Robert Novak describes the “attack on Joe Wilson”:

Armitage was giving me high-level insider gossip, unusual in a first meeting. About halfway through our session, I brought up Bush’s sixteen words. What Armitage told me generally confirmed what I had learned from sources the previous day while I was reporting for the Fran Townsend column.

I then asked Armitage a question that had been puzzling me but, for the sake of my future peace of mind, would better have been left unasked.

Why would the CIA send Joseph Wilson, not an expert in nuclear proliferation and with no intelligence experience, on the mission to Niger?

“Well,” Armitage replied, “you know his wife works at CIA, and she suggested that he be sent to Niger.” “His wife works at CIA?” I asked. “Yeah, in counterproliferation.”

He mentioned her first name, Valerie. Armitage smiled and said: “That’s real Evans and Novak, isn’t it?” I believe he meant that was the kind of inside information that my late partner, Rowland Evans, and I had featured in our column for so long. I interpreted that as meaning Armitage expected to see the item published in my column.

The exchange about Wilson’s wife lasted no more than sixty seconds.

The notion that Wilson was being “punished” by “outing” his wife never made any sense, except to the Bush deranged. And as the article notes, Fitzgerald knew this before he ever deposed Libby, and yet decided to go on his fishing expedition anyway.