Tucked away on the Newsweek web site last week was a not entirely unexpected wrinkle in Judith Regan's lawsuit against her former employers at HarperCollins: "Regan has a tape recording that presumably helps to buttress her allegations in her suit," reports Johnnie Roberts. "One influential publishing executive in Regan's camp firmly declares direct knowledge of the tape. This person, however, claims to have not listened to it, and didn't know whether Regan or her lawyers have told News Corp. about it. Two media executives close to the matter also claim to know one person, a man, who has listened to the tape. They declined to identify him, however."

Roberts acknowledges that the contents of the alleged tape remain unknown, but then spends the remaining two-thirds of his article probing the links between Regan and disgraced former New York City police commissioner Bernie Kerik, then connects the dots to Rudy Giuliani's presidential ambitions. That would certainly be a lot more entertaining than a recording of the conversation between her and former HarperCollins attorney Mark Jackson (now the general counsel at Dow Jones) that's held up by the publishing company as one of the key motivations for firing her.