Institutional memory is important at newspapers. Consider how it helped a reporter undermine a political candidate's aborted effort to smear his rival ahead of today's election.

When the Republican candidate for a US Senate seat in New Jersey, Thomas H. Kean Jr., claimed that his Democratic opponent, Robert Menendez, was a guilty party in a Union City corruption scandal 25 years before, New York Times reporter Jim Dwyer, who had covered Union City at the time, deftly demolished the claims. Here's an excerpt from Dwyer's June 25 article, for which he earned praise from several bloggers:

To a depth unusual for events that are decades old, the Kean campaign's accusations can be measured against a robust historical record—including F.B.I. tapes and volumes of trial testimony—of a roiling human and legal drama between 1978 and 1982 in Union City.

The Kean accusations find no support in those records or from independent authorities of that era.

Menendez told Dwyer, "They're trying to destroy a lifetime of work, to rewrite history. I'm not going to be Swift-boated." How prescient: Within a week, the Kean campaign told Dwyer it was preparing a campaign film targeting Menendez, and said it would be "very similar" to the Swift Boat campaign. (FactCheck.org) Of the Union City charges, Dwyer wrote, "Mr. Menendez has said that he acted to thwart a racketeering scheme involving his own political associates and organized crime figures—a claim that is documented in public records and corroborated by independent authorities."

Who was making the film? Chris Lyon, "a researcher working on Thomas H. Kean Jr.'s proposed film attacking U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez [who] once sent out thousands of anonymous post cards and automated phone calls accusing a New Hampshire candidate's wife of being in an orgasm cult," Cynthia Burton wrote a couple of weeks later, in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

By August 25, the campaign wasn't as chatty about the film. From the Herald News of Passaic County:

Earlier this summer, reports surfaced about the Kean campaign hiring a firm to produce a documentary taking aim at Menendez's political career in a manner akin to the "Swift Boat" commercials that helped squash the 2004 president bid of Sen. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts.

Kean said on Thursday the film was merely a campaign option that was still being considered—11 weeks before Election Day.

By last week, the film seems to have died a quiet death. Here's Dwyer, fittingly, writing the epitaph (buried on page B8):

…there is no sign that the film has been made, and Mr. Kean has yet to provide any proof for those accusations.

"They pulled the plug, it was July, I think," said Peggy Pacy, an independent producer who had been hired to make the movie.

Asked yesterday about the fate of the film, Mr. Kean's spokeswoman, Jill Hazelbaker, wrote in an e-mail message: "We're not making any of our media strategy available in the final five days of the campaign."

Ms. Hazelbaker did not reply when asked if Mr. Kean stood by his claims.

The 15th-paragraph kicker, written in the third person:

This reporter, who covered Union City from 1980 to 1982, was asked in early June to appear in what was described as a documentary on Mr. Menendez. The request was made by Chris Lyon, an opposition researcher for Mr. Kean who did not disclose his affiliation with the campaign. When The New York Times learned Mr. Lyon's connection, there were no further conversations about the film.