Afficionados of the Climategate story know that the person behind the disclosures signed themselves "RC", a reference presumably to RealClimate. They linked to a file called FOIA.zip on the RealClimate server.
Steve M has been speculating that RC was a UEA insider, who held back some important parts of the email archive as a bargaining chip:
Let’s suppose that U of East Anglia discovered who had the emails and also knew that the person had a big hold back that he’d secreted away somewhere. If you were Acton or Trevor Davies, would you be prepared to enter into a confidential agreement to drop all charges if the leaker turned over his copies of the holdback? It would be very tempting.
If you were the leaker, would you be prepared to turn over all copies of the holdback in exchange for East Anglia dropping all charges and maintaining confidentiality? It would be very tempting.
Thinking in such terms, there isn’t a whole lot of incentive for the University to find the leaker or for the leaker to drop another bomb. Sort of a Cold War standoff. I wonder…
Last night, someone signing themselves RC and again using their website link as http://www.realclimate.org/FOIA.zip left the following comment.
There was no deal made.
Was this the real RC? Has the mystery man just spoken? Let's see...