Anonymity is rare in newspaper columns

The New York Times last week published an op-ed criticizing the Trump administration. Nothing new there. Two factors set this one apart: It was published anonymously by the New York Times, and (2) the author claims to be a member of the Trump administration and a member of a secret subset of administration employees who are doing what they can to counter Trump's worst decisions.

The anonymous author claims to be doing right by the country by resisting Trump's bad behavior, but if anonymous thought the op-ed would change Trump, anonymous was wrong. If anything, the op-ed bolstered Trump's paranoid illusions about a "deep state" of career federal employees who "really" run foreign and domestic policy. Trump is well-known for punishing disloyalty in any form and for lashing out at even the slightest criticism.

As a former newspaper editor who spent years battling with people who wanted to write letters to the editor or op-ed columns anonymously, I am having a hard time getting over the fact that the sainted New York Times allowed someone to use its opinion pages without identifying himself or herself. I've read that an anonymous column is not unprecedented, but it surely is among the rarest of exceptions.

On a national scale, I can think of only one one exception to the generally accepted rule that opinion columns should be signed and usually include a brief bio of the author. The exception I recall came in March 1975, when a writer using the pseudonym of "Miles Ignotus" suggested in a Harper's article that the problem of the rising cost of oil and the growing power of OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, could be solved by a quick, precise military strike on the Saudi Arabian oil fields. Miles suggested that Americans could produce oil at a cost of five cents a barrel (as best I remember), sell it at $5 a barrel, and give away the excess profit to the Saudis and others to placate Arab interests. Everybody would be happy except the Saudis!

Fortunately, no one followed Miles' advice, and it was another 28 years before the United States decided to invade another oil-producing Arab country, producing a hopeless war, thousands of deaths, a debacle aptly described in the book by Tom Ricks titled "Fiasco."

During my career as an editor, I encountered many people who wanted to run anonymous letters or columns, but my fading memory can recall just two extraordinary incidents in which I relented and ran an anonymous letter. One was written by a domestic violence victim who was commenting on the local effort to stem domestic abuse. The writer had been recently divorced from her abusive husband and was living somewhere that he was unaware of. To publish her name and address would have endangered her life, but what she had to say was worth reading. The second incident involved a letter from a college faculty member who was critical of the college administration (I don't remember the issue involved). I agreed to run the letter anonymously because to run the writer's name would have resulted in an immediate dismissal.

Would I have run Anonymous' op-ed about Trump if I were in the opinion editor's cubicle last week? I think not, but it's hard to say what one might decide in a theoretical case. I would have feared the column would have infuriated Trump and made him more paranoid, more unpredictable and more angry.

I'm confident that the New York Times knows the identity of Anonymous, just as nearly every American newspaper expects a verifiable name on every letter to the editor. I knew the identity of the writers of the two letters I can remember from a 33-year career that I agreed to publish anonymously. With all others, I would explain that the letters column was a public forum, and participants in that forum should be willing to stand behind their opinions, as they would in a public meeting. If you are ashamed of your opinion, don't send it to the newspaper editor.