After the New York Sun published Josh Gerstein’s measured report on President Bush, Scooter Libby and the National Intelligence Estimate today, I wondered how long it would take for the left-wing press to take the same information and blow it completely out of proportion. Answer: about half a day. MB reader Kevin K. writes:

The AP’s breathless lead paragraph on the latest Lewis Libby news reads as follows:Vice President Dick Cheney’s former top aide told prosecutors President Bush authorized the leak of sensitive intelligence information about Iraq, according to court papers filed by prosecutors in the CIA leak case.Several paragraphs later we find the basis for this assertion:Libby’s participation in a critical conversation with Miller on July 8, 2003 “occurred only after the vice president advised defendant that the president specifically had authorized defendant to disclose certain information in the National Intelligence Estimate,” the papers by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald stated. The filing did not specify the “certain information.”So what’s the truth? The actual story here is that Fitzgerald says that Libby says that Cheney says that Bush authorized the disclosure of “certain information in the National Intelligence Estimate.” In other words, it is fourth-hand information.
And to imply that this allegedly authorized disclosure concerned “sensitive intelligence information” is a mere editorial gloss. Who knows whether this “certain information” was “sensitive”? AP doesn’t.
Why can’t these reporters just report the facts?

Because the facts as they are don’t suit the left’s agenda.