What's a Little Lying Between Friends?

Meanwhile, the Senate will not get a key part of the paper trail, as the Boston Globe reports:

"President Bush vowed yesterday not to release any White House memos by his Supreme Court nominee, Harriet E. Miers, provoking a standoff with senators from both parties who have demanded more information about her work in the White House.

"Senate leaders, who have asked that they be given a complete list of Miers's memos by tomorrow, vowed to continue their efforts to obtain at least some of Miers's White House work, arguing that such documents are especially important because Miers lacks a record as a judge or law professor.

"The emerging confrontation developed as criticism of the Miers nomination expanded with the launching of two new conservative websites aimed at forcing her withdrawal and raising money for ads against her."

The other woman under fire, Judy Miller, gives an interview to New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser :

" 'I'm not mad, I'm sad,' Judy told me from her home on Long Island. 'Isn't it sad that, after going to jail for 85 days for a principle, it's come to this?' . . .

"Judy will not take on her colleagues as personally as they've maligned her. 'Believe it or not, I can be pretty mild. I'm not going to sink to that level,' she said. 'But if someone says I'm a liar, I'm going to say I'm not a liar.'"

Of course, those "colleagues" include her boss, Bill Keller.

American Journalism Review Editor Rem Rieder says Keller's mea culpa "was both the right thing and the smart thing to do. Admitting that you've screwed up is never easy. It's exponentially harder when you're the boss at a revered (if flawed) American institution, and your mistakes have compounded that institution's problems.

"The Times has never been what you would call a particularly transparent newspaper. Its From the Editors note about the misguided Wen Ho Lee coverage was tortured, grudging. Its awfully late guilty plea about the paper's WMD fiasco didn't even mention Miller.

"But this time Keller was forthright, to the point. And there was none of the accepting-responsibility-but-not-blame that is so popular these days. No 'mistakes were made.' These, Keller said, were on me. That's the way a true leader acts."

Among the unhappy ex-Timesmen is David Halberstam :

" 'I think the paper has taken a terrible hit,' said David Halberstam, one of the Times' most respected alums, and a former Pulitzer Prize-winning writer. 'I think it is shocking that this young woman who has been a known identified land mine for a long time seems to have guaranteed loyalty to the office of the Vice President of the United States more than to The New York Times.' "