New York Times Op-Ed crusader (sub. req.) Nicholas Kristof had to take a break today from his busy schedule of rescuing Indonesian sex workers and such to defend himself against plagiarism accusations from a little-known writer.

Gary Brecher claims he has received "dozens" of e-mails from readers alerting him to Kristof's "brazen theft" of his March 6 column about the Iraq war in the Exile, a Moscow-based alternative paper.

"So far, Iran has been the big winner in this war, and they haven't fired a shot or lost a man," wrote Brecher. "Makes me wonder if Cheney isn't actually a mole parachuted into Wyoming a while back by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard."

Two weeks later, Kristof wrote his own column, headlined, "Iran's Operative in the White House." "You have to wonder: Is Dick Cheney an Iranian mole?" he asked.

Brecher, whose "widely read" column is called the War Nerd, is demanding an apology from Kristof and a statement from the Times acknowledging an act of plagiarism.

He's not going to get either, though. "I've never seen his column nor seen his site," Kristof, who is traveling in China, tells Radar via e-mail. (FishbowlNY, which reported Brecher's claim earlier, says it couldn't get a comment from Kristof.) "The idea was all my own, and I've never heard of [Brecher]. It was my own idea, plain and simple."

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