When David Brock declared his independence from the conservative movement last summer, he carefully stood by his own work even while renouncing his career as a "right-wing hit man." Brock, the author of "The Real Anita Hill," broke with the right because his fellow conservatives, he suddenly realized, had admired his investigative writing only as long as he "kill{ed} liberals for a living." And when he published a less-savage-than-expected book about the first lady, "The Seduction of Hillary Rodham," they turned on him. At that time, Brock defended all of his previous writings -- including his famous (or infamous) story in the American Spectator, in which he had reported allegations that then-Gov. Bill Clinton used Arkansas state policemen to procure women. The so-called Troopergate story and his two books, he argued in Esquire magazine, had all merely reflected his pursuit of the truth, and he expressed shock that conservatives didn't understand that his "commitment to journalism outweighed partisan considerations." He wondered: "Had they cheered `The Real Anita Hill' and Troopergate because they believed them to be true, as I did and do, or just because they were useful?"