Ask any plumber and they will tell you: Water has a way of finding a way out.
The same can be said for secrets.
At 2,600 gigabytes, the Panama Papers were the biggest data leak in history — a massive information dump that exposed the shady dealings of billionaires, celebrities , sports stars and world leaders.
In this case, it was somebody with access to the records of the Panama City-based Mossack Fonseca law firm who steered some the 11.5 million records to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, which then shared them with the U.S.-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).
RELATED: Why are Americans not included in the Panama Papers?
But history is littered with other leaks that have exposed corruption, governmental ineptitude, ruined reputations, and even brought down a sitting U.S. president. Here are some of the best known examples:
Watergate — It was an infamous leaker dubbed Deep Throat who helped a pair of Washington Post reporters — Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein — make the connection between the June 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex and the White House. The resulting stories led to the resignation of President NIxon. Much later, the leaker was unmasked as a former FBI honcho named W. Mark Felt.
Pentagon Papers — A former military analyst named Daniel Ellsberg helped sour the nation on the Vietnam War and sow distrust in the government in 1971 by turning over to the New York Times a top secret, 7,000-page Pentagon history of the events leading up to the conflict. It led to a dramatic confrontation between the press and the White House, which wanted to muzzle the story. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of publishing the papers.








