Sometimes the media’s inability to get simple facts right is astonishing. The way certain facts get exaggerated or distorted, and the speed with which this happens, makes me wonder what some editors get paid for. Jim VandeHei’s and Walter Pincus’s editors, for instance, should have caught the following misrepresentation in their article in the Washington Post today:

Miller, in her account, said Libby raised the issue of Plame in the June 23, 2003, meeting, describing her as a CIA employee and asserting that she had arranged the trip to Niger.

Here’s what Judith Miller actually wrote:

Soon afterward Mr. Libby raised the subject of Mr. Wilson’s wife for the first time. I wrote in my notes, inside parentheses, “Wife works in bureau?” I told Mr. Fitzgerald that I believed this was the first time I had been told that Mr. Wilson’s wife might work for the C.I.A. The prosecutor asked me whether the word “bureau” might not mean the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Yes, I told him, normally. But Mr. Libby had been discussing the C.I.A., and therefore my impression was that he had been speaking about a particular bureau within the agency that dealt with the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. As to the question mark, I said I wasn’t sure what it meant. Maybe it meant I found the statement interesting. Maybe Mr. Libby was not certain whether Mr. Wilson’s wife actually worked there.

Elsewhere in her account, Miller wrote, “My notes do not show that Mr. Libby identified Mr. Wilson’s wife by name.” Despite Miller’s uncertain description of her June meeting with Libby, VandeHei and Pincus feel confident writing that at that meeting Libby described Plame as a CIA employee. Then, VandeHei and Pincus depart from Miller’s account entirely and write that, according to Miller’s account, Libby asserted at the June meeting that Plame arranged the trip to Niger.

In her account, Miller wrote, “Mr. Fitzgerald asked me whether Mr. Libby had mentioned nepotism. I said no. And as I told the grand jury, I did not recall – and my interview notes do not show – that Mr. Libby suggested that Ms. Plame had helped arrange her husband’s trip to Niger.”

Where were the editors? Will the WaPo correct? Stay tuned…