Boomerang. That’s the word for news that Joe Biden is the 2020 Democratic candidate with whom the CIA’s so-called whistleblower had a “professional” tie. The ex-vice president had been holding himself — and his son — out as the wronged parties in this whole contretemps. Now it’s starting to look as if he has been less than forthcoming with the American voters.

We put that in the conditional because a lot of this story needs to be confirmed. The link that went up under a siren on the Drudge Report, though, brings up a report in the Washington Examiner, which quotes intelligence officers and former White House officials. The Examiner has a fine record on this beat, and the report is for Mr. Biden to deny, and forthrightly, if he can.

The Examiner notes that lawyers for the whistleblower said he had worked only in the executive branch.” The Washington Examiner says it has established “that he is a career CIA analyst who was detailed to the National Security Council at the White House and has since left.” It notes that the New York Times has reported that he was a CIA officer and “was detailed” to the NSC “at one point.”

That the Times hasn’t been more forthcoming is itself becoming part of the story. The New York Post has a trenchant editorial this morning noting that the Times has already published facts about the whistleblower that it believes bolster the whistleblower’s credibility. So, the Post reckons, it has “basic journalistic duty” to share with its readers facts which undermine the whistleblower’s credibility.

Exactly. The American people deserve to know not only for whom the whistleblower worked and traveled (the Examiner quotes some speculation that the whistleblower might have accompanied Mr. Biden on Air Force Two on one of the veep’s six trips to Ukraine). Americans also deserve to know just who the whistleblower is, so they can make up their own minds about his entanglements.

Of all the scandalous elements bubbling out of Ukraine, the most shocking is the idea that an American president, duly elected and sworn, might be impeached on testimony of an individual whose name is being kept secret — from the President, the Congress, and the American voter. The Wall Street Journal, in an important editorial issued Wednesday, calls it “impeachment in secret.”

The Journal is referring not only to the prospect that the Democrats might haul the whistleblower before Congress with the equivalent of a bag over his head (it calls the prospect “astonishing”). It’s also referring to the generally furtive nature of the way Speaker Pelosi and Chairman Schiff are conducting the impeachment. Now Mr. Biden, too, turns out to be telling less than he undoubtedly knows.