The hunt is on for the identity of the anonymous author of an op-ed in the New York Times who claimed to be a senior official in the Trump administration. Everyone is getting in on it, including famed Unabomber profiler James Fitzgerald in a Fox News interview with Harris Faulkner on Friday.
If you are familiar with the Unabomber case or watched the fascinating Discovery Channel series Manhunt: Unabomber you would be aware that Fitzgerald, while working as an FBI profiler, used his expertise in forensic linguistics, the analysis of written and spoken language for investigative and evidentiary purposes, to analyze the writings of the Unabomber, Ted Kaczinski, including his manifesto.
Fitzgerald also applied his unique set of skills to an analysis of the New York Times op-ed which you can hear him discuss in the following interview.
HARRIS FAULKNER: James Fitzgerald is a former FBI linguist who pored through Ted Kaczynski's manifestos, boy we haven't said that name in a while, and he was able to actually help eventually identify him as the Unabomber. He is the author of the memoir series A Journey to the Center of the Mind.
...Let's start with what you say should be a commonality in something and identifying someone and that is that they use the lingo that only people in the room or the circle would know about.. Did you find that in this op-ed?
JAMES FITZGERALD: I certainly did, Harris, and there's no question this person has an advanced level of writing skills and he or she, not sure exactly gender at this point, but they know how to write very succinctly, very cogently, and get their points across.
There's 27 paragraphs here. Fourteen of them are only one sentence which is kind of unusual for people's writing style. Paragraphs are generally supposed to be more than one sentence. However some journalists do tend to write in only one sentence. So there are some and I'm certainly aware that this may have been there's been a copy editor involved in this to some degree at the New York Times, maybe even several levels of that. So there may have been some editing here. But there's definitely some language familiar to this person and certainly from someone who may be involved in the White House staff.
Hmmm... So perhaps the first thing to check are the op-eds submitted to the New York Times by non-journalists to see if their writing was copy edited into frequent one-sentence paragraphs to resemble a journalist type of style. Also, since Mr. Fitzgerald pointed out that their language was definitely familiar to someone who may be involved in the White House, could there not be some overlap? A former journalist, a speechwriter?
Okay, pardon me for putting on my Sherlock Holmes, or "Fitz," cap but now back to the interview:
FITZGERALD: Anonymous authors have two goals in mind. One to get their point across and two to remain anonymous and it's about a 50/50 percentage roughly of how important they take each issue. So here in a letter that's supposed to be anonymous we have here an interesting autobiographical clue and "That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can."
So this person is including himself or herself in this group of Trump appointees. I would consider that, and this is a linguistic term that I coined, a contra indicator that means it's against indications. It's against what's truthful so it's very possible that this person is lumping them, they're lumping themselves in with a Trump appointee group but in reality they may be not. Then it may not be that. They may be a lower-level someone who just took a regular job and somehow now they're involved in the White House staff and some decision-making and all of a sudden they're trying to lump themselves in with this to try to make themselves appear more important but also not identified.
Hmmmm... A contra indicator which could mean that the anonymous author is not a Trump appointee. This could also mean he is not even working in the White House -- although he or she obviously wants you to think that.
