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According to the report of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was that Wilson returned from Niger and reported to the CIA that Niger's former Prime Minister had confirmed that in 1999, an emissary from Saddam Hussein made an overture that the Prime Minister interpreted as an attempt to buy uranium. (The claim that was made about Niger was that Iraq tried to buy uranium there, not that it succeeded.) Six months later, Wilson lied about his mission to Niger in an op-ed in the New York Times that attacked President Bush. Wilson misrepresented what he learned in Niger, and what he told the CIA.

None of this is hard to figure out; it was all widely reported when the Intelligence Committee's report was issued in July 2004. There is no excuse for an AP reporter not knowing these basic facts.

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The Intelligence Committee report confirmed that Valerie Plame did indeed--contrary to Joe Wilson's denials--recommend her husband for the Niger assignment. The report quotes Plame's memo to a deputy chief in the CIA's Directorate of Operations dated February 12, 2002, which said that her husband "has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." Why do prominent newspapers like the Boston Globe print op-eds by writers who don't know any facts?

Kuttner says "the administration" leaked Plame's name to Robert Novak as "part of a clumsy campaign to discredit and punish Wilson." This is dumb. First of all, Novak has already explained the context of the "leak." Many people wondered why the CIA sent such an unsuitable person as Joe Wilson on the Niger mission; someone in the administration explained to Novak that Wilson was selected because his wife worked for the Agency. Which, of course, turned out to be true.

But, in any event, why would that "discredit and punish Wilson"? The fact that his wife is a CIA employee doesn't discredit Wilson in the least. And her employment status is anything but a deep dark secret, as her subsequent Vanity Fair photo shoot demonstrated.

Kuttner now makes the real point of his column, titled "Politics Taints Probe of CIA Leak." His purpose is to libel U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald.