if everyone knows all these thingous see in the up in are tantamount to official acknowledgment, thenthe whole game collapses, unless people are almost silly in their level of formalism here. so, how do you preserve that constructive ambiguity about weather the disclosure is -- you have to allow some give in the system, some amount of unauthorized or quasi-unauthorized leaking, at least that's my claim. very quickly, few other factors. most leaks that occur are not like bradley manning. they're not disclosures unauthorized in any sense of the term by a completely rogue low level actor. most actually occur in the middle space between full presidential authorization and no authorization. ... >> these are people who on multiple levels are tough to prosecute. it's not clear that it's worth it. finally, there's a big literature on leaks as a form of internal communication within the executive branch, how they allow you to bypass the awkwardness and sum cumbersomeness of channels. a quote, by the end of the administration, we had converted "the new york times" and washington post into our w