"<some government official> said <false claim>" is still factual reporting if said government official did in fact make the false claim. It would be wrong to cite it as proof that the claim is in fact true, but it would be a good source to cite to show that the claim was made.
I had not yet learned English at the time and I was definitely not reading the New York Times, so no, I do not remember their coverage of the Iraq war.
That said, your link contradicts your statement that "the administration followed the media":
> The way the pre-war game worked was that Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress, an exile opposition group, served as a public relations clearing house for Iraqi defectors under Hussein. Chalabi then connected the defectors with journalists like Miller so they could tell their wild tales, based on what they claimed was first-hand knowledge, about Iraq's mounting WMD threat. Of all the mainstream journalists on the defector beat however, Miller was the most impressed and least skeptical of Chalabi's sources; sources who were spreading pro-war talking points on behalf of the pro-war American administration.
There are no links to any NYT articles based on Chalabi's sources, but I assume they still presented the information they got from him as something a source had told them, not something that the reporters themselves hat witnessed in person.
