Will they ever find out who dunnit in the White House?

It has to be unprecedented for pretty well every single person in the Trump cabinet member and senior official closely associated with the president to put out a statement denying being the author of the devastating anti-Trump oped in the New York Times. It's the most intruiging mystery since the hunt for the Deep Throat in the Watergate scandal who spilled the beans bit by bit in an underground car park to Woodward and/or Bernstein during the 1970s scoop of the century. But what really fascinates me is not who penned the article but how many people at the New York Times know who he or she is. The paper says it defnitely knows who the author is. Well, they could hardly print an anonymous oped without knowing who was writing it. That would be seriously unprofessional. So who knows what we all want to know? Just the editor, the publisher and the oped editor perhaps? Who would the anonymous author have initially contacted and was it by email or by phone or during a discreet lunch somewhere in or outside Washington? Whichever way the deal was done it could be traceable by the FBI IF Trump insisted on the Justice Department getting involved. After all, he did tweet that it was TREASON. If I was a disgruntled Trump cabinet member and wanted to air my views in public in the New York Times I reckon I would only contact someone I personally knew and could trust. So, it could even be an individual reporter I had known for years, or a columnist. Then that person would go to the editor and tell him. The editor would then bring in the oped editor and probably no one else. The subeditor given the job of putting the oped into the paper would certainly not be told the identity of the author. So that's a maximum of three people. The publisher might want to know but the editor would probably say it was best to keep the name within the tightest possible circle. The first question the editor would have asked is: "Are you absolutely sure this is genuine and is not a scam by the Democratic Party?" The author would have to have shown his face at some point to verify his bona fides. The one thing that worries me is that in the newspaper world, when a rival paper gets a big scoop - eg Bob Woodward's book on the Trump White House serialised in the Washington Post - the number one priority is to get back at your rival by publishing something equally scoopish to snatch away all the publicity being made by, in this case, the Washington Post. The timing of the New York Times oped was no coincidence. The Woodward stuff was running to huge acclaim, the paper's circulation was rising rapidly and, BANG, in comes the New York Times with its "spoiler" as we say in Fleet Street. So how long did the paper have this anonymous oped on the stocks or was it penned as soon as the Woodward book serialisation started to run because the author thought it was the best time to contact the New York Times? I bet they had it ready to go for some weeks, knowing that their rival was soon to publish the Woodward stuff. The spoiler succeeded. All the attention now is on the New York Times, not the Washington Post. Brilliant. Reporters on the New York Times who don't know who wrote the oped must be gossiping like mad. "Go on, Mr Editor, tell us, we promise not tell anyone else." Ho ho ho. The name will come out sometime I guarantee.