Why is Pravda on the Potomac putting its best intelligence reporter, the great Walter Pincus, on a 40-year-old story? That would be like Izvestia on the Hudson using Seymour Hersh to cover the New York Fire Department rescuing a kitten from a tree (if Hersh, a real reporter, could still stand to work there).

The answer can only be:

They don't want Pincus covering today's stories. And they're helping yet another administration disinformation campaign by muzzling him.

Which is remarkable, or not, since so many of today's stories are on Pincus's beat: Warrantless surveillance, an executive operating in complete secrecy, torture, concentration camps, Scooter...

Gee, I'd like to hear more about those stories! (And not Watergate. The glory days were a long, long time ago.)

NOTE OK, OK, let's be fair. Consistently through the runup to Iraq, WaPo buried story after story from Pincus--all prescient stories about how the Bush regime was maniplating the intel--on A18. Now Pincus gets a story on page A1. So maybe the editors are making it up to him? Though not to the country, of course.