Much as I prefer writing boring historical backgrounders, there’s no use denying that Black Ink’s coverage of the Rachel Paulose saga brought a lot of eyeballs to your humble ink-stained blog that would otherwise never have landed here.

As far as I can tell, the links from around the blogosphere continue to send people here looking for new breaks in the case. I don’t have any today, but, as I prepare to take a few days off and eat some turkey, I leave behind this roundup of the Paulose pieces to date. Regular visitors with encyclopedic memories are excused from this review. For the rest of you, there will be a quiz in the next class.

Paulose was appointed interim U.S. attorney in Feb. 2006, nominated for the permanent job in August and confirmed just before Congress recessed in December. In April, 2007, the problem that would eventually end her tenure became public with the resignations of her top three subordinates as a protest against her management style.

I first wrote about the case in May, at my old Star Tribune blog The Big Question, when I learned that the same former top supervisors had written her a letter asking that she repudiate and put a stop to media reports in which their motives for resigning were attributed to various biases, including racism, sexism and ageism. Considering how the story ended this week, this was a more significant development than most people realized at the time.

In June, when Black Ink was operating in secret (I guess I’m supposed to say in “beta”), I posted a modest scoop about an awkward gathering of the U.S. Attorneys staff. Perry Sekus, a long-time attorney was being feted upon his departure. Several of the speakers at the event praised Sekus for the dignity with which he had navigated the awkward months of the Paulose reign. Paulose was present and gave him a plaque. But when Sekus’ turn came, he deflected the praise and said the heroes were those who had resigned to call attention to Paulose’s “communications style.” With Paulose still present, the room erupted in a sustained ovation in tribute to the resignees. The Paulose crisis had generally disappeared from the news by then, but the incident demonstrated that the staff was still in turmoil.

Unbeknownst to press and public, another problem was undermining Paulose’s hold on the job. The Office of Special Counsel had opened a serious investigation into a number of allegations against her mostly involving the way she treated the staff, but including two fairly sensational charges — that she had mishandled classified national security documents, and that she had a made a racist remark about a member of the support staff. The investigation had been under way since June, but Black Ink put it on the public record in September.

A week later, Washington Post reporter Dan Eggen confirmed my modest scoop and added another blow to Paulus’ standing: An extensive job review by a team of specialists from other U.S. Attorneys offices had concluded that her leadership skills, especially her treatment of subordinates, was atrocious.

Sen. Norm Coleman, who had sponsored Paulose’s appointment, had turned critical. With Michael Mukasey, the nominee to replace Alberto Gonzales as attorney general was seeking Senate support, Coleman announced that he had asked Mukasey to look into the Paulose problem. On Sept. 24, I wrote that “by raising the matter with Mukasey, he increases the pressure on Paulose to step down before the end of Bush’s term, or on Mukasey to seek her removal as a sign that he wants to separate himself from his predecessor’s alleged efforts to politicize federal prosecutor’s offices.”

Drip, drip, drip. Hoping to survive until the end of Bush’s term, Paulose was avoiding contact with most of the staff, allowing her subordinates to supervise, while she spent many days out of the office. It wasn’t working. In an Oct. 16 post titled: “Is Rachel Paulose in her Final Days?” Black Ink cataloged the signs and portents suggesting she wasn’t going to make it to inauguration day 2009.

Paulose’s friend and chief public defender, Scott Johnson of Powerline, put up two posts last week defending her. the first one mocked an unflattering New York Times piece. The second one passed along a letter from a Rhode Island professor of Women’s Studies suggesting that dark forces within the Justice Department might be trying to get rid of Paulose to punish her for her aggressive prosecution of human trafficking cases. This struck me as far-fetched, and I said so. I asked the Rhode Island professor for any evidence she might have for her hypothesis. (Yesterday, by the way, she emailed me that she was still seeking to gather that evidence and would get back to me. If she is able to support her suspicion, I will post her evidence.

The main indication I took from the Powerline posts was that the situation was feeling pretty desperate in the Paulose bunker. This theory was supported by Johnson’s third brief for a commutation, in which he quoted Paulose asserting that her critics were guilty of McCarthyite tactics and hated her because she was young, female, non-white, conservative and religious. One of my best sources called after reading that quote and said Paulose had just committed a huge mistake. My piece dissecting the Paulose victimology claims was a good example of why I’m (mostly) glad to have left the newspaper. I could never have written it for a publication still clinging to the norms of so-called objective journalism, but it was one of the truest and most honest pieces I’ve ever written. That piece went up Monday morning.

Within hours, I learned that the source I mentioned above was correct. Paulose’s attack on her critics set off a huge new wave of outrage in the staff. One member of the leadership team, Michael Cheever, resigned in protest and the other top managers were discussing a mass resignation.

That afternoon, while I was trying to get confirmation of who had and hadn’t resigned, Paulose threw in the towel. Her new Washington job is not a promotion but a face-saving arrangement. But her departure is clearly the best thing for the important office that she headed and I hope it will turn out to be, all things considered, the best thing for her as well. During my embarrassingly long career as a journalist, I often denounced the scoop mentality. I still think the desire to be first, and to hype one’s stories, can be an enemy of accuracy and fairness, two of journalism’s claimed values to which I still very much subscribe. So I’m embarrassed to admit (but not too embarrassed to mention it here) that I felt proud that the time stamp on my “Paulose Resigns” post was just five minutes after the time stamp on the email she sent out announcing her resignation to the staff and a couple of minutes ahead of the AP and the Strib. Isn’t it pitiful that I care?

Please have a safe and happy Thanksgiving. I have much for which to be thankful, including the honor that you do me by paying occasional attention to my scribblings. See you next week.