Article is in the eye of a storm

Times Editor Bill Keller defended the story both in a statement and in interviews.

"On the substance, we think the story speaks for itself. On the timing, our policy is, we publish stories when they are ready," Keller said in a statement.

The editor said, via e-mail, that the furious discussion of the story neglected its broader focus on McCain's history and how a "man who so prizes his honor can also be, according to those who know him well, careless of his reputation."

Keller said he could only speculate about the motivation for the McCain camp's sharp counterattack.

"But it's textbook crisis control to change the subject by making the story about the messenger," Keller said. "And . . . I suspect his operatives see Times-bashing as a time-honored way to rally the conservative base."

More than 2,300 comments on the article poured in to an nytimes.com message board, prompting the paper to announce late Thursday that editors and reporters who worked on the piece would answer questions from readers submitted to askthetimes@ nytimes.com.

Political and journalistic insiders have been anticipating the Times story for weeks, ever since the Internet's Drudge Report launched a missive just before Christmas saying McCain was trying to "spike" the report.

The Times story dealt with the concerns of McCain's aides about frequent interactions between McCain, 71, and Iseman, 40, as he was running for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination. Quoting anonymous sources, the paper said aides became "convinced the relationship had become romantic . . . and intervened to protect the candidate from himself."

Another vein of the story suggested McCain, chairman of the powerful Commerce Committee, had taken actions that benefited Iseman's lobbying clients.

American Journalism Review Editor Rem Rieder wrote in an online article late Wednesday that, while "not the most airtight piece ever published," the Times story had correctly highlighted McCain's record as a self-styled government reformer.

"To have such a high-profile relationship with a lobbyist on issues over which he has jurisdiction, replete with a trip on her client's corporate jet, is an appalling lapse of judgment, regardless of whether the two were sleeping together," Rieder wrote, in part.

Mike Hoyt, executive editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, also defended the story, saying the concerns about a lobbying conflict and aides' purported efforts to prevent an unseemly relationship were enough to justify publication.