Fallout from the scandal of how a secret CIA operative’s name came to be leaked to the US media, which is threatening to engulf the White House in crisis this week, has also reached the newsroom of the venerable New York Times.

In an extraordinary memo to the paper’s staff, executive editor Bill Keller has launched a thinly veiled attack on its controversial reporter Judith Miller, who spent 85 days in jail to protect the identity of a secret source in the affair of the CIA operative Valerie Plame.

He said Miller had misled the paper about the real nature of her contacts with her source, later revealed as Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, a White House aide who could face criminal charges this week.

Keller said he had been unaware of the exact nature of Miller’s secret contacts with Libby, and that if he had known about them he would have been less willing to back Miller in her court fight to protect her source’s identity.

The memo reveals deep fractures in America’s most respected newspaper and is the latest problem to hit the Times, which is still recovering from the Jayson Blair plagiarism scandal. Miller has been derided by many colleagues for her role in pushing the White House line on Iraq’s weapons programmes, but lauded by others for going to jail to protect a source.

Her high-profile role in the affair has prompted a round of heart-searching in American journalism about the use of unnamed sources and the often too close relationship between the Washington press corps and administration officials.

The article goes on to update OBSERVER readers on the political side of the outing of Plame. I think the useful bit — for those of us concerned with declining standards in US journalism — is the growing conflict inside our media between journalism vs. entertainment vs. lapdogs.