Times insiders think The New York Times' mea culpa on its weapons of mass destruction reporting may yet have ramifications for reporters, editors and executives.

Judith Miller, the reporter who penned at least four of the stories singled out, is in the crosshairs.

While The Times cited a number of her major "scoops" as questionable or unsupported, it conspicuously left her name off its 1,100-word editor's note, which ran on Wednesday under the headline, "The Times and Iraq."

The buzz inside the paper, said one source, is that "someone is protecting her."

The question is: Who? Could it be Jill Abramson, the co-managing editor? The former head of the Washington bureau, from which Miller was based, Abramson was elevated to her current job when Gerald Boyd was forced out with executive editor Howell Raines in following the Jayson Blair scandal.

Abramson "edited all of those [questionable] stories, or at least a big chunk of them," said the insider. "That could be the next shoe to drop."

But Miller may have protection in the form of Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr., the Times' publisher.

"Arthur likes her," grumbled another reporter. "They double-dated when he was in the Washington bureau."

"The Trust" — a 1999 book on the company by Susan E. Tift and Alex S. Jones — revealed that Miller was part of a Washington "brat pack" of young and mostly single Times reporters, including Sulzberger and his lifelong friend Steve Rattner, now a media investment banker. At the time, Rattner was romantically involved with Miller.

Asked yesterday if he was protecting one of his old brat-pack pals in the latest controversy, Sulzberger said, "I'm not going to talk about it. If that's what they say, that's what they say."

Miller did not return a call seeking comment.

A Times spokeswoman insisted there is no other shoe to drop. "I think the note takes pains not to suggest disciplinary action," she said. "The failures were not by any one individual but by reporters and editors at many levels."