Flutterby™! : NY Times passing columns through the CIA

New York Times gave advance copy of a Maureen Dowd column to the CIA.

UPDATE (12:41 p.m.): New York Times Managing Editor Dean Baquet called POLITICO to explain the situation, but provided little clarity, saying he could not go into detail on the issue because it was an intelligence matter.

"I know the circumstances, and if you knew everything that's going on, you'd know it's much ado about nothing," Baquet said. "I can't go into in detail. But I'm confident after talking to Mark that it's much ado about nothing."

"The optics aren't what they look like," he went on. "I've talked to Mark, I know the cirucmstance, and given what I know, it's much ado about nothing."

Any person asshole enough to use "the optics" in that context is clearly lying about the details. "I can't tell you but really it's not what it looks like" indeed.

The column in question as obtained by a Judicial Watch FOIA request.