The leak of the draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, published by Politico in May, was an extraordinary breach of the court’s usual secrecy.
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The Supreme Court was unable to identify the person who leaked a draft opinion in a case overturning Roe v. Wade.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court announced on Thursday that an internal investigation had failed to identify the person who leaked a draft of the opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that had established a constitutional right to abortion.
In a 20-page report, the court’s marshal, Col. Gail A. Curley, who oversaw the inquiry, said that investigators had conducted 126 formal interviews of 97 employees, all of whom had denied being the source of the leak. But several employees did acknowledge that they had told their spouses or partners about the draft opinion and the vote count in violation of the court’s confidentiality rules, the report said.
The investigation did not determine whether any of those discussions led to a copy of the draft opinion becoming public. Investigators also found no forensic evidence by examining the court’s “computer devices, networks, printers and available call and text logs,” the report said.
The leak, published by Politico in May, was an extraordinary breach of the court’s usual secrecy. In a statement soon after, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. confirmed the authenticity of the draft opinion but said it did not represent the final version and announced an investigation.
The report said the marshal’s office would investigate any new information that arose, and it made several recommendations for improving security practices. But it conveyed the distinct impression that there were enough holes in the system that the mystery of who leaked the opinion may never be solved.
“If a court employee disclosed the draft opinion, that person brazenly violated a system that was built fundamentally on trust with limited safeguards to regulate and constrain access to very sensitive information,” the report said.
It added: “The pandemic and resulting expansion of the ability to work from home, as well as gaps in the court’s security policies, created an environment where it was too easy to remove sensitive information from the building and the court’s I.T. networks, increasing the risk of both deliberate and accidental disclosures of court-sensitive information.”
The report said that investigators had collected all court-issued laptops and cellphones from people who had access to the draft opinion but “found no relevant information from these devices.”
It also said that it found nothing relevant in call and text logs and billing records from personal cellphones; while the report said that “all employees who were requested to do so voluntarily provided” such logs, it did not say how extensive those requests were.
In particular, in discussing the scrutiny of “employees” of the court, the report did not say whether investigators also looked at the personal communications of the justices themselves — or those of their spouses.
But the report also said that investigators did not believe outside hackers were responsible for extracting a copy of the opinion.
The leak frayed relations among the justices. Justice Clarence Thomas likened it to an infidelity. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., the author of the opinion, said the disclosure endangered the lives of the justices in the majority.
When the court issued its decision overturning Roe v. Wade in June, the draft opinion was essentially unchanged.
Source: nytimes.com
