Perhaps the most intriguing part of Richard Perez-Pena’s article, Rhodes Trust GIves Account of Yale Quarterback’s Candidacy, in yesterday’s Times is the identity and motives of the first and only person to go on the record supporting Perez-Pena’s allegations: Elliot F. Gerson, the American secretary of the Rhodes Trust.

In a rare public disclosure, the Trust confirmed that it had put on hold the candidacy of the quarterback, Patrick J. Witt, upon learning that a fellow student had filed a complaint against him. …

The Rhodes statement was originally given to the public editor of The New York Times, who was preparing a column about an article first published on the Times’s Web site on Jan. 26 detailing the problems with Witt’s candidacy because of the complaint, which was an allegation of sexual assault against a fellow student. That article had prompted an angry response from Witt, 22, who is currently training in hopes of an N.F.L. career.

What Richard Perez-Pena does not disclose is that Gerson has a secret of his own—an arrest for assaulting his daughter and wife, who was, at the time, ill with terminal cancer.

But before we get to that, two very quick points about Perez-Pena’s journalistic issues here.

First, I don’t know how the Times works, but if the public editor is preparing a story on the work of another reporter, and in the course of that story acquires new information, is it standard operating procedure for him to turn over that information to the reporter he’s writing about?

Second, note Perez-Pena’s self-exculpatory description here: “That article had prompted an angry response from Witt, 22, …”

That article prompted an angry denial from Witt. It prompted angry responses from dozens of media experts and columnists from any number of reputable news organizations and blogs.

It’s disingenuous of Perez-Pena not to mention the widespread criticism of the story, but to put it all on Witt.

That said: After a close read of the article, I’m struck by the fact that Perez-Pena never mentions Gerson’s motives for releasing the statement—which, given its rarity, is a question that begs to be asked.

I’m guessing here, but I think that the reason Perez-Pena doesn’t ask it is this: That Gerson was the original source for this story, and now that it and Perez-Pena have come under attack, Gerson is trying to bolster the credibility of both by going on the record in a limited way. (Note that Perez-Pena says Gerson gave him a “brief interview.”)

Why does Gerson strike me as the likely source? Or at least a likely source?

The story doesn’t feel like it was driven by people at Yale; we know it wasn’t driven by Witt’s accuser, because Perez-Pena didn’t even know who she was. It certainly wasn’t driven by Witt.

No, the story has always felt like it was driven by someone who felt that Witt pulled a self-aggrandizing fast one at the expense of the Rhodes Trust and didn’t want him to get away with it.

Which, from what I can tell, does sound like Gerson.

A bit of bio about Elliot F. Gerson.

He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard College, then attended Oxford on a Rhodes and then went to Yale Law School, after which he clerked for Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart.

Certainly a very promising start, but after that, Gerson’s career never seems to have quite achieved the heights that those previous accomplishments might have suggested.

Gerson served as deputy attorney general of Connecticut, so he knows something about prosecution. Subsequent to that, he was a vice-president at the Travelers Corporation, which sells insurance. He bounced around the Internet in some fairly minor ways before becoming head of a company called FHCHS Health Systems, which appears to be defunct.

Gerson also served as the finance chair for Joe Lieberman’s 2004 presidential campaign, which certainly calls his judgment into question.

At some point in the late 1990s, Gerson became the American secretary of the Rhodes Trust, and he is also the “executive vice-president of policy and public programs at the Aspen Institute,” a job which, if the Internet is to be believed, consists primarily of moderating panel discussions.

In his position as the Rhodes secretary, Gerson has spoken out in numerous ways, but he got probably the most attention for decrying the fact that more and more Rhodes Scholars are going to work for Wall Street.

… nothing is wrong with this picture if one believes that changed career paths of a few privileged people is not of any larger significance. Never mind that some have gifts that realistically could be expected to lead to world-changing breakthroughs, cures or innovations; to greater respect for politics; or to hundreds of profoundly moved and inspired students.

During the publicity about Patrick WItt’s difficult choice last fall, Gerson was pretty outspoken—in a way that felt implicitly critical of Witt and resentful of the media narrative of which Witt was the center. He emphasized that Witt had known of the potential scheduling conflict well in advance—Witt has said that if he didn’t apply for the scholarship and then suffered an injury and couldn’t play anyway, he’d regret not applying—and emailed reporters that the interview time could absolutely not be changed to accommodate a quarterback.

“This is not a simple matter involving changing an interview time… The interview is central to our process, and is not at all like interviews for most other kinds of opportunities or awards or jobs….”

“We have candidates every year miss games for the interview,” Gerson told ESPN.

Gerson seemed to go out of his way to dispel the notion that athletics was an important part of the criteria for the Rhodes.

“(The) Rhodes Scholarship is an academic award, and is not an award for “scholar-athletes,” despite some popular perception of it in that explicit light,” Gerson said.

All told, Gerson comes across as pretty comfortable talking to the press and decidedly unsympathetic to athletes in general and Witt in particular.

This proves nothing, of course. But of the potential sources for this story—Witt, the accuser, people at Yale, Gerson, and other people who may have heard of it—we can eliminate the first two, and the third seems unlikely. (Yale is allegedly the cover-upper, right?)

And in Gerson, we have a guy who’s made it a mission of his to protect the integrity and valor of Rhodes scholarships (surely a very important mission), speaks to the press, and can’t imagine why anyone would expect the Rhodes interviewers to reschedule simply to accommodate an…athlete. Especially one he knows has been accused of sexual assault.

But here’s where the plot thickens: Because Elliot Gerson, who apparently believes so strongly in character that “in a rare public disclosure” he sticks it to Patrick Witt, has a dark secret of his own: In 2005, he was arrested and charged with assault and child endangerment.

At the time, Gerson in the midst of a bitter divorce from his wife Amy Shapiro, a successful and attractive advertising and media entrepreneur. They were married in 1993—Elliot was at the time president of managed care and employee benefits for Travelers—and honeymooned in Venice and Florence. (Elliot had shortly before split with his first wife, a Hartford television anchor named Janet Peckinpaugh.)

The newlyweds moved to Washington and became something of a power couple; Elliot was working for an Internet firm called Lifescape.com—it no longer seems to be in existence—and Amy had her own company, Gerson Media Group. Together they gave tens of thousands of dollars to Democratic politicians.

But Amy later separated from Elliot, took their girls and moved back to New York. On Dec. 10, 2005, police say, Amy called 911 from an Upper East Side restaurant complaining that Elliot had pushed his oldest daughter and twisted Amy’s arm behind her back “causing substantial pain.” He was hit with assault and child endangerment charges.

Later, the complaint alleged, Elliot called a relative of Amy’s and warned, “Tell [Amy] that if she does not drop the charges, I will retaliate by filing for custody of the children.” Witness tampering was added to the charges.

According to the New York Post, Amy Gerson had terminal cancer at the time that her husband allegedly assaulted her. She apparently later dropped the charges, and records of the case were sealed.

Amy Shapiro, now divorced from Elliot, died in February 2007. In September, Elliot Gerson sued a Virginia doctor for malpractice, claiming that the doctor had failed to biopsy a lump in his late ex-wife’s scalp. Gerson asked for $20 million in damages. I haven’t been able to find out how that lawsuit was resolved, which probably means that the doctor’s insurance company paid off before the case progressed too much. (Gerson, being a former insurance company executive, might have expected this.)

Gerson subsequently married for a third time, to Jessica Herzstein, Harvard class of ‘78. They split their time between Washington and Aspen.

What’s relevant about all this? Well, it goes to the credibility and motivation of a source for a nasty and unsubstantiated piece of journalism.

It suggests that while Elliot Gerson demands secrecy (those sealed records) when he is alleged to have been the perpetrator of bad behavior, he does not extend that courtesy to others.

And it also shows how murky these situations are. I have no idea if Gerson did anything wrong. Sounds like he lost his temper and almost broke his wife’s arm, but who knows? Maybe she made the whole thing up. She was dying, after all.

We just don’t know, and we can’t judge until we do. But although everything I’ve written above is public information, we can’t come to a fair conclusion because, well, Elliot Gerson has decided to keep the details of what happened private.

I wonder: DId Elliot Gerson disclose the facts of his arrest to the Rhodes Trust when they asked him to be their American representative?

And what would Gerson do if confronted with a Rhodes applicant arrested for assaulting his wife and shoving his daughter?