The paper's two-story Sunday package--a 5,800-word account of Miller's role in the Valerie Plame affair and Miller's own first-person tale of her conversations with vice-presidential chief of staff I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby--missed the deadline to be included in the bulldog edition, 270,000 copies distributed nationally.

Deputy managing editor Jon Landman, who oversaw the reporting team, said the slipped deadline was a result of Miller's delaying. Throughout the previous week, Landman said, Miller gave conflicting signals about whether she would write a story herself or not.

"We didn't have her first-person account," Landman said. "We didn't have her perspective on things. We got it a little before noon [Oct. 14]. It was very frustrating.

"There was lots of off-and-on and on-and-off," Landman added. "And that was frustrating too."

The reporters on the story--Don Van Natta Jr., Adam Liptak, Clifford Levy and Janny Scott--had been working to complete a piece with or without Miller's participation, Landman said. But when Miller turned in her first-person piece late on the morning of Oct. 14, the reporters had to race to re-report details to reflect her assertions, with less than a day to spare before deadline.

Executive editor Bill Keller, who was traveling in China, reviewed a partial draft. Copy editors received the piece by 9 a.m. on Saturday, but it was too late to turn the package around for the noon bulldog close.

--Gabriel Sherman 

Correction: The number of copies in the national bulldog edition was about 270,000, not 100,000 as originally reported in this item.