There's been much conjecture as to why the Times held the Spygate story for a year and decided to publish it now. Freepers say the story was timed to sway public support against the Patriot Act so it wouldn't be renewed. Yeah, right. Bill Keller says he was finally "convinced there was no good reason not to publish it". Yeah, right.
The real reason that the Times published the story is that a book by a journalist employed there that reveals the same information is going to be on sale 1/16.
An article in yesterday's L.A. Times reveals this.
Free Press, the publisher of the historic Against All Enemies by Clarke is publishing
State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration by Times reporter James Risen less than a month after the Times published the story.
Seems obvious to me...From the looks of it, other than hiring an excellent journalist in Risen, the Times should get NO credit for even printing the story a year later.
Questions:
I could be wrong, but one could infer that Risen may have been frustrated by the Times holding the story and went through other means to publish it (while making a pretty penny, I'm sure). If he didn't publish the book, would we even know this information before the 2006 elections?
Risen must have signed with the Free Press at least 6 months ago for this book to be ready now. How was the Free Press able to make the decision that the information was publishable so long ago -- but the Times wasn't?
Did Risen have an obligation to come forth with this information sooner since he knew it would come out eventually anyway? The book is embargoed, meaning Free Press kept the manuscript under tight wraps.
Did the Times wait until now to print the story to publicize a book by one of its journalists?
The more I learn about the New York Times, the more nauseous I get.