So, Sean Treglia — the hapless former Pew program officer who gave the incriminating speech about how Pew worked to “create an impression that a mass movement was afoot” calling for campaign-finance reform — has leveled some ugly charges against me.

In a letter to the editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, responding to William Schambra’s excellent article about how blogs covered Pewgate, he gives an account of a conversation we had before my original story ran in The Post.

He doesn’t mention me by name — worried about libel? — but the account is clearly about me (it was, after all, my article he was talking about).

Anyway, here’s the relevant portion of his letter:

When the blogger presented me with his theory of conspiracy and cover-up, I explained to him that he was misinterpreting the meaning of what I said. In the course of my conversation with him I learned that he had not bothered to watch my entire presentation (someone later took credit for e-mailing him the handful of clips he based his story on); he had not spoken to anyone else in the nonprofit sector to confirm his theory; he questioned no reporters who covered the issue at the time to see if foundation activities were hidden; he spoke with no grantees who worked on the issue; and he had reviewed no grantee Web sites, materials, reports, statements, etc., on which the names of the foundations are displayed prominently.

As it turned out he had not talked to anyone and had not even bothered to conduct any basic research to fact-check and confirm. When I expressed surprise that he was about to write a news story based on some out-of-context clips someone had e-mailed him, he said, “It’s not a news story, it’s an opinion.” I then asked if he wanted his “opinion” to be based on the truth. His response, and I quote, “I don’t have time for all that, I’m going with my story.”

Really, this is too much. I’ve written a letter in response to the Chronicle, but just to put a few things on the record now:

* I of course watched the full video (it’s about 2 hours long) before calling Treglia for his comment. I wasn’t sent clips. I obtained the full video and later created the clips myself to put on The Post’s Web site. Nothing I said to Treglia could have been construed as indicating otherwise.

* How exactly Treglia claims to know what Web sites or reports I looked at or didn’t is a mystery to me. Suffice it to say I looked at plenty of these Web sites and reports and have been careful throughout my writing on this to note that Pew and other foundations’ support was always disclosed somewhere — it was the media that was too lazy to connect the dots (a point Treglia himself made during his talk).

* That last quote (“I don’t have time for all that, I’m going with my story”) is simply made up. I was — as I work at a daily newspaper — of course under time pressure, and I may well have indicated as much to Treglia. But my editors and I were (and remain) fully confident that the story was accurate and well-sourced. The tape doesn’t lie.

For all of Treglia’s accusations, he can’t point to one fact wrong in the story. It’s his right to argue that I’m taking him out of context — but I’m not, and I’ve long been inviting readers to watch the whole tape, which I provide on this Web site.

So, that’s all for now on this. You can also read Winfield Myers’ and Mark Tapscott’s responses to Treglia. Both make a number of excellent points and have been dogged in keeping the foundation folks honest.