The New York Times is turning once again to Frontline correspondent Lowell Bergman to pump up the Pellicano volume. Bergman is a name recognizable from Michael Mann’s The Insider. (Al Pacino portayed him as a producer, then on contract to 60 Minutes, caught in the buzz saw when CBS buckled to corporate pressure and yanked his Big Tobacco story from whistleblower Russell Crowe.) As I reported at the time, Bergman was the bigfoot brought in by the NYT back in 2003 when the Pelican flap first broke. But, the probe dragged on without indictments, and Bergman eventually returned to more newsy matters. Most recently his byline ran on two NYT‘s stories — one, about Jack Abramoff, the other about NSA spying — and he helped Frontline and WGBH/Boston win a 2006 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for their report on Al Queda’s new terrorist front in Western Europe. Now Bergman is back on the heated-up Pellicano beat for the NYT. Who else wishes he’d keep bitch-slapping the Bush White House and back off our scandal?

Top: Bergman; Bottom: Pellicano