Updated, 4:30 p.m.

Using a cache of material from an intelligence source that some are calling a “new Snowden,” the start-up national security news site called The Intercept earlier this month published an ambitious investigative project, “The Drone Papers.”

It exposes details about the inner workings of the American drone program, describing a bureaucratic “kill chain” that leads to the president. It also describes the shocking extent to which drones kill people who were not the intended targets in Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan. (According to the documents, nearly 90 percent of the individuals killed in one five month period during an operation in Afghanistan were unintended targets.)

The “Drone Papers” have been covered by many outlets around the world and in the United States since its publication. Among those that published stories on the project were NPR, CNN, PBS NewsHour, Newsweek, The Guardian and Quartz. The series was excerpted in the Huffington Post, which also ran a related story on the source.

The Times noted it in the last paragraphs of a story on President Obama’s decision to keep troops in Afghanistan until 2017, and linked to The Intercept’s project. That mention read as follows:

New details about the Pentagon’s drone war from 2011 to early 2013 were disclosed on Thursday in classified documents published by The Intercept, a national security news website. The documents included a set of briefing slides assessing Operation Haymaker, an effort to hunt down Taliban and Qaeda militants in Afghanistan from January 2012 to February 2013. During that period, there were 56 airstrikes that killed 35 suspects. Those strikes also killed 219 people who do not appear to have been specifically targeted but were labeled “enemy killed in action,” the documents showed.

But a number of readers who wrote to me wanted to know why they couldn’t find coverage about this major leak in The Times. Matt Davis of New York City wrote: “Is the NY Times planning on covering the extensive leaked information (first published at The Intercept) regarding the Pentagon’s drone warfare program? One would think, for example, the extensive civilian casualties labeled as Enemy Killed in Action would be highly newsworthy.”

Mr. Davis thought the lack of an article might be explained by misplaced patriotism, or annoyance “about being scooped by the upstart journalists.” (The Intercept, founded by Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill is most closely identified with the journalism brought about by leaks of classified information from the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.)

Doug Tarnopol of Cranston, R.I., wondered if he should blame his own investigative skills: “I googled, used your search function and couldn’t find mention of this major leak reported in the Intercept. Is it my googling skills/reading habits? :) Or is it the case that The New York Times hasn’t reported on this, and if so, why not?”

I asked both the executive editor, Dean Baquet, and the editor for national security coverage, William Hamilton, why the story had received relatively short shrift.

Both said they found the project a worthy one. They and several Washington reporters looked it over with interest, they said, and agreed that there was new detail in it. But they didn’t see it as something that warranted its own story, at least not at the moment, they said.

I’m particularly interested in this subject because it says so much that is troubling about how our government functions – and yes, kills — in secret and often without adequate oversight. I’ve written about aspects of it a number of times.

Times journalists have done plenty of worthy coverage of the drone program themselves, with one national security reporter, Scott Shane, writing a significant big-picture story last April, covering some of the same ground that the Intercept is exploring now. He and Jo Becker also wrote a stunning story in 2012 detailing the existence of the president’s “kill list.” Mr. Shane is the author of a well-regarded recent book on the subject, “Objective Troy: A Terrorist, a President, and the Rise of the Drone.”

Since The Times has done so much on this subject, it may be understandable that only a brief mention of The Intercept’s scoop has been made so far. Still, given the new information in the released documents — as well as the mere existence of a major intelligence leaker who is not Edward Snowden — Times journalists might have served readers well to do more on “The Drone Papers.” They also could consider doing so in the future.