1. Mattis and Kelly are obviously either direct sources for these stories or have authorized friends to relate their accounts.

2. They’re already tacitly confirming them by silence. They could have torpedoed these stories instantly, before publication or after, with a sentence. Every publication reporting on this has asked them. They have chosen not to.

3. To the attentive, they’re as good as on the record on this. But to the more numerous inattentive, it might make a difference if they actually went on the record. There is no good justification for their failure to do so; they should put their names on it.

There’s no intelligible principle on which duty forbids saying this stuff in quotation marks, with attribution, but permits saying it in Pig Latin and interpretive dance. Just give a goddamned quote already. You’re not fooling anyone.