A brief note on the Times details on this whistleblower.
I preface this by noting that the public really does have a legitimate interest in knowing who this person is. He’s at the center of a firestorm news story that will likely end in a weighty decision about whether to remove the President of the United States from office. The government’s rules and interests about anonymity cannot automatically apply to the press. It is also highly unlikely that we weren’t going to learn this person’s identity in the fairly near future. Having said all that, this feels like a questionable decision. The details the Times provided are: 1) CIA officer, 2) man, 3) detailed to the NSC, 4) likely area expert in Eastern Europe or perhaps the former Soviet Union. Those details are probably enough to narrow this down to a very small number of people, perhaps just one person.
So for practical purposes, his identity is probably already known.
