Mentioned this question briefly in the Boltonblogging post below. There’s plenty to criticize John Kerry for, but this isn’t one of them. The Associated Press now asserts that both Sen. John Kerry and Sen. Richard Lugar “may have blown” a CIA agent’s cover during the Bolton hearings. (Lugar mentioned the name in his opening statement; Kerry dropped the name during questioning.)

Well, did they or didn’t they blow it? Don’t just rely on AP. Arms Control Wonk , the blog of Research Fellow Jeffrey Lewis at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, provides four previous media citations of the agent’s name–all which make public reference to the agent, Fulton Armstrong, and the specific intelligence controversy at issue–dating back to September 2002.

So, how come the AP reporter wrote this?

Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., both mentioned a name, Fulton Armstrong, that had not previously come up in public accounts of the intelligence flap.

And how will all of these newspapers that picked up the AP story square the reporter’s assertion with those previous media citations?

Update: The Washington Post also ran AP’s story.

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