How the Anonymous Op-Ed Came to Be

[Former Homeland Security official, Miles Taylor, reveals himself as “anonymous.”]

Updated Nov. 7, 2019

Last year, The New York Times’s Opinion desk published an Op-Ed by an anonymous senior official in the Trump administration. Now, the still-unnamed author will publish a book, “A Warning,” this month.

When the Op-Ed came out, nearly 23,000 readers sent us their questions about the vetting process and our thinking behind publishing the essay.

Our Op-Ed editor, James Dao, responded to a selection of the submissions, which were condensed and lightly edited. Read his answers, from 2018, below.

Why did you publish this piece?

Why publish this? What purpose does it serve, other than to enrage its target and assuage the guilt of a collaborator? We have a mad king and a shadow government. This is a coup, not a heroic attempt to save democracy.

— Henry Matthews, New York

Henry:

In our view, this Op-Ed offered a significant first-person perspective we haven’t presented to our readers before: that of a conservative explaining why they felt that even if working for the Trump administration meant compromising some principles, it ultimately served the country if they could achieve some of the president’s policy objectives while helping resist some of his worst impulses.