The latest from the New York Sun’s Josh Gerstein reveals the extent to which we were misled by previous news reports about Valerie Wilson’s covert status:

Contrary to published reports, a State Department memorandum at the center of the investigation into the leak of the name of a CIA operative, Valerie Plame, appears to offer no particular indication that Ms. Plame’s role at the agency was classified or covert.
The memo, drafted by the then head of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research [Carl Ford Jr.] and addressed to the then secretary of state, Colin Powell, was carried aboard Air Force One as President Bush departed for Africa in July 2003. A declassified version of the document was obtained by The New York Sun on Saturday. […]
The gist of Mr. Ford’s memo has been previously reported in news accounts, but it has not been quoted from directly. In addition, the early leaks about the memo were selective, perhaps deliberately so.
A Wall Street Journal article on July 19, 2005, citing an unnamed person familiar with the memo, reported that the memo “made clear that information identifying an agent and her role in her husband’s intelligence gathering mission was sensitive and shouldn’t be shared.” The Journal account said the paragraph discussing Ms. Plame’s role in her husband’s trip was marked in a way to indicate it shouldn’t be disclosed.
A story the following day in the Washington Post, “Plame’s Identity Marked as Secret,” said correctly that the paragraph carried the mark “S,” signifying the middle level of three major tiers of classification.
Not noted in the previous press reports was the fact that six of the seven paragraphs in the memo are marked “secret,” while only one appears to mention Ms. Plame. In addition, virtually every paragraph in the attached supporting documents from the State Department about alleged Iraqi uranium procurement in Niger carries the “secret” designation.
With most, if not all, of the Niger-related documents marked “secret” in a host of places, there is no particular reason a reader would think the classification was derived from Ms. Plame’s status or involvement.

The Journal and the Post led us to believe that this memo was smoking-gun evidence that White House officials knew that Valerie Wilson’s employment at the CIA was classified but exposed her anyway. We now know that nothing in the memo indicates that Wilson’s employment status was particularly sensitive information. Although the reporters who wrote the misleading accounts were possibly deceived by their sources, their readers were certainly deceived by their reporting. The Journal and the Post are obligated to correct the record.

As usual, Tom Maguire has more.