Novak: People Are out to Get Bush and Me

NewsMax.com ^ | Thursday, Oct. 16, 2003 | Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff

[jmstein7]

Robert Novak says "firestorms" such as the one surrounding his July 14 column about CIA employee Valerie Plame occur weekly inside the Beltway.

"This has stayed alive for several reasons," he told students Wednesday at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla.

"A lot of people want to use it to bring down President Bush. There are a lot of people, on the left and right, who don't like me and would like to discredit me."

Sorry, would-be Woodwards and Bernsteins: "I'm not going to tell them who my original leak was. ... That'd be the end of my career. If you can't protect your sources, you're finished."

One naive student asked Novak this knee-slapper: to comment on another journalist's assertion that the media should never use anonymous sources. That would be nice, wouldn't it? But what would the New York Times and Washington Post and Los Angeles Times do with all those acres of white space?

According to the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel today, the journalism students found Novak witty, even those so ignorant they had never heard of him or Plame, whom the paper falsely described as "a top CIA agent."

They all had a good laugh when someone asked Novak if it was intimidating to meet President Bush. His response: "No. Why should it be? I knew him back when he was still drinking."

[Diogenesis]

Monday Morning Quarterbacking of a Quisling

"They made me do it. They made me do it."

[My2Cents]

...Plame, whom the paper falsely described as "a top CIA agent.

Didn't want this comment to slip by unnoticed.

[Blast Radius]

First of all, President G.W. Bush's drinking history is no business of the US media or citizens. It is deplorable that the media and government officials attack such a great and honest man. For such a long time they protected Clinton and allowed him to get away with many deplorable and immoral acts. Yet now, they are scrutinizing our current President's every move and decision.

[Pubbie]

"Novak: People Are out to Get Bush and Me"

And Cheney, and Rumsfeld, and Rush Limbaugh, and Capitalism, and Christianity, and The Constitution, and Arnold Schwarzenegger,and Sean Hannity, and Ann Coulter...

[malia]

"whom the paper falsely described as "a top CIA agent."

This could be stopped right now. If someone actually leaked this info I think it should ruin their career not Novak's.

"That'd be the end of my career. If you can't protect your sources, you're finished."

Who needs sources like that, anyway? And besides Novak is just a seat filler.

And for Novak to add the following tidbit shows he is finished. It convinces me there was so leaker, just Novak leaking.

"They all had a good laugh when someone asked Novak if it was intimidating to meet President Bush. His response: "No. Why should it be? I knew him back when he was still drinking."

Stupid comment!

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Just because you're paranoid does not mean people are not out to get you.

[Howlin]

I'm not going to tell them who my original leak was. ..."

But on Crossfire he said he would name names if the FBI asked him.

[LibertarianInExile]

I said it before and I'll say it again: Novak is a moron whose only value is to the left, as their version of the Eleanor Clift for the right in roundtable 'discussions' of politics. He's most valued to them in that he says stupid things that are highly quotable, and you can bet that if any of these comments are quoted it'll be the idiotic 'I knew him when he was drinking' statement.

[Jabba the Nutt]

Hey, they're out to get me too! Good thing I'm hiding in my fortified panic room.

[teeples]

He's the leak. Fire him!

[DLfromthedesert]

And the United States of America, and honesty, and integrity, and every decent moral value.

[CyberAnt]

It wasn't just stupid, it was very disrespectful!

[ladyinred]

I am sure he is right, they are out to get anyone who isn't a freaking liberal socialist.

[jocon307]

"And besides Novak is just a seat filler."

I'm not sure what you mean by seat filler, but I think Novak is more than that...whatever it is! : )

Novak is a long tenured and well respected political reporter. He's a playah, as the kids say today.

I don't think much will come of any of this, the story seems to have walked it's little legs off already. I could be wrong.

[Howlin]

They aren't going to "do" anything to Novak; he's a registered Democrat.