Robert Novak and the CIA Leak
By Colman McCarthy
Before the din of the CIA leak case fades, it’s worth remembering a few of the facts—starting with the major one that it was Robert Novak who in a July 2003 newspaper column exposed Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA intelligence officer. Her cover was blown, her government career was over, and she and her family put at risk.
With all due disrespect, no current media personality is more officious than Novak. “Media personality” is the right term, rather than what Novak, a man of oceanic self-regard, likes to call himself: reporter and journalist.
Novak received the information about Mrs. Wilson from Richard Armitage, then a deputy secretary of state. It was also confirmed by Karl Rove. To his credit, Armitage has expressed deep regret and apologies for mentioning Mrs. Wilson’s name to Novak: “It was a terrible error on my part,” an invasion of both the professional and personal privacy of an official whose intelligence work is meant, by law, to remain covert.
But it was Novak, not Armitage, who recklessly put her name in The Washington Post. Throwing chum into the political waters, Novak stood aside as prosecutors, judges and much of the media went fishing for the leaker.
Novak has long specialized in the lowest form of journalism: taking dictation from vested interests, the farther on the right the better. Want to humiliate a liberal? Have a grudge against a left-leaning judge? Want to stop a bill in Congress that doesn’t benefit the rich? Need a smear job? Have a rumor you want spread? Call Novak, he’s your guy. For years, he wrote a column with the late Roland Evans. Their work was so tawdry that the Evans and Novak column was known as “Errors and No Facts.”
Among others, one fact Novak had wrong was claiming that I.F. Stone, the iconic reporter unmatched for integrity and honesty, was on the take from the Soviet Union.
A humorless rightwing ideologue, Novak became a personality during his two decades on CNN “Crossfire,” beating the brows of anyone daring to disagree with his brand of Republicanism. He’s with Fox now, at home with a cast of other agenda-driven pseudo-journalists.
Getting access to Novak doesn’t come cheap. Twice yearly, he hosts the “Evans-Novak Political Forum” at which attendees pay $595 for a day of speeches by political favorites of Novak—Dick Cheney, Sen. Bill Frist et. al—plus readings from the Gospel According to Novak. When asked by The New York Times last month who does the money benefit, Novak answered, “It benefits me.”
The taking of cash from people you are, or might be, covering does not violate journalistic ethics in Novak’s mind. “I’m not a reporter,” he told The Times. “I’m a columnist and commentator.” That wasn’t his self-description when he said on C-SPAN Sept. 15 that not only was he was a reporter, he was “an intrepid reporter.”
The mystery in all this is, first, why The Washington Post ran Novak’s 2003 column that violated Mrs. Wilson’s rights. And, second, why has it long given op-ed space to this character who is on the far outer edges of professional honor. Maybe the smarmy Novak isn’t the problem. You don’t blame a pig for its grunts, you blame the farmer for calling it music.