CIA leak: Now it can be told; Novak reveals in new book how the secret unfolded

When I went to my office Monday, July 7, 2003, Joe Wilson was not in the forefront of my mind. Frances Fragos Townsend was. She had just been named deputy national security adviser at the White House though her background was in liberal Democratic politics, including Attorney General Janet Reno's inner circle during the Clinton administration. Her appointment was a political mystery of the kind I had been exploring for forty years in my column.

I wrote the Townsend column Tuesday morning because I had a busy schedule the rest of the day, including a 3 p.m. appointment with Richard Armitage, deputy secretary of state. I had no idea what a big event it would turn out to be.

Armitage was less guarded
I asked to see Armitage early in the George W. Bush administration and repeated my request after the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. Armitage and Colin Powell, the new secretary of state and Armitage's close friend, were widely perceived as being out of step with the rest of the administration about military intervention in Iraq.

I had ready access to Powell, in person and over the telephone, but he was circumspect in what he said to me, while Armitage had a reputation for being less guarded in conversations with journalists. Armitage rebuffed me, not with the customary evasion of claiming an overly full schedule but by his secretary making clear that he simply did not want to see me. I assumed that Armitage bracketed me, a notoriously conservative columnist, with the Iraqi war hawks who were unsympathetic toward his views. If so, he had somehow missed my written and spoken criticism of the Iraqi intervention.

Then, in the last week of June 2003, Armitage's office called to agree unexpectedly to my request and set up the appointment for July 8.

Neither of us set ground rules
It is important to note that Armitage reached out to me before Joe Wilson went public on the New York Times op-ed page and on "Meet the Press" with an account of his Niger report that he said contradicted 16 words in Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address: ("The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium in Africa.")

I was ushered into Armitage's big State Department inner office promptly at 3 p.m. Neither of us set ground rules for my visit. I assumed, however, that what Armitage said would not be attributed to him but would not be off the record. That is, I could write about information he gave me but would not identify him by name. During a long career, I had come to appreciate that sort of thing in countless interviews without putting it into so many words. I viewed what Armitage told me to be just as privileged as if he had made me swear a blood oath.

Armitage was giving me high-level insider gossip, unusual in a first meeting. About halfway through our session, I brought up Bush's sixteen words. What Armitage told me generally confirmed what I had learned from sources the previous day while I was reporting for the Fran Townsend column.

I then asked Armitage a question that had been puzzling me but, for the sake of my future peace of mind, would better have been left unasked.

Why would the CIA send Joseph Wilson, not an expert in nuclear proliferation and with no intelligence experience, on the mission to Niger?

"Well," Armitage replied, "you know his wife works at CIA, and she suggested that he be sent to Niger." "His wife works at CIA?" I asked. "Yeah, in counterproliferation."

He mentioned her first name, Valerie. Armitage smiled and said: "That's real Evans and Novak, isn't it?" I believe he meant that was the kind of inside information that my late partner, Rowland Evans, and I had featured in our column for so long. I interpreted that as meaning Armitage expected to see the item published in my column.

I never spoke to Armitage again about Wilson. But he acknowledged to me nearly three months later through his political adviser, lobbyist Ken Duberstein, that he was indeed the primary source for my information about Wilson's wife. Shortly thereafter, he secretly revealed his role to federal authorities investigating the leak of Mrs. Wilson's name but did not inform White House officials, apparently including the president.

After Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago named as a special prosecutor in the case, indicated to me he knew Armitage was my source, I cooperated fully with him. At the special prosecutor's request and on my lawyers' advice, I kept silent about this -- a silence that subjected me to much abuse. I was urged by several friends, including some journalists, to give up my source's name. But I felt bound by the journalist's code to protect his identity.

Reprinted from The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Reporting in Washington, Copyright © 2007 by Robert D. Novak. Published by Crown Forum, a division of Random House Inc., available in bookstores Tuesday.

Scooter was sentenced to 2.5 years in jail because he had a different recollection of events that Fat Dim Russert. Fat Dim filed a false affidavit to the judge, one that the prosecutor KNEW was false. Judge Walton allowed on the jury, over the objections of the defense, a neighbor of Fat Dim’s who also worked for Woodward at one point.

The whole case was a farse from start to end; Walton needs to hang up his robe and retire; Fitzy needs to be held in contempt for lieing to the court and a full investigation of his prosecutorial tactics needs to be undertaken.

As for Libby, how/when will he ever get his reputation back?

NBC/MSNBC was intimately involved in this whole story. From the spitter Chris Matthews who made it his trademark story, to his “key” reporter David Schuster who was caught in more lies than any other reporter. Mrs. Alan Greenspan knew all about Plame and told us so on Capitol report, then claimed she must have been drunk when she said that (as so she told IMUS). David Gregory was a leak recipient and Fat Dim filed the false affidavit and lied on the stand when he said he didn’t know you couldn’t have a lawyer in the grand jury room. All of these individuals are still employed by NBC/MSNBC. There is NO doubt in my mind that NBC/MSNBC was colluding with the Kerry campaign during this whole story.

I’m glad the President commuted Libby’s sentence and I’m glad he slapped the judge when he made his statement saying that the punishment was in part based on evidence that was NOT presented at trial.

Walton is Ito, Fitzy is Niphong.

To: nathanbedford

I agree with most of your statement about the Bush family.

I’d point out that while Laura and Barbara might be for the principle of Roe v. Wade in order to “prevent back alley abortions like in the old days”, that in itself isn’t proof that they are “for abortion” in the sense of advising their female family members, or their friends’ daughters, to get abortions. I think the formulation among such folks is “abortion should be legal, safe and rare”. If I’m reading them correctly, without proof, and I hope I am.

The larger point is that George HW and George W aren’t required to politically follow the personal preferences of Barbara or Laura. There are various elements in the family and I don’t ascribe “lockstep” on abortion or other issues to the family as a whole.

Your point about George W coming from a Christian perspective rather than a conservative one is so true. Strange that to poster Philip Freneau Bush is a Marxist. Let me take that on in my way, as a supplement to your excellent analysis.

Freneau claims that Bush claimed to be a conservative, but after in office supported a lot of what Fr. called Marxist legislation.

Doesn’t square with the facts, even putting analysis aside.

First, if he were a total leftist, why did he heroically push a supply side solution to the economic troubles following the Clinton Bubble and the fallout from 9-11?? His marvelous tax cuts might not be conservative enough to suit Freneau, but they aren’t what a “leftist/marxist” would pursue and that’s indisputable.

The most erroneous statement, however, is that list Freneau made of Bush the Bush legislative record coupled with his claim that Bush took the conservative position on all of those and then turned around and did the opposite. He attributed his motive to some kind of conspiracy like blackmail (while not using the word) or something I didn’t quite follow, tying it in somehow to Bush’s acquiescence to the Fitzgerald investigation of the Plame thing.

Actually, Bush had long ago come out for federal education testing mandates, modeling them after his work in Texas education. His nod to conservatism was that the Feds would not mandate the test content or what testing company to use, etc. but WOULD require schools to MEASURE or else their funds for Title 1 would be cut. To get this done, he had no choice but to work with Ted Kennedy. No education bill of any kind was going to pass without him. Thus Kennedy shaped a bill that would have been different if Bush alone had crafted it. Bush was for private school vouchers where public schools were failing, and he had to drop it. He wasn’t for the amount of spending Kennedy was, but had to give on it to get the mandated measurement.

The rest on Fr.’s list are similar in that Bush supported them beforehand, not as a johnny come lately who had a secret agenda.

The one exception I see is McCain-Feingold. There, Bush had long backed a version of CFR which differed from McCain’s and was much more in keeping with conservative (Christian?) values when compared with it. But Bush was not going to oppose McCain who was already on the outs with him and rub salt in an open wound, not to mention oppose the supposed war hero McCain whom his father liked as well as having been a friend of McCain’s father the Admiral, who was by all accounts a great man. Not to mention have a veto overridden while doing so. So he signed the thing and there’s reason to believe he thought the Supreme Court would knock out the part about no issue ads 60 days before an election. The Court didn’t, but the most recent Court has taken a different, better turn.

Even that act of signing legislation that contained items he disagreed with dates back to Texas. Bush tried to preempt receiving unwanted legislation by getting in with the key players before the bills were written. He tried to put what personal stamp he could on things, but there were times when he would have signed something because of strategic or technical or political reasons when it wasn’t the type of bill he wanted.

Whomever attacks George W Bush as a Marxist or Leftist needs to answer: Why the venomous attacks on HIM? If HE’S a Marxist or Leftist so is almost - not all - but almost all of the rest of America and officeholders who supported the legislation that Fr. so railed against.

And why rail against LBJ for allegedly starting it all? I personally couldn’t stand LBJ, but his hero was FDR and he was following in his hero’s footsteps.

Is there something about Texans that automatically galls Fr? And if anyone or anything galls him, he vents his spleen all over the nearest place, which happened to be Free Republic??

Thanks for the post.

I don’t really blame Novak in all this. I read his original article and it was harmless enough. This whole episode shows the power of the Democratic attack machine. Valerie, left-wing kook in the CIA, recommends her husband for a politically sensitive mission. Someone in the CIA approves. (The identity of this someone remains a state secret.) Wilson goes to Niger, provides an oral report to the CIA, and does not sign a confidentiality agreement. He falsely tells the NYT that the President lied. Democrats call for impeachment. Novak asks who the heck hired this fruitcake. The answer comes back that it was his wife who works in the CIA. Novak reports. No one cares. A few months later Joe Wilson (coaxed by David Corn of the Nation magazine) yells “Bush outed my wife,” and calls for impeachment.

Questions remain. Who hired (on Valerie’s recommendation) Joe Wilson? Why didn’t the CIA require Wilson to sign a non-disclosure agreement? How left wing is the CIA? What role did they have in setting up this political game to get Cheney and Bush?

Novak did some innocent political reporting and we can see how risky that turned out to be. My concern is that the legal system, in concert with a one party mainstream media, hamstrings anyone who wants to tell the truth.

So he signed the thing and there’s reason to believe he thought the Supreme Court would knock out the part about no issue ads 60 days before an election. The Court didn’t, but the most recent Court has taken a different, better turn.

We don't need "reason to believe," we have Bush's own words from a White Press Release upon signing the bill.

"However, the bill does have flaws. Certain provisions present serious constitutional concerns. In particular, H.R. 2356 goes farther than I originally proposed by preventing all individuals, not just unions and corporations, from making donations to political parties in connection with Federal elections."

I believe individual freedom to participate in elections should be expanded, not diminished; and when individual freedoms are restricted, questions arise under the First Amendment.

"I also have reservations about the constitutionality of the broad ban on issue advertising, which restrains the speech of a wide variety of groups on issues of public import in the months closest to an election. I expect that the courts will resolve these legitimate legal questions as appropriate under the law.

THIS IS NOT LEADERSHIP. If Bush had "reservations about the constitutionality" of the bill, he should have vetoed it and the supporters of the bill would have not been able to override the veto. Political expediency won out over the President's sworn duty to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. There is no excuse for his action, which limits political speech.

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