The Trump White House has been a hotbed of palace intrigue since its earliest days, and the whispers against Coates are the latest in a string of similar campaigns. National Security Council officials have watched in horror as pro-Trump commentators outside the administration have channeled gossip and innuendo purporting to come from inside the White House. Many of the people targeted were career government staffers detailed to the NSC from other agencies, whereas Coates is a political appointee who joined the administration early on.

The purported identity of the author has been a potent weapon in the White House's endless internal battles. At times, some have claimed to out their colleagues as Anonymous, who claimed in the op-ed to be part of a "resistance" of like-minded individuals inside the Trump administration. But the official's name remains a closely guarded secret, and it's not even clear whether he or she still works in government.

Coates, a former aide to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), is a Middle East specialist with a nontraditional background for a top foreign policy hand. She’s an art historian and author of a 2016 book on the Western canon, David's Sling: A History of Democracy in Ten Works of Art. In a review, The Washington Post’s Carlos Lozada called it “an unusual book, enjoyable in its visuals and prose, even if not fully persuasive in its arguments.” Coates, who once taught at the University of Pennsylvania, has a doctorate in Italian Renaissance art. She declined to comment.

Latimer and his co-founder, Keith Urbahn, are former aides to Donald Rumsfeld, and some allies of the president had pointed out that Coates helped the defense secretary write his memoirs, Known and Unknown. She also once blogged under a pseudonym for Redstate, a conservative website whose leading figures have at times been critical of the president, and published her book with Javelin’s help.

Latimer’s statement notes those circumstantial connections but refutes outright that she is Anonymous, defending Coates against her accusers.

“This ‘investigation’ is based on innuendo, the irrelevant fact that she once worked with this agency on an art history book, and otherwise unprovable allegations — which are unprovable because they are not true,” Latimer will say. “The fact that there is no real evidence has not stopped a whisper campaign against her to members of the press in the hope that someone would write a story. Nor has it stopped uninformed idiots from trying to out her on Twitter on Pavlovian command. As a result, her career is now at risk.”

It’s not clear who Latimer is referring to as “uninformed idiots” on Twitter but among those publicly accusing Coates is a prominent pro-Trump activist who has been retweeted by the president in the past.

But Coates is not known to express disagreements with Donald Trump’s foreign policy in private, which she has supported assiduously in public — making her an odd fit as a potential Anonymous.

“She’s not, but it’s a convenient excuse to get rid of her for people who want her gone for other reasons,” said a person close to Coates who has been tracking the whisper campaign.

“I knew her as a person who believed generally that America needed a much more muscular, assertive foreign policy and was especially focused on Israel,” said a former Cruz aide who knows Coates.

Coates was a fierce critic of Barack Obama’s Israel policies, as well as his nuclear deal with Iran. A 2016 profile of Coates in National Review describes Rumsfeld coming across her pseudonymous writings and asking his staff, “Who is this military guy who knows so much and thinks so well?”

As the NSC official in charge of Middle East policy, Coates has been at the center of many of the administration's thorniest challenges, from stabilizing Iraq to squeezing Iran to fighting terrorist groups that have both waned and waxed on Trump's watch. She traveled to Turkey last year to help negotiate a ceasefire after Turkish troops invaded northern Syria over U.S. objections.

Javelin has emerged over the past few years to become one of Washington’s most sought-after agents for political books. Their highest-profile client at the moment is John Bolton, the former national security adviser. Details from Bolton’s forthcoming memoir have dribbled out in The New York Times, leading to a last-ditch effort among Senate Democrats to compel his testimony in Trump’s impeachment trial.

Senate Republicans defeated a measure to allow witnesses, however, and the White House has claimed that Bolton’s as-yet unpublished manuscript contains classified information — which Bolton’s lawyer denies.