Rabinowitz E-mail Gaffe Goes to 9/11 Widow

By: E&P Staff Editors and writers, you need to keep your eye on the ball -- or at least on the keyboard.

Famed Wall Street Journal columnist Dorothy Rabinowitz is red-faced, or worse, today after accidentally sending a scathing e-mail to one of the best known "9/11 widows" that was intended for Tunku Varadarajan, her paper's deputy editorial page editor.

The note was intended for internal consumption, not for the recipient, Rabinowitz explained, the result of hitting the wrong key on her keyboard.

The episode began when Kristen Breitweiser, 33, the 9/11 activist from New Jersey with a high profile these days, submitted an Op-Ed piece to the Journal. Rabinowitz, who sits on the paper's editorial board, composed a note to Varadarajan warning him of "total and complete ... repetitive ... nonsense from people given endless media access to repeat the very same stupid charges, suspicions and the rest. ... this is just an opportunity for these absurd products of the zeitgeist -- women clearly in the grip of the delusion that they know something, have some policy, and wisdom not given to the rest of us to know -- to grab the spotlight. Again."

Apparently Breitweiser's Op Ed charts government failures leading to 9/11. Referring to Rabinowitz, she told The Washington Post, "This woman, I don't know why she hates me so much."