New York Times Accidentally Revealed Identity of Q Group In an article on November 12, 2017, the New York Times accidentally revealed the identity of Q Group as the counter-intelligence arm of the NSA. The context of the article is important to understand. The NYT article was very detrimental to NSA, and Leon Panetta gave the NYT access and background for the article.  Panetta was former Director CIA, and also former Dec Defense. Thus The conflict between the CIA and the NSA appears to have been in full swing, with Leon Panetta assisting in discrediting the NSA. The point being, that the NYT got their information about Q Group  from Panetta. Thus their disclosure of the identity of Q Group has  credibility, even though the article is disparaging to the NSA. The identification of Q Group as NSA counter-intel was strictly incidental to the thrust of the article, and for that reason we have no reason to doubt the NYT in this particular.  The fact that Panetta was doing a hatchet job on the NSA through the NYT article actually lends credence to the accidental reporting by the NYT. Of course, one year later the NYT goes all-out to discredit Q and Q Group as a "conspiracy theory".  And  Leon Panetta is not credited in their articles when they decided to disparage Q and Q Group in 2018 and 2019.  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/12/us/nsa-shadow-brokers.html