Once upon a time, before the use of the anonymous source became all the rage in the news-gathering business, a reporter would sooner turn down a free meal than hand his editor a news story laced with comments from unidentified spokesmen. The inflexible rule on attribution was simple: If the comment or opinion came with no name attached it never saw the light of day in the newspaper.

Granted, those days have long since gone the way of the five-cent cigar, the bunny hop and World War II victory gardens. Names in too many news stories have been replaced with phrases such as “one official close to the president” or “a source in the Justice Department,” and the like. The closer we get to war with Iraq the more pervasive the anonymous source becomes – the better to float the political trial balloon du jour making the case against the evil Saddam Hussein, my dear.

But sometimes, even those reporters for whom shilling for the anonymous source has become second nature must have to laugh at their own ludicrous forays into obfuscation and murkiness. Who, for example, could fail to get a hoot out of one such clunker in a story buried deep in Thursday’s newspaper?

Writing about the possibility that the al-Qaida terror network may have obtained a chemical weapon in Iraq, a Washington Post reporter unleashed this beauty: “Knowledgeable officials, speaking without White House permission, said information about the transfer came from a sensitive and credible source whom they declined to discuss.”

If that sentence doesn’t contribute vastly to mankind’s understanding of the incident I can’t imagine what would. When it comes to knowledgeable government officials speaking without White House permission I have found the effect on a normal person to be consistently mind-boggling, i.e., you believe you understand what you think they didn’t say, but you can never be sure that what you read is necessarily what they didn’t mean.

Later in the aforementioned Post story, the knowledgeable sources enlighten us further. “Authorized national security spokesmen declined to discuss the substance of their information about the transfer of lethal chemicals,” the reader is informed. “Those who disclosed it have no policy-making responsibilities on Iraq… Even authorized spokesmen, with one exception, addressed the report on the condition of anonymity…”

For some inexplicable reason the story jump-started a nonrelated flashback to my days covering one of the pre-historic legislatures of the late 1960s when a politician in a leadership position – I can’t recall just who it was – called a morning press conference to announce that he was calling an afternoon press conference. (Like a dope, I covered both.) For all I know, the chap may today be a knowledgeable White House official who speaks without permission. He certainly showed the essential qualifications back then.

Lately, the national media seem to have gotten even lazier, frequently streamlining the anonymous source reference to merely “sources said,” whereas previously they might have elaborated along the lines of “sources with access to the palace guard said,” or some such wimp-out. The more outlandish anonymity, of course, remains that given total strangers in alien cultures on the other side of the world, for something that doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. As in, “A spokesman at the Chinese Army barracks in Shanghai, speaking on condition of anonymity, said

the fireworks display was impressive…”

Like if we knew the guy’s name he’d be in deep doo-doo here in metropolitan Winterport for speaking out of turn about such a top-secret matter.

But I don’t mean to put too fine a point on things. The attributable quote is not completely out of fashion. Here in Maine (The Way Life Ought To Be) it is very much alive, thanks to lame-duck governor Angus King and other newsmakers who have a way with words and are not bashful about being quoted.

Speaking to a gathering sponsored by the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine recently, the governor turned to the subject of a proposed north woods national park for Maine, the boondoggle that is so dear to the hearts of the Beautiful People of RESTORE: The North Woods. I switched on my car radio just in time to hear him declare, “Any governor who locks up 3 million acres of his state and sends the key to Washington is nuts, as far as I’m concerned,” and I could imagine four-fifths of the state cheering his words.

No anonymity sought there. But had there been, you’d like to think no news outfit would have been nuts enough to grant it.

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is

olddawg@bangordailynews.net.