NY Times ran NSA story so book wouldn't trump the paper

The best I can come up with from the New York Observer is that the Times finally ran the story to prevent getting trumped by its own reporter's pending book.

It's another in a sorry string of disasters for the Paper of No Record that it sat on the story through the 2004 election. I'm going to guess though, that the swiftboating of Dan Rather and his Texas Air National Guard memo story might have had the chilling result intended where other news outlets were concerned.

Maybe this angle will come out and get explored. Still, the bottom line is that we can't count on the NYT and haven't been able to for a growing length of time. Bill Keller's future is probably in doubt, or should be.