More from David Corn’s article defending the reporting in his new book, co-authored by Michael Isikoff:

The Plame leak in Novak’s column has long been cited by Bush administration critics as a deliberate act of payback, orchestrated to punish and/or discredit Joe Wilson after he charged that the Bush administration had misled the American public about the prewar intelligence. The Armitage news does not fit neatly into that framework.

Well, no, it doesn’t. So how does Corn defend the investigation? Well, even though Armitage “got the ball rolling,” his leak simply “abetted” a White House effort to rebut Joseph Wilson’s criticisms:

Bush critics have long depicted the Plame leak as a sign of White House thuggery. I happened to be the first journalist to report that the leak in the Novak column might be evidence of a White House crime….
Whether he had purposefully mentioned this information to Novak or had slipped up, Armitage got the ball rolling–and abetted a White House campaign under way to undermine Wilson.