October 16, 2006: Columnist Who Exposed Plame Wilson Attacks Book that Exposed State Department Leaker, Reveals White House Source for Post Articles

Columnist Robert Novak, a recipient of several White House leaks regarding covert CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson (see July 7, 2003, July 8 or 9, 2003, (July 11, 2003), and Before July 14, 2003) and the author of the column exposing Plame Wilson (see July 14, 2003), publishes a column in the conservative Weekly Standard attacking the authors of Hubris, a book that identified former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage as the original leaker of Plame Wilson’s identity (see June 13, 2003, July 8, 2003, September 6, 2006, and September 7, 2006).
Attacks Co-Author of Book - Novak focuses primarily on “stereotypical leftist activist” co-author David Corn, whom he accuses of engendering the entire Plame Wilson identity leak investigation with a column questioning the propriety of Novak’s exposure of a covert CIA official (see July 16, 2003), and writes that Corn and other “enemies of George W. Bush” used the investigation to try to “bring down a president” (Bush). Now, Novak writes, Corn is in the ironic position of having co-authored a book “that has had the effect of killing the story.” (Novak credits co-author Michael Isikoff, not Corn, with discovering the Armitage leak.) To regain traction, Novak writes, “Corn has been frantic… to depict an alternate course in which [White House official Karl] Rove, [former White House official Lewis] Libby, and Vice President Cheney attempted, by design and independently, to do what Armitage purportedly accomplished accidentally.” Armitage’s leak was a gossipy “slip-up” that occurred simultaneously with what Corn and Isikoff called “a concerted White House effort to undermine a critic of the war,” former ambassador Joseph Wilson. Novak says the “conspiracy theory” of a White House effort to denigrate and smear Wilson is specious (see June 2003, June 3, 2003, June 11, 2003, June 12, 2003, June 19 or 20, 2003, July 6, 2003, July 6-10, 2003, July 7, 2003 or Shortly After, 8:45 a.m. July 7, 2003, 9:22 a.m. July 7, 2003, July 7-8, 2003, July 11, 2003, (July 11, 2003), July 12, 2003, July 12, 2003, July 18, 2003, October 1, 2003, April 5, 2006, and April 9, 2006), and calls the book’s detailed recounting of the misdeeds of the White House surrounding the Wilson smear and the Plame Wilson exposure “tiresome.” Novak dismisses Hubris as little more than “an unmitigated apologia for the Wilsons.”
Justifies Own Cooperation with Prosecution - He goes on to justify his repeated (and unreported) testimonies before the Patrick Fitzgerald grand jury (see October 7, 2003, February 5, 2004, and September 14, 2004), saying since Fitzgerald already knew who his sources for the Plame Wilson leak were (Libby, Armitage, and CIA official Bill Harlow), “there was no use in not testifying about them,” and he “feared facing the same legal juggernaut that sent Judith Miller of the New York Times to jail” (see July 6, 2005).
Claims Plame Wilson Not Covert - Novak says that no one—Armitage, Libby, Rove, nor himself—could be prosecuted for outing Plame Wilson because she “was not a covert operative under the terms of the law” (see Fall 1992 - 1996, Late 1990s-2001 and Possibly After, April 22, 1999, (July 11, 2003), Before July 14, 2003, July 22, 2003, July 30, 2003, September 30, 2003, October 11, 2003, October 22-24, 2003, January 9, 2006, February 13, 2006, and September 6, 2006).
Exposes White House Source - Novak concludes the article by identifying former White House press aide Adam Levine (see February 6, 2004 and October 26, 2005) as the source for the “1x2x6” articles published by the Washington Post (see September 28, 2003 and October 12, 2003). [Weekly Standard, 9/23/2006]