Reporters In Glass Houses

When journalists are seen as pursuing stories to get "television appearances or million-dollar book contracts, it becomes much more difficult for us to play our role."

Waas is currently attached to National Journal, but over the past decade he's written for the Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, the Nation, the New Yorker, Salon and American Prospect. By staying independent, Waas says, he may benefit from the "lack of bureaucracy."

Ten days ago, Waas broke the story of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby saying President Bush had authorized him to leak classified information about Iraq in 2003. (Waas got a tip that prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald had revealed the information in a late-night court filing; the New York Sun beat him online by a few hours.) This, in fact, confirmed Waas's February scoop about Libby's account.

Waas also reported last month that presidential adviser Karl Rove had cautioned other White House aides in 2003 that Bush's reelection prospects would be damaged if the public learned he had been warned that a key rationale for the Iraq war had been challenged by other administration officials.

Last year, Waas disclosed that Libby had told prosecutors that in 2003 he met with Judith Miller, then a New York Times reporter, and told her about CIA operative Valerie Plame. Fitzgerald cited the Waas account in a letter to Libby's lawyer that set in motion the waiver springing Miller from jail on contempt charges.

Once a teenage legman for columnist Jack Anderson, Waas is intense, speaks just above a whisper, and has a knack for prying information out of prosecutors, as he did during Kenneth Starr's probe of Bill Clinton. He was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1993, with Douglas Frantz of the Los Angeles Times, for reporting on clandestine U.S. efforts in Iraq. Says Frantz, now the paper's managing editor: "He's a dogged reporter with an amazing capacity to get sensitive documents."

Inside Job

In his forthcoming book "Public Editor #1," a collection of his columns as the New York Times ombudsman, Daniel Okrent says that some of his best sources for apparently questionable journalism worked at the paper:

"Sub-editors would rat out desk heads, Washington bureau reporters whispered sourly about national editors and the hard news types threw roundhouse punches at articles featured on the cover of the Sunday magazine."