Maybe you know there was (say) a Cabinet meeting today & it was due to discuss X & X is controversial. So you ring a few people & sort of...bounce things around. e.g. you might say 'I've heard that..
..there was a big row about X this morning & that you were anti it, am I doing you an injustice by writing that?" Maybe you do 100% know this is what happened & you are just responsibly checking. Maybe you are kind of guessing, & fishing. But anyway..
..the person might then say "You know I can't possibly talk to you about a Cabinet conversation about X, bye now". Or they'll first try to find out what if anything you actually do know (which might not be much). Or they'll say 'gosh you guys are fast'..
..& you'll think, ok so I was right. & then you bounce it off a few more people, & same process ensues. Or v rarely someone might go 'well if you know THAT, let me tell you XYZ'. But anything short of the last answer, & that person might tell...
..themselves 'well I didn't leak it. They already knew. I just..helped the story be accurate about me.' They reason everyone else is briefing to make themselves look good so why be the one who doesn't & get stuffed? + builds goodwill with hacks.
I've had people say to me "I don't know how you got hold of X" & I think 'uh literally from you mate'. Sometimes if you know a person well it's about the face they pull when you ask them did X happen, or the answer they don't give. You might...
..not write a story based on that alone obv but it's like a rolling stone, gathering moss. A little bit of info from lots of people who in each case don't think they really told you anything much = quite a sizeable stone sometimes.
to repeat i have no idea what happened with Huawei; only the journo concerned does & he's right to protect his sources. But leaking is a complicated thing, done for complicated reasons, & thus v hard to stop. Unlike this thread. (Stop).
