Gawker's Fox News Mole Reveals Himself -- And Then Gets Fired

On Wednesday, it was revealed that Fox News had found out the identity of the mole within its ranks that was slipping information to the website Gawker by way of what was supposed to be a regular column (it only took one column for Fox to figure out who it was). Now the mole has revealed his identity -- and he's been promptly fired.

So who is it? His name is Joe Muto and he was apparently an associate producer for "The O'Reilly Factor." Before he was permanently relieved of his duties, Muto penned an article for Gawker describing what happened:

Two hours ago I was called into a meeting with Dianne Brandi, the Fox News Executive Vice President of Legal and Business Affairs and suspended indefinitely... with pay, oddly enough.

They nailed me.

In the end, it was the digital trail that gave me away. They knew that someone, using my computer login, had accessed the sources for two videos that ended up on Gawker over the past few weeks. They couldn't prove it entirely, but I was pretty much the only suspect.

I denied it, which is why they didn't fire me outright. But two nice gentlemen from security escorted me to my desk to pack up my stuff, and it was pretty obvious at that point that I would not be setting foot back into 1211 Avenue of the Americas again.

But where as Muto had simply been suspended when he wrote his swan song, Fox tells media insider Mediaite that he's been canned:

Joe Muto is fired effective April 12. Once the network determined that Mr. Muto was the main culprit in less than 24 hours, he was suspended late today while we pursued concurrent avenues. We are continuing to explore legal recourse against Mr. Muto and possibly others.

"I am a weasel, a traitor, a sell-out and every bad word you can throw at me... but as of today, I am free, and I am ready to tell my story," he concludes, "which I wasn't able to fully do for the previous 36 hours."