Times Reporter Shared Maureen Dowd Column With C.I.A. Before Publication

By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY

A New York Times reporter provided a copy of a column written by the columnist Maureen Dowd to an official with the Central Intelligence Agency before it was published, a spokeswoman for the newspaper has confirmed.

The spokeswoman, Eileen Murphy, said the action by Mark Mazzetti, who covers national security issues from The Times's Washington bureau, was “a mistake that is not consistent with New York Times standards.”

Her statement offered some context: “Last August, Maureen Dowd asked Mark Mazzetti to help check a fact for her column,” she said. “In the course of doing so, he sent the entire column to a C.I.A. spokeswoman shortly before her deadline. He did this without the knowledge of Ms. Dowd.”

Both Ms. Dowd and Mr. Mazzetti declined to comment.

The conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch discovered that Mr. Mazzetti had sent over the article before publication through a Freedom o f Information Act request.

The news site Politico reported the news on Tuesday. In an update to its post, Politico quoted The Times's managing editor, Dean Baquet, as saying: “I can't go into in detail. But I'm confident after talking to Mark that it's much ado about nothing.”

Reached via e-mail, Mr. Baquet referred questions to Ms. Murphy.