A bunch of e-mailers have echoed this theme about my original item on Nick Lemann’s faulty recounting of the events leading up to Scooter Libby’s indictment: “The New Yorker lede has another mistake, and it’s a biggie. It says Wilson was dispatched “to find proof that the country had shipped yellowcake uranium to Iraq” and that he “came up empty-handed”. But actually, Bush’s assertion–which Wilson was dispatched to investigate–was that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger, and Wilson actually found evidence corroborating this. No, Iraq did not seem to have success in getting the uranium–but as Bush said, Iraq was actively seeking uranium, which could only have been used in a nuclear weapons program.”

Me: In my original item, I was citing only incontrovertible facts no one would disagree with. The information that Wilson lied about his Niger finding comes from the report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. I’ve cited it, and I believe it, but Wilson denies it, and I didn’t want to get into a whole rigamarole about the SSCI’s report. My point stands: The very fact that Nick Lemann and the New Yorker can’t get the elementary details of the Wilson-Libby case right is evidence that the case exists due entirely to prosecutorial mania.