The arrest of James Wolfe, the former director of security for the Senate Intelligence Committee, kicked off a State Department-wide crackdown on leakers after Wolfe was arrested and indicted for lying to the FBI about contacts he had with three reporters as they were investigating leaks of classified information to the media.
And now, one of the reporters who allegedly received some of the leaked classified information is being investigated by her own paper for possibly lying about the nature of her relationship with Wolfe. Ali Watkins, a former Buzzfeed reporter who has been covering national security for the New York Times since December, is being investigated by the paper for her "involvement" with the Wolfe case after she disclosed to her editors that she had had an ongoing romantic relationship with Wolfe that began in 2013, when she was an intern at McClatchy, and ended last year. Watkins claims she didn't receive information from the 58-year-old married Wolfe during the affair.
Journalists are supposed to abide by ethical rules that stipulate they cannot have personal relationships - including romantic relationships - with their sources. But Watkins claims she didn't receive any information from Wolfe while they were together, according to the New York Times.
The Times said on Tuesday that it was conducting a review of Ms. Watkins’s involvement in the case, including the nature of her relationship with Mr. Wolfe, and what she disclosed about it to her prior employers. Ms. Watkins informed The Times about the prior relationship after she was hired by the paper, and before she began work in December. She has said that Mr. Wolfe did not provide her with information during the course of their relationship.
DOJ investigators seized emails and phone records belonging to Watkins in what the NYT described as the first instance of the Trump administration seizing the personal communications of a journalist. Watkins was later informed of the seizures in a letter that she received in February, which informed her that "years worth of records for two email accounts and a phone number of hers" had been accessed as part of the investigation.
Meanwhile, Wolfe told the FBI that he had been romantically involved with Watkins since 2013. The contents of two text messages allegedly sent by Wolfe to Watkins - who is identified in court documents as "Reporter No. 2" - can be seen below:
"I’ve watched your career take off even before you ever had a career in journalism… I always tried to give you as much Information [sic] that I could and to do the right thing with it so you could get that scoop before anyone else," Wolfe wrote to an individual the documents identify as Reporter No. 2.
"I always enjoyed the way that you would pursue a story, like nobody else was doing in my hal1way [sic],"...