Novak Backs Off Pledge To ‘Reveal All’
Novak Backs Off Pledge To ‘Reveal All’
On June 30, 2005, Robert Novak appeared on CNN with host Ed Henry and explained that while he could not answer questions about who in the administration gave him Plame’s identity, he would soon “reveal allâ€:
NOVAK: Well, that’s what I can’t reveal until this case is finished. I hope it is finished soon. And when it does…I will reveal all in a column and on the air.
In an op-ed on Human Events Online, Novak writes that Fitzgerald has cleared him and that “frees me to reveal my role in the federal inquiry.†But Novak fails to “reveal all,†as he earlier pledged, in at least two respects.
1. Novak refuses to identify his primary administration source who revealed to him that Valerie Plame worked at the CIA as an undercover agent. He confirms Karl Rove was his second senior administration source, and that CIA official Bill Harlow served as a confirming source. But Novak writes his primary source’s name “has not yet been revealed†and “has not come forward to identify himself.â€
2. Novak also did not explain why he earlier said he was given Plame’s identity by the White House as part of an effort to intentionally out her. He said: “I didn’t dig it out [Plame’s identity], it was given to me…. They [the White House] thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it.†In his latest op-ed, Novak fails to address this issue, and states simply that Plame’s “role in instituting her husband’s mission was revealed to me in the middle of a long interview with an official who I have previously said was not a political gunslinger.â€
UPDATE: John Aravosis notes Novak’s interesting acknowledgement that his account differs from Rove’s.
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Just admit it:
July 11th, 2006 at 7:12 pmIt was Cheney…
Robert Novak: the sleaziest most dishonest piece of shit in the history of talking heads.
July 11th, 2006 at 7:18 pmwow - i dodn’t think cheney could move that fast…
July 11th, 2006 at 7:23 pmhe got on the phone pronto-like…
Thanks, TP. This is already being misread right and left on Cheap Republic and Huffpo.
Novak just wants some face time.
July 11th, 2006 at 7:25 pmSo, what does this move by Novak imply?
July 11th, 2006 at 7:35 pmIt’s somebody big, and it’s somebody powerful. Plain and pathetically simple.
Investigate, Impeach, Imprison.
For those who have a clue (not including Faiz):
1. Novak won’t reveal the primary source because Patrick Fitzgerald is also keeping this a secret. Top of the rumor list is Richard Armitage.
2. This is a dishonest misrepresentation. Novak simply stated that the info on Plame was given to him without him asking, in other words, Armitage inadvertedly mentioned it without Novak asking for it. Spinning this as “he earlier said he was given Plame’s identity by the White House as part of an effort to intentionally out her” is completely ludicrous.
July 11th, 2006 at 7:45 pmSo Novak is an unwitting victim in this whole thing? I wonder who Novak and Rove threw under the misfiring neocon bus to stay unindicted?
July 11th, 2006 at 7:57 pmAbove the Clouds,
I wonder who Novak and Rove threw under the misfiring neocon bus to stay unindicted?
Leopold says Cheney. I say no one. Who you gonna believe? *snicker*
July 11th, 2006 at 8:03 pmWhat does any of this really mean anymore? Anyone in legal jeopardy will get a pardon anyway. It’s just a titillating diversion in a People magazine kind of way.
July 11th, 2006 at 8:08 pmBadmoodman: You are right, we should be spending more time discussing the adject failure of the Bush Administration’s Iraq policy. It must be tough for freedom to be on the march with all those bodies to step over.
July 11th, 2006 at 8:15 pmFunny what happens when your life is threatened….
July 11th, 2006 at 8:18 pmHey, Seixon says Armitage carelessly revealed classified info to Bob Novak!
Let’s at least hang Armitage! What a sloppy, sloppy Administration! Someone should investigate the people who hire this silly waggle-tongues!
July 11th, 2006 at 8:20 pm#9 Indeed. This is a sideshow. Joe Wilson has been vindicated by the facts-on-the-ground in Iraq…and elsewhere.
The VAlerie Plame episode is a footnote to an extended saga called The Death of America.
July 11th, 2006 at 8:27 pmNovak writes that he is free to reveal his role? We all knew his role from day one - he was the water boy who carried out the wishes of this White House. DUH! So let’s see - Rove was his 2nd source and we don’t know who his 1st source is because he is not saying. If it were Armitage - Novak would have given that name up in a NY second. No, I don’t think it was Cheney himself, just one of the loyal soldiers who worked for Cheney. And of course, partisan hack Robert Novak would not throw Cheney under the bus, would he? How do you know Robert Novak is lying - his lips are moving.
July 11th, 2006 at 8:45 pmI don’t see why people would get that excited about this.
Bottom line: when’s the last time *any* of you read a Novak column? I bet it’s been awhile, right? Why? Because Novak hasn’t written anything interesting in a long time.
July 11th, 2006 at 8:50 pmpgl,
Fitzgerald is shielding Novak’s primary source and most likely asked Novak to not divulge any information about him. As I said, most people knowledgable about this case believe that source to be Richard Armitage. Armitage was not in the neo-con squad, in fact, I believe he was against the Iraq war. His deputy, Marc Grossman, is a friend of Wilson’s. A very interesting web was woven with all of this…
July 11th, 2006 at 8:56 pmNovacula wouldn’t know the truth if Jonah Goldberg pasted him in the face with it.
WHO CARES?
July 11th, 2006 at 9:02 pmThe Douchebag of Liberty is desperately seeking relevance.
-GSD
July 11th, 2006 at 9:17 pmWow, same five people here plus 2.
July 11th, 2006 at 9:17 pmHad to be undercover to be “under cover” she worked at the agency, had a badge to get thru the gate, “under cover” does not.
July 11th, 2006 at 9:19 pmDrSinker
July 11th, 2006 at 9:22 pmWow its getting hot in here… damn must be global warming.
Wow its getting hot in here… damn must be global warming.-Umbra
That all you got? Lame…
July 11th, 2006 at 10:01 pmDon’t mean to be dense, but why would Armitage join in a scheme to discredit Wilson? Is the thinking that someone in the WH set him up?
July 11th, 2006 at 10:30 pmBob Novak is a turd.
July 11th, 2006 at 10:31 pmI inadvertantly told secrets about Seixon.
July 11th, 2006 at 10:47 pmSo this whole thing was about some no name guy inadvertantly giving the name to Novak?
July 11th, 2006 at 10:49 pmIt’s common knowledge that Novak is a waterboy for the White House, a shill with a column who “catapaults their propaganda” and a weasel-like snarly little man.
July 11th, 2006 at 10:51 pmHe should be in jail along with the others who betrayed a secret agent, working on proliferation of WMDs in Iran. It is more important to them to retain their personal power and riches than to protect our country. Give up a spy? Sure, if they get to discredit her husband (whose information was correct, by the way) because the war was based on lies and the truth can’t be told.
I inadvertantly told secrets about For Truth.
July 11th, 2006 at 10:55 pmI inadvertantly told secrets about Seixon.
Comment by For Truth — July 11, 2006 @ 10:47 pm
So, anyway, my wife Ethel is just talking with this Russian guy, and she just happens to blurt out that the American fission bomb is based on an imploding-sphere design with synchronized explosive charges placed in a regular, radial pattern along the outside of the sphere. And then she said some stupid shit about U-235 and fast neutrons and how you need to shield the trigger electronics with beryllium.
It was just an inadvertent slip-of-the-tongue, you know? She didn’t mean any harm. I’m sure this Plame thing was like that.
– Julius Rosenberg
July 11th, 2006 at 11:01 pmbeep52,
Armitage would have mentioned it because Wilson was lying to the press about the State Department (he was Deputy Secretary of State at the time) knowing all about his mission. Check this from the Kristof May 6, 2003 column:
This, of course, was completely false. Wilson never reported anything about the forgeries for his mission. Yet Wilson had no problem lying to Kristof in claiming this, which is what probably got Armitage upset enough to talk about it.
Wilson lied, Armitage was mad, inadvertently outed his wife, the rest is history.
July 11th, 2006 at 11:01 pm#25 PS: Let’s have more secrets about Seixon!
The dark creepy ones…if you have them.
July 11th, 2006 at 11:04 pmWilson lied, Armitage was mad, inadvertently outed his wife, the rest is history.
Comment by Seixon — July 11, 2006 @ 11:01 pm
The good news, thankfully, is that Joe Wilson has been vindicated by the facts-on-the-ground.
We invaded Iraq on a Presidential whim, we found nothing and turned an entire nation into Beyond Thunderdome.
This is your brain. This is your brain on bullshit Republican war-pimping. Any questions?
July 11th, 2006 at 11:15 pmThis is just a scandal thats been taken out to warm a little, it will soon go back into the deep-freeze.
Move along folks it’s establishment hyperbole, move along nothing to see the same scandal, just thawed out, move along, no talking in the free speech zone…
July 11th, 2006 at 11:45 pmWilson lied, Armitage was mad, inadvertently outed his wife, the rest is history.
Comment by Seixon — July 11, 2006 @ 11:01 pm
not a truth one in that statement seixon
July 11th, 2006 at 11:49 pm#34 It’s OK. Given the number of even-more-spectacular scandals that are on the boil right now, this one’s just a sideshow.
Bush and Company have teed-up America to be humiliated by it’s enemies, it’s allies, its creditors and even the ungrateful brown people we’ve invaded, raped and murdered as a lesson in free-market benevolence.
There’s no escape for Bush and the Pubbies now. For the next three years, they’re going to feel like Jamie Lee Curtis in”Halloween.” It’s just a damn shame we had to lose another war in order to bring down another corrupt Republican administration. That’s becoming a cliche.
July 11th, 2006 at 11:54 pmThis doesn’t make any sense. Neither he nor Rove are in any danger of getting indicted, so why roll over on Rove like this? Why not just clam up and wait for the whole thing to blow over? Is Novak that desperate to stay in the public eye?
July 11th, 2006 at 11:59 pmWhy don’t we send them all to Gitmo and have the truth extracted by approved methods.
July 12th, 2006 at 9:03 amSo when is Rove going to be fired? Novak should be put in jail.
July 12th, 2006 at 9:28 amjoe wilson submitted his wife’s name and job title to the Who’s Who in American Gov. org long before it appeared in Novak’s collumn.
July 12th, 2006 at 9:53 amUmmm, liberal-idiot, post #39 is a lie. Her job title was not published. He maiden name was listed in Who’s Who, she used her married name in the CIA. Why do cons always post mis-information.
July 12th, 2006 at 10:52 amInvestigate, Impeach, Imprison.
Comment by Cloak & Swagger
July 12th, 2006 at 10:55 am===============
One can only hope!
But in his column that began circulating Tuesday night, Novak wrote: “I learned Valerie Plame’s name from Joe Wilson’s entry in ‘Who’s Who in America.’â€
July 12th, 2006 at 12:29 pmInterestingly, the Washington Post chose not to mention that fact in its coverage of Novak’s new revelations.
July 12th, 2006 at 12:30 pma lib is a lib is a lib
July 12th, 2006 at 12:31 pmCheck out Jonah Goldberg’s Fizzlegate (NRO’s The Corner) or my reaction to the latest Goldberg spin )Angrybear).
July 12th, 2006 at 12:56 pmWhat you fail to mention is that Fitzgerald knew the names of Novaks three sources from almost the beginning and did not choose to prosecute any of them on the charge of “outing” Plame–the very reason for which the whole fiasco was begun! Novak makes this point quite clearly in his article today. So the whole 3 yr exercise became little more than a political attempt to “get someone” at the White House on some trumped-up, extraneous charge. And for this, the collective leftist mouth has been watering like a rabid wolf, making all sorts of silly charges and accusations. All the while ignoring the fact that Joe Wilson lied about everything to everbody, including the 9/11 commission. And you people wonder why you don’t win elections.
July 12th, 2006 at 2:46 pma lib is a lib is a lib
Comment by liberal idiot
===============
Hmm.
I don’t agree with all of my fellow liberals regarding every issue on this site.
Your thesis is flawed.Sorry.
July 12th, 2006 at 5:29 pmLet’s see - the “scandal” progressives have been salivating about for eons is about to go “poooof’ and vanish like the smoke and mirrors it is. The proven liar in all of this is Joe Wilson, who stupidly claimed the “administration” was behind his trip to Niger. (Many people have a great need to “bolster” their contacts or credentials….Poor Joe seems to be one of them.) Mrs. Wilson was the basis for Joe’s field trip - but Joe forgot to mention that.
“BRIT HUME: Did you call Rove or did he …
ROBERT NOVAK: I called Rove.
HUME: And did you call for the purpose of getting this confirmed or did this come up in passing?
NOVAK: I called him for several reasons. I wanted to talk about the column I was writing about the mission to Niger. Almost all of my conversations with Rove were not for attribution and in the course of that I told him. I asked him about Wilson’s wife at the CIA, working with the CIA and initiating this visit and as I remember the conversation very distinctly, Karl said to me, “Yes, I know that, too.”
HUME: “I know that too?”
NOVAK: Yes.
HUME: He didn’t say, “You know that, too?”
NOVAK: No. He said, “Oh, you know that, too?”
HUME: And what did you take that to mean? Did you take that to mean he talked to other journalists who knew that?
NOVAK: No, I took that as a confirmation that she worked with the CIA and initiated it. He said, “Oh, you know that, too?”
HUME: You said you talked to Bill Harlow at the CIA, the public information officer. A lot of this has been out for a long time around town. What was the nature of this? You called him expressly to confirm this?
NOVAK: I called him, he said, “I’ll get back to you” and he talked to somebody — I just guessed he talked to the CIA director, George Tenet, I had no idea if that’s true. He came back to me and he told me yes, she worked for the CIA in the Office of Weapons of Mass Destruction and he told me that Mrs. Wilson did not suggest the mission by her husband, but she was asked to get him to do it by other people in the CIA.
HUME: Which said she suggested it.
NOVAK: Said she suggested it and there were no Democratic dissenters.
HUME: So you didn’t call him about that specific thing; you called him about something else?
NOVAK: I called him about the mission to Niger, but in the course of asking about the mission to Niger, I said, “I understand that his wife works at the CIA and she initiated the mission.”
HUME: And he said, “You know that, too?”
NOVAK: We were talking about specifics. I feel constrained not to say about exactly what was discussed — because it hasn’t come out — in the conversation I had with both Mr. X and Karl Rove about some of the details of the mission in Niger, which I put in the column because I still consider that was given to me on a background basis.
HUME: Let me ask you a question others are sure to want to know the answer to: Why did you consider this — and I think I know the answer, but I’d rather hear it from you — why did you consider this to be newsworthy? What was the story here that made Joe Wilson’s wife’s job relevant?
NOVAK: The column was about the mission, what he found. Some of the things in the column indicated were contrary to what Mr. Wilson said. For example, — this was specifically asked for by Vice President Cheney — I wrote that there was never a real report written about it, that it was not a conclusive report. When I asked my original source, I asked him, “Why in the world did they send Joe Wilson on this? Why would it be somebody who was not a CIA person, was not familiar with this situation? Why would they send him?”
And I thought it was interesting that his wife suggested it. It was a throwaway line in the middle of the column.
HUME: Of course, it turned out to be — when the Senate Intelligence Committee investigated — an important reason why he was sent, according to the committee’s findings.
NOVAK: Absolutely. They have a document that they put in the committee report that got very little attention. I wrote about it later, that she suggested it at the CIA, that her husband was well-plugged in and she suggested he be sent there. I still think it was an extraordinary decision to be made, but that was the decision that was made.
Bottom line: the administration didn’t send Joe as much as he might wish it so, he lied, case closed…..
July 13th, 2006 at 4:26 pmLet me get this straight..It is more important how Joe W got to Nigg>er than the administration lies he uncovered that were the false pretext to getting us into a disastrous war that has shredded our economy and our credibility around the world? Not to mention lost us all respect and any moral high ground we may once have held in dealing with the real forces of tyranny..
I just love how the neo cons are able to frame things so that they are always right, and the main issue is a non -issue. It is always about distraction, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. They treat us all (the Am public) like we have the attention of a 4 yr old. In this regard, sadly, they are often correct.
July 23rd, 2006 at 6:10 am