Novak's History
There is an excessive amount of chatter about Bob Novak following his strange choice to walk off the set of CNN's Inside Politics when James Carville provoked a Novak's cussing outburst. Novak is the key player in the Plame Affair- the only significant question which remains at this time is this: Did Rove leak Plame's name to Novak, or did Novak feed it to Rove? Every other question in the case follows from this question. Novak, of course, went to print exposing Plame's name; Rove denies leaking it, and claims that Novak told him.
But Novak has dodged every bullet in the Plame affair to this point. He says he has testified to Fitzpatrick's invetsigation, but for the man who actually broke the protection of the identity of an undercover CIA agent, he has had surprisingly little to account for in public. When one woman who did not even publish a story about Plame sits in jail, and another man narrowly skipped out on jail by having his publisher turn over his notes, the attention has turned to Novak.
Media Matters has a great collection of his history of comments concering the Plame Affair, which he addresses primarily in his articles. They find, simply in Novak's tone and firmness of his assertions, that Novak shifts significantly over how her name came to him, or whether Plame recommended Wilson's trip to Africa or not. Novak starts in the position of saying that Plame's name was planted and purposefully given to him; and that there was no conclusive evidence that Plame authorized Wilson's trip. He then trends toward the current Republican line on both of these.
And yet, as we've pointed out at the AntiC before, Novak and Rove's connection is far far deeper than the Plame Affair. They have a history of sourcing- Rove has fed information to Novak's desk for 20 years with relatively little risk.
Except for this one time when a little incident occured: Rove fed Novak some secret information about George Bush I's 1992 re-election bid in Texas. Bush found out that there were leaks and fired Rove for it.
Fired Rove for leaking information to Novak.
We've established a very close history here, with very close parallels. There is more evidence that needs to exposed, but the legal precendence in America is whether this exists beyond a reasonable doubt.
It certainly has been inching closer and closer to that point.
But Novak has dodged every bullet in the Plame affair to this point. He says he has testified to Fitzpatrick's invetsigation, but for the man who actually broke the protection of the identity of an undercover CIA agent, he has had surprisingly little to account for in public. When one woman who did not even publish a story about Plame sits in jail, and another man narrowly skipped out on jail by having his publisher turn over his notes, the attention has turned to Novak.
Media Matters has a great collection of his history of comments concering the Plame Affair, which he addresses primarily in his articles. They find, simply in Novak's tone and firmness of his assertions, that Novak shifts significantly over how her name came to him, or whether Plame recommended Wilson's trip to Africa or not. Novak starts in the position of saying that Plame's name was planted and purposefully given to him; and that there was no conclusive evidence that Plame authorized Wilson's trip. He then trends toward the current Republican line on both of these.
And yet, as we've pointed out at the AntiC before, Novak and Rove's connection is far far deeper than the Plame Affair. They have a history of sourcing- Rove has fed information to Novak's desk for 20 years with relatively little risk.
Except for this one time when a little incident occured: Rove fed Novak some secret information about George Bush I's 1992 re-election bid in Texas. Bush found out that there were leaks and fired Rove for it.
Fired Rove for leaking information to Novak.
We've established a very close history here, with very close parallels. There is more evidence that needs to exposed, but the legal precendence in America is whether this exists beyond a reasonable doubt.
It certainly has been inching closer and closer to that point.
posted by General Stan at 11:21 AM
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