How "senior" is Anonymous?

Hmmm 1: Answering reader questions in a piece posted yesterday (“How the Anonymous Op-Ed Came to Be”), deputy editorial page editor (and Op-Ed Editor) Jim Dao said vetting included “direct communication with the author, some background checking and the testimony of [a] trusted intermediary.” If the official were famous, how much testimony would you need?

Hmmm 2, pointed out by Jonathan Swan: The Op-Ed author writes that “a top official” had “complained to me recently, exasperated by an Oval Office meeting at which the president flip-flopped on a major policy decision he’d made only a week earlier.” Would an actual top official describe a peer as a “top official”?

Hmmm 3, and this is the biggest one of all: Dao told Michael Barbaro on The Times’ podcast, “The Daily” that on the “senior administration official” terminology, “All I can say is I feel that we followed a definition that has been used by our newsroom in the past.”