Just pertinent info.

First author Lichtblau has been shown to believe suspect sources too easily; from Wikipedia:

Lichtblau joined The New York Times in September 2002 as a correspondent covering the Justice Department,[2] and published his last story for the paper in April 2017.[3] In that month he became an editor for CNN;[4] just two months later, in June 2017, he was among three CNN editors who resigned following the retraction of a report regarding alleged contact between the presidential transition team of Donald Trump and a Russian state-owned bank.[4][5]

Maybe I am wrong but I don't recall him ever doing much on foreign in his career at the Times. Very much a DC gummint beat person.

Second author Myers is truly a Russian/Putin expert. Has book on Putin's rise to power published in 2015. I remember reading his reports from Moscow all the time during earlier Putin years. I thought he was quite good.

Maybe Myers vouching for Lichtblau's source's story as "that sounds right" is what made the editor involved go: okay, let's go with it!? And this time, Myers was fooled, too.

(See All The President's Men for how this happens, it's kinda iffy. Woodward and Bernstein could have been fooled, too. Even more so a person who travels DC power circles for a long time like Lichtblau, they get to trust someone as giving them good info., but then building the trust turns out to be part of a "counter-intel op" )