The story now up on its website about the Judy Miller matter reads, in part: “Much about Ms. Miler’s role in the matter remains unclear. Mr. Keller, the newspaper’s executive editor, has declined to say whether she was assigned to report about Mr. Wilson’s trip, whether she had tried to write a story about it, or whether she ever told editors or colleagues at the newspaper that she had obtained information about the role played by Ms. Wilson.”
Wait, hold it. Her “role in the matter” isn’t in the least “unclear” to the editor of the newspaper website in which that sentence appears. Bill Keller could insert a few sentences of what he knows with his red pencil. So the sentence is a lie. The Times could reveal everything it knows about this now, could have a year ago, could tomorrow. It is deliberately withholding information from its readers and bizarrely covering its own tail by writing about its own decision as though it were writing about another newspaper. There’s something, I don’t know, creepy about it.