And speaking of that partisan website, another columnist does a pretty good deconstruction of the Joe Wilson story:

    There are just too many anomalies in the Wilson mission to Niger to believe that anyone who wasn't planning to bash the president could possibly have chosen Wilson for the task.

    He had no expertise in WMD, hadn't been in Niger since the 1980s, and had no intelligence training.

    One of the most revealing aspects of Wilson's mission, relevant to showing it was part of a disinformation campaign, was that he wasn't required to sign a CIA secrecy agreement before taking on the mission. In plainest terms, that meant his CIA bosses wanted him to go public on his return. And he did. The other point that proves Wilson's mission was anything but serious is that, in Wilson's own words, he told everyone he met that he was an agent of the U.S. government.

    In his July 6, 2003 NYT op-ed, Wilson said, "The mission I undertook was discreet but by no means secret. While the CIA paid my expenses (my time was offered pro bono), I made it abundantly clear to everyone I met that I was acting on behalf of the United States government."

    You tell everyone you're speaking to that you're in the government's employ so they can feed you whatever line of baloney they want the U.S. government to hear?

    Wilson's "mission," in short, was a pathetic joke and not an intelligence mission by any definition. The CIA knew this. Who in the CIA authorized, paid for, and managed this mission? Why did they do it? There's no plausible explanation other than the intent to embarrass and discredit the Bush administration.

    A source who spoke on the condition of anonymity said Valerie Plame -- who suggested her husband for the Niger mission -- was too low on the CIA totem pole to have approved and paid for the mission. Logically the person who approved the Wilson mission would have had to be some senior person in the Operations Directorate.

    Regardless of who started the mission, the CIA responded to the Novak column by sending a classified criminal referral -- the allegation of criminal conduct requesting a formal investigation -- to the Justice Department. When it did so, it had to have known that Plame's status was not covert (as defined in the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982) and probably knew (it is an intelligence organization, after all) that Wilson had blabbed his wife's identity around town.

    Why, then, was the criminal referral made? Who approved it? Such actions had to be approved at least by the CIA general counsel and probably by CIA Director Tenet or at least his deputy, McLaughlin. Why did they do that knowing what they must have known?

    The December 30, 2003 letter from Deputy Attorney General Paul Comey appointing Patrick Fitzgerald special prosecutor, says, in part: "I hereby delegate to you all the authority of the Attorney General with respect to the Department's investigation into the alleged unauthorized disclosure of a CIA employee's identity." What was the allegation? If it were made falsely -- say with the knowledge that Plame's identity wasn't covert or had become public -- the person who made the referral may have committed a serious crime.

    The whole Wilson/Plame affair stinks to high heaven. And the smell is coming from Langley. Porter Goss should receive credit for working hard to fix the CIA. The Wilson affair isn't his problem, it's ours. Right now, the CIA's disinformation campaign has cost Scooter Libby his future, threatens other White House staffers and -- most importantly -- burdens the credibility of the president in time of war. It affects our standing in the world, our relationship with our allies, and our strength in the eyes of our enemies. In short, this damned thing needs to be unraveled, publicly, and right bloody now.