no Times employee assisted me in any of my deceptions.

I am making amends and seeking forgiveness. My only hope is that some good can come out of my situation.

Those ethical choices often are made every day at a time, minute by minute in ways that you may not even relate to ethics, so I'm going to walk them through the whole story from that perspective and hopefully they'll be able to walk away with something good from it.

If they're all so brilliant and I'm such an affirmative-action hire, how come they didn't catch me?

I fooled some of the most brilliant people in journalism.

It's not about the external things that surround you, but it's about YOU.
How you operates your life, how you take your path and walk with it.