IT was almost eight years ago that The Times published a blockbuster story by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau about a secret Bush administration program to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants. But for many Times readers, it still resonates deeply.

The 13-month delay in publishing the article, a period that spanned a presidential election, continues to bother these readers. Why did The Times, at the urgent request of the administration, wait so long? What does that say about the relationship between the government and the press? Would the same thing happen today? I hear about it often in email and online comments. It crops up in newspaper columns, on Twitter, in journalism reviews.

Now, in light of the huge leak of classified information on government surveillance from Edward J. Snowden, the former contractor for the National Security Agency, the episode has a renewed currency.

Mr. Snowden has said that, because of this very episode, he chose to take his trove elsewhere (largely to Glenn Greenwald at The Guardian, to the video journalist Laura Poitras and to Barton Gellman at The Washington Post). Mr. Snowden recently told the journalist Natasha Vargas-Cooper that those who put themselves in danger to leak information “must have absolute confidence that the journalists they go to will report on that information rather than bury it.”