"The New York Times is not a supermarket tabloid," boasted their Washington Bureau Chief R.W. Apple when Gennifer Flowers first declared in 1992 that she and Gov. Bill Clinton had an affair. Even then, the line sounded laughable.

One year before, then-Times reporter Maureen Dowd penned a 2,400-word front-page stink bomb passing along discredited gossip author Kitty Kelley's unproven charges of something apparently too glorious to fact-check: an alleged long-time affair betwee ...

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