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Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

President Trump is obsessed with leaks,

not from the roof of the White House, of course, but from the people working inside. His closest aides have been in hot pursuit of leakers, but at least he doesn't have to worry about the

First Lady being one of them. President Abraham Lincoln did, and it was quite a scandal. In 1862, the House Judiciary

Committee undertook an extraordinary investigation into how the telegraph was transforming the

spread of news, particularly government business. One incident in particular, the leaking of excerpts

from Lincoln's first state of the Union drew intense interest.

The parties involved would have made great characters for reality television, had, you know, television been invented.

There was Henry Wickoff, described as a shady news scavenger, who wrote a memoir about kidnapping a woman he loved

who didn't love him back.

There was John Watt, a corrupt White House gardener who had been accused of blackmailing

the Lincoln's.

And there was Mary Todd Lincoln, unpredictable, high-tempered, lirty.

But was she a leaker?

Historians are still asking this very question, and the evidence, while not a slam dunk,

certainly raises deep suspicion about Lincoln's wife, who had already been the subject

of rumors claiming she was slipping information to rebel leaders.

The excerpts from Lincoln State of the Union were telegraphed from Washington to the New York Herald,

which employed Wickoff as a freelance gatherer of news tips.

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