Issue one: Truth vlue.
Are they leaks, and true?
Are they leaks, and so distorted as to be not true?
Are they lies told by people in positions to have the truth?
Or are they sourced from people who merely claim to have access to the information, but don't?
We have no answers. We have suspicions, hankerings, desires, beliefs. But ultimately we trust a few sources who rely on us trusting them--even though they have a spotty track record, and their sources are already liars. All this confidential information comes from people who pledged their integrity on keeping the information confidential. Once you're past the "I'm going to make myself a liar in search of my personal higher truth" phase, what their "higher truth" is becomes a mystery.
Issue two: Agenda
Are they true but goal-driven? Done by people who don't like their boss or who intend to discredit adversaries? I've seen one set of leaks described as an attempt to show how incompetent the spy agencies are, the ones that are now leaking anti-Trump stuff. I've seen leaks described as an attempt to rehabilitate Comey to make Trump look bad or to further discredit him to make Trump look good. Strictly speaking, agenda doesn't determine truth value--true, skewed, or false leaks could be used for almost any agenda.
But with an agenda often comes manipulation. In telling the truth they're consciously and intentionally manipulating people not for the sake of the truth itself but to nudge them to other kinds of behavior? (I'd point out that much of the "fake news" last summer was accurate, produced by from Comey. Or worse, from email data-dumps or skewed RT reporting, but still not untrue. In other words, manipulative-but-true "leaks". That was the essence of most "Russian fake news" and those responsible for voting were manipulated, but didn't object to being screwed over. Less rape, more seduction.)
Those people intended to be manipulated (if that's the goal) could be you and me, could be the NYT and WaPo, could be the investigators or Congressmen. I'd point out that trying to influence the proceedings of a grand jury tends to be a bit illegal, and that if there is a grand jury and leaks are coming from it that's going to influence who testifies and the quality of the testimony, and the first thing the prosecutor and judge have to do is protect the process. Would *you* testify honestly and willingly and completely if you knew that what you said in secret proceedings would necessarily be reported back in your twitter feed on the way home in ways that you have no control over?
Given the lack of information, we could say that the leaks are what they are, and assume they're true by people who just like truth. They could be false, an attempt to manipulate people against Trump by people who don't like Trump--it's not like that can't happen. They could be an attempt to make it look like Trump's the object of a false smear campaign, only to have the truth when "revealed" show their falseness. Or maybe it's an attempt by people who don't like Trump to disguise their anti-Trump campaign as a false smear campaign, so when the truth comes out they'll be shown to be prescient and far, far superior to the MSM. Or maybe ....
No data, no constraints on the hypothesis. Ripe for gossip, a plaything for speculative analysis, but no more than that.
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What is that worth
