In short, Krugman believes the Bush administration called CNN -- within minutes of a segment airing, no less -- and somehow pressured them to announce that some video had been faked.
And that CNN immediately did so. Sure, that?s believable. In Krugman?s mind, it probably happens all the time.

What actually seems to have happened is fairly simple. CNN?s Atlanta headquarters did get a call from the White House -- CNN?s staff at the White House.

The network?s White House bureau believed the tape had been faked. And CNN?s video of the event was inconclusive, since the cameraman zoomed in when the president started speaking and the boy was not visible in the shot.

So CNN?s own employees called the control room when they saw that video on the air, to point out they believed it wasn?t real. In other words, Kagan wasn?t taking instructions from George Bush and his minions; she was taking instructions from Senior White House correspondent John King and his. When a CNN anchor refers to ?the White House? she may mean the president?s staff, but she?s just as likely to mean the network?s own reporters and producers there.

That?s not good enough for Krugman. On April 6, he ran a non-apologetic apology. ?CNN called me to insist that despite what it first said, the administration really, truly wasn?t responsible for the network?s claim that David Letterman?s embarrassing video of a Bush speech was a fake. I still don?t understand why the network didn?t deny White House involvement until it retracted the charge.?

Krugman?s question is answered by Occam?s razor: The simplest explanation is usually the correct one. In this case, the simplest explanation is that CNN messed up and then fixed its mistake with a correction. Believe me, it happens all the time. And that explanation is certainly more plausible than thinking CNN is aiding and abetting the White House in covering up for ?yawngate.?

The beauty of a conspiracy theory is that it can?t be disproved. Any new evidence that seems to disprove it is actually a clever forgery and simply adds to the depth of the conspiracy.
Luckily we?ve got Paul Krugman out there, to get to the bottom of these controversies.

Coming next week in The New York Times: ?Why the Bush administration?s healthy forest initiative is killing trees on the White House grounds.? Why not? Krugman?s already written -- and the Times has published -- sillier columns.