NRO’s excellent editorial, as well as very good one in the WSJ this morning, inspires these thoughts:

It is now clear that the White House did not, as charged, conspire to expose the identity of an undercover CIA agent as a way to punish Joe Wilson and discourage other whistle-blowers.

The truth is that Joe Wilson and David Corn imagined this conspiracy – and brilliantly made it into a major story and a multi-million dollar, tax-payer funded federal case.

Or – this can’t be dismissed — perhaps they knew all along that what they were alleging was false but found it a convenient way to attack and undermine an administration they hated and opposed.

As I’ve written in the past, it is obvious that Wilson has been Corn’s major source from the start, and that Wilson provided Corn with information on his wife, Valerie Plame — information that Bob Novak did not receive from Richard Armitage and Karl Rove. In particular Corn learned of Plame’s undercover status and details about the work she did and the covers she utilized. (Why that leak of classified information to Corn has not been prosecuted is a mystery to me.)

It would be good for an investigative reporter to look into all this but I guess Michael Isikoff is disqualified since he decided to write a book about the Wilson/Plame affairs with David Corn as his co-author. What could Michael have been thinking? Or smoking?