Gretchen Morgenson at the US Senate

Today the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing in which Gretchen Morgenson's name probably won't be mentioned, but at which her reputation will surely be at issue.

A little background. Morgenson co-wrote a story last June attacking the SEC for stopping an insider trading investigation into Pequot Capital because it would have implicated John Mack, the politically connected head of Morgan Stanley.

On November 15, the WSJ's Holman Jenkins wrote an interesting column attacking Morgenson's journalistic standards, discussed here. He discussed how Morgenson's (though not naming her)

byline turned up again a few weeks ago above a front-page story airing allegations that John Mack, now the head of Morgan Stanley, had helped a hedge fund engage in insider trading. Many paragraphs down, the story acknowledged there was no evidence that Mr. Mack had possessed insider information, or that insider trading had occurred. Rather, the story was apparently justified simply because an ex-SEC attorney, positioning himself a "whistleblower," claimed he had lost his job because his superiors were afraid of antagonizing the prominent Mr. Mack by allowing the attorney to question him. The attorney, the older brother of a rabblerousing San Diego politician and lawyer, had once achieved modest fame suing developers and contractors on behalf of homeowners. At the improbable age of 64, he sought a job as an SEC staff attorney enforcing the securities laws, from whence he brainstormed up the Mack allegations and then lost his job, all in 12 months.

Jenkins wondered why

Times editors allow such stuff into the paper? Do they wave it through because it might prove personally inconvenient to try to stop it? Do they believe they have more pressing things to worry about than what appears in the newspaper?

Jenkins article drew a strong rebuke, discussed here, by Bill Keller, the NYT's executive editor.

When a story like this, with political overtones, shows up on the front page of the NYT, Congress doesn't have much choice but to investigate. So today several SEC and former SEC officials will testify about it, including Paul R. Berger, Robert B. Hanson, Mark Kreitman and Linda C. Thomsen.

Anyone who is interested in the quality of Morgenson's reporting and commentary, which I've been critiquing for months, should read the straightforward and factual WSJ article. Although the article draws no conclusions, it's hard to come away without serious doubt about Aguirre's claims.

That doubt intensifies after reading the testimony of the four SEC officials the WSJ links. Here, for example, is Paul Berger:

These allegations deserve to be put to rest, for they are utterly and completely false. They are a slur on the good names of literally hundreds of members of the SEC's Enforcement staff, who show up to work each and every day with only one goal in mind - to protect the Nation's investors. And they are a slur on the presidentially appointed Commissioners of the SEC, members of both political parties.

Even if one draws a different conclusion on balance -- which it seems to me could happen only if one has serious doubts about the honesty of all four SEC officials -- the point is that honest and complete reporting compelled reporting more facts relating to Aguirre's credibility, as Jenkins charged.

In the end this isn't about the integrity of the SEC.  It's about Gretchen Morgenson and the NYT.