Often, people who "aren't authorized" are used to plant an idea in the press, without the agency in question having to make an official statement. Whether that

Often, people who "aren't authorized" are used to plant an idea in the press, without the agency in question having to make an official statement. Whether that information is reliable depends on whether you trust the agenda of whoever decided to leak the information. The Washington Post's record on verifying the claims of the US national security apparatus is poor. The newspaper uncritically reported false claims by the Bush administration about Iraqi WMD. Many people people at the time found those claims extremely dubious, but critical voices were belittled or shut out of most mainstream reporting. More recently, the Washington Post has been all-in on Russia paranoia. That doesn't mean that everything they publish about Russian hackers is wrong, but it very well may be misinformation leaked by US intelligence officials, or something insignificant blown out of proportion and presented without any context. In December 2016, for example, the Washington Post reported that the Russians had hacked a Vermont utility. That story turned out to be complete nonsense, but the Washington Post never fully retracted it. If you look at the story today, you'll still get the impression that the Russians attempted to hack the utility, even though that aspect of the story completely fell apart. The Washington Post on Russia is a bit like Bloomberg on Chinese hackers (e.g., Supermicro).