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 all“:

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.”

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.”

UPDATE: John Aravosis notes Novak’s interesting acknowledgement that his account differs from Rove’s.

Tonight on MSNBC’s Hardball, Chris Matthews revealed that Bob Novak’s “confirming” source for Valerie Plame’s undercover CIA identity was former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow. Watch it:

Transcript:

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Bob Novak’s going to go on television tomorrow and give away one of the sources in the infamous Valerie Plame leak story. It’s going to be Bill Harlow, the spokesman for the CIA all those years. He’s going to identify him as one of his sources, apparently the other source is still maintaining his deep background sourcing role here. … Bob Novak’s office has just now confirmed to Hardball that his confirming source — that’s the one that said, “So you heard,” and backed up the initial source — in learning about Valerie Plame’s identity with the CIA, her undercover identity, was Bill Harlow, the former CIA Public Information Officer. Bill Harlow himself hasn’t commented so far.

Recall, Bill Harlow was the former CIA spokesman who repeatedly urged Novak that he was not to use Plame’s identity. From the Washington Post, 7/27/05:

Harlow, the former CIA spokesman, said in an interview yesterday that he testified last year before a grand jury about conversations he had with Novak at least three days before the column was published. He said he warned Novak, in the strongest terms he was permitted to use without revealing classified information, that Wilson’s wife had not authorized the mission and that if he did write about it, her name should not be revealed.

Harlow said that after Novak’s call, he checked Plame’s status and confirmed that she was an undercover operative. He said he called Novak back to repeat that the story Novak had related to him was wrong and that Plame’s name should not be used.

There has always been tension between Harlow’s and Novak’s accounts. Novak has claimed that while Harlow asked him not to publish the name, Harlow “never suggested to [Novak] that Wilson’s wife or anybody else would be endangered.” (But Novak did acknowledge Harlow told him that Plame’s outing would cause “difficulties.”) Novak wrote, “If he had, I would not have used her name.”

Today the National Journal published a list of salaries for the 403 White House staffers. Here are the four most overpaid:

And yes, there is a White House Director for Lessons Learned. We aren’t making this up.

This year the highest paid staffers in the White House – including Karl Rove, Dan Bartlett and Steven Hadley – got a cost-of-living adjustment of $4,200, boosting their total salary to $165,200.

Meanwhile, the White House is backing Congressional efforts to beat back a modest increase in the minimum wage for the lowest paid Americans for the first time since 1997. Here’s a press release issued today by Rep. George Miller (D-CA):

For the fifth time in less than two weeks, Republicans in the House of Representatives today voted to block a vote on legislation to increase the national minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour…

A full-time minimum wage worker earns just $10,712 per year – which is $5,888 less than the $16,600 needed to lift a family of three above the federal poverty threshold…the minimum wage is at its lowest level in more than 50 years, when adjusted for inflation. Congress has not raised the federal minimum wage since 1997.

The good news is, after a hard day making sure that the working poor don’t get a pay increase, Karl Rove will have some extra cash for a nice dinner and a foot massage.

are protected under the Geneva Conventions is “not really a reversal of policy” White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said today. (Actually, it is.)

NBC News reported today on a new Lundberg Survey showing that the average national gas price has spiked up 11 cents over the last two weeks to $3.00 per gallon, the second-highest level in U.S. history.

TRILBY LUNDBERG: We’re within a couple of pennies of the nominal all-time high last September, when there was a shortage of gasoline brought on by hurricane damage. And we’re just six cents under the real high — the inflation-adjusted high of March ’81 — in today’s dollars.

Also this morning, Brad Proctor of GasPriceWatch told ABC News he was expecting possible $4/gallon gas prices this summer. “We’ll see $3 and possibly $4 depending where the summer goes in terms of hurricanes and other natural disasters that may happen. We’ll see an upward trend occur.”

It’s definitely time to Kick the Oil Habit.