In her autobiographical account yesterday, Judy Miller writes:

“Mr. Fitzgerald [the independent counsel] asked my reaction to Mr. Novak’s column. I told the grand jury I was annoyed at having been beaten on a story. I said I felt that since The Times had run Mr. Wilson’s original essay, it had an obligation to explore any allegation that undercut his credibility. At the same time, I added, I also believed that the newspaper needed to pursue the possibility that the White House was unfairly attacking a critic of the administration.”

Interesting. A senior reporter at the NYTimes instantly sees that information that might have undercut Wilson’s credibility would be highly relevant to deciding what weight ought to be given to the allegations in Wilson’s now-famous op-ed put into the public domain by that self-same NYTimes. Yet, when the government being attacked puts out just such relevant information, the NYTimes lustily called for an investigation.