When writers are accused of plagiarism these days, they often plead innocent on the grounds of an electronic mishap: A file of their own notes was inadvertently confused with a file of notes taken from other sources.

In one unusual recent case, however, an editor at the San Francisco Chronicle Book Review has admitted she may have caused an incidence of plagiarism by rifling through her writer's personal computer files and printing parts of the wrong review.

It took an alert reader in Pacific Grove, CA to notice the similarities between Chronicle op-ed editor Dean Wakefield's June 30 review of Marshall Frady's new biography of Jesse Jackson, titled "Jesse," and a review of the book by the political writer Jim Sleeper that had run several weeks earlier in The Washington Post Book World.

Both reviews were cover stories for their respective Sunday book reviews, and at first glance they seem utterly different. But once you read past the first few paragraphs of Wakefield's review, the similarities to Sleeper's June 2nd Washington Post review become apparent. The middle and final sections of Wakefield's review contain more than ten paragraphs that are lifted nearly verbatim from Sleeper's earlier essay.

To give one example, here is a sentence from the final paragraph of Sleeper's original review:

"A new progressive politics should grasp another truth that Frady softpedals: Jackson's big vote in some heavily white areas shows a country less racist than it has been; he has gotten a lot of mileage out of whites' own guilt and goodwill, with his book a case in point."

Here is a sentence from Wakefield's later review:

"Still, a new progressive politics should grasp an irony Frady soft-pedals: Jackson's big vote in some heavily white areas shows a country less racist than it has been. He has gotten a lot of mileage out of whites' own guilt and goodwill, and this book is a case in point."

According to Wakefield, the resemblance between the two reviews is a case of "electronic error." While working on his review of "Jesse," he says, he called up a copy of Sleeper's earlier review and downloaded it into his files in order to read it and "make sure I was doing justice to Frady's book." Wakefield, who recently came to the Chronicle from the editorial pages of the Los Angeles Times, says he had not reviewed many books in the past and wanted to read Sleeper's review more for form than content, "just to see how good reviews are done."

Wakefield says he did write and submit an entirely original review of Frady's book, but that Sleeper's words were mingled with his own in the editing process. Patricia Holt, the Chronicle's book review editor, did not return telephone calls last week. But in a letter faxed to Sleeper, which he made available to Salon, Holt wrote that she and Wakefield "are both guilty of an incredibly tangled and embarrassing series of blunders that resulted in the sabotage of our own review process." She also notes that "in my 14 years as Book Editor, nothing like this has ever happened."

According to Holt's rambling, three and one-half page letter, the error occurred when she became worried that Wakefield -- who was apparently out of town -- would miss his deadline on the review. "I kept looking in our data base for his review and, when the keyword 'Jesse' came up on my screen, nabbed what I thought was Dean's review," Holt wrote Sleeper. Unfortunately, she had instead grabbed Sleeper's review, from which Wakefield had apparently removed both Sleeper's byline and any references to the Washington Post.

"I began editing," Holt's letter continues, "but soon realized I wasn't in the Books file but the Wakefield, D file and immediately pulled out, sent an electronic message to Dean apologizing for stumbling into his files when he wasn't ready, and told him to send in the completed review as soon as possible."

When Wakefield returned from out of town, Holt continues, he "plowed through his messages (the op-ed editor gets plenty) so fast that all he saw from Holt, P was a demand to get the review in right away." When he did file it, Holt says, "I found the review to be different from what I read earlier and felt that Dean, a new reviewer, had begun to doubt his first, more aggressive and thoughtful take on the book. Thinking I could work with him on combining the best of both takes, I took parts of what I thought were his early draft and spliced them into the newly filed review, and sent it back to him with a long explanation and many accompanying messages."

Wakefield says that because he didn't read Holt's messages carefully enough -- he thought she had merely made some minor changes in his review -- he never realized what had happened. The review ran as a combination of Wakefield's words and Sleeper's.

According to Sleeper, who notes that he was "sort of surprised and amused to find twelve paragraphs of my work in someone else's review," the Chronicle's explanation "seems a little convoluted."

Chaotic as newspaper editing can be, the incident does raise a number of questions. Why did Wakefield remove Sleeper's byline (and all Washington Post references) from the Post's review? Why didn't Holt have an inkling that these two dissimilar reviews were not the work of the same writer? Why didn't Wakefield read the final (combined) version of the review that Holt sent him for his approval? And didn't Wakefield even bother to read his piece once it had appeared in print as a Book Review cover story?

On the other hand, it is hard to believe that these seasoned journalists would deliberately engage in such blatant thievery.

For his part, Wakefield says it was "entirely my fault" for not reading the version of the story Holt sent him for his approval. He says he has also been asked by Holt not to read other reviews before writing his own in the future.

According to Holt's letter to Sleeper, the paper's Sunday Book Review planned to run an "announcement" about the snafu in its July 28th issue. Instead, a correction ran this past Saturday -- traditionally a day when fewer people read newspapers -- that managed to itself contain two errors. The correction referred to Marshall Frady as "Michael" Frady, and to Jim Sleeper as "James" Sleeper, a name he has never used as his byline.

In a subsequent letter to Holt, Sleeper pointed out these errors and asked the Chronicle to run a second correction in their July 28th book section.

Sleeper also added: "Even knowing as I do how newspapers work and how pressured such work can be, I find your account believable only as an account of gross malfeasance. I don't see how your proposed 'Correction' can say simply that my work ended up in the 'wrong' file and not that the problem involved a failure on both your parts to properly check the work."

-- Dwight Garner