It requires no special skill to sell Michael Gordon, chief military correspondent for the New York Times, the Brooklyn Bridge. All you have to do is whisper to him that the transaction will occur at a background "briefing" by anonymous intelligence sources and a "senior official" or two.

One would think that it would require astonishing rhetorical ingenuity on the part of the sales team (in fact operating out of the United States Defense Department) to keep on selling Gordon the Brooklyn Bridge long after the deed from the first sale was pronounced an obvious fraud. But it's not so strange, really. Your true sucker is a vain fellow who can never accept the evidence of his own gullibility and who therefore regards each successive purchase of the Brooklyn Bridge as a sound investment, certain to re-establish him in the public mind as a man with a keen eye for the good deal. He thus becomes psychologically and professionally a captive of the bridge salesmen.

On September 8, 2002, the New York Times editors published Gordon and Judith Miller's fictions concerning aluminum tubes in Iraq that were allegedly part of Saddam's nuclear program. Far too late this bout of bridge-buying on the part of the Times duo prompted widespread derision. Only then did the embarrassed Times editor ban Miller from bridge-buying altogether.

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