[Mb-civic] Bob Novack...

[Robin McNamara]

I tend to believe that ":Bob Novak sucks"

Love forever
Robin




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jim Burns" <jameshburns at webtv.net>
To: <mb-civic at islandlists.com>
Sent: Sunday, July 17, 2005 5:37 PM
Subject: [Mb-civic] Bob Novack...


>
> Years ago, when Bob Novack was partnered with the late Evans, their name
> around Washingon, was "Errors and No Facts..."
>
> 'Seems like a good time, to reread this article, from last year,
> particularly, perhaps, the last paragraph.   Jim
> __
>
>
> 'Seems like a good time to repeat this article, you sent out last
> year...   Jim
>
>
>
> THIS IS HUGELY LONG--BUT HAS FASCINATING INFO ON SCUMBAG NOVACK THAT I
> HAVE NEVER KNOWN. AT LEAST SKIM IT--AND READ THE LAST PARAGRAPH. YOU
> WILL BE SOOO REPULSED. ARTICLE IS VERY REVEALING ABOUT HOW HE REMAINS
> ALMOST TOTALLY UNTOUCHED BY HIS MISDEEDS.-B.
>
>
> Little Big Man
> By Amy Sullivan, Washington Monthly
> Posted on December 6, 2004, Printed on December 6, 2004
> http://www.alternet.org/story/20663/
> Robert Novak was in high dudgeon. He and his colleagues on CNN's "The
> Capital Gang" were squabbling over whether CBS should have run a story
> on President George W. Bush's National Guard service, a story which
> relied on documents whose authenticity had come into question. Novak
> â?" the show's resident curmudgeon, outfitted with a three-piece
> suit and permanently arched eyebrow â?" delivered his verdict. "I'd
> like CBS, at this point, to say where they got those documents from," he
> growled. "I think they should say where they got these documents because
> I thought it was a very poor job of reporting by CBS."
> Resident liberal Al Hunt jumped in to clarify. "Robert Novak," he asked,
> "you're saying CBS should reveal its source?" When Novak replied that he
> was, Hunt pressed him further. "You think reporters ought to reveal
> sources?" In a flash, Novak realized he had made a mistake; he began to
> backtrack. "No, no, wait a minute," he said. "I'm just saying in that
> case." So in some cases, Hunt continued, reporters should reveal their
> sources â?" but not in all cases? "That's right," said Novak.
> What Novak's fellow panelists on "The Capital Gang" knew that day, but
> most of the show's viewers probably didn't, was that much of Washington
> has spent the better part of a year waiting for Novak to reveal a source
> of his own. During the summer of 2003, someone in the Bush White House
> decided to extract a pound of flesh from former Ambassador Joseph
> Wilson, a critic of the administration's rationale for the Iraq war, by
> revealing to members of the press that Wilson's wife was an undercover
> CIA agent. And though the leak was peddled to several journalists, only
> one was willing to actually print it: Robert Novak.
> By exposing the name of Wilson's wife â?" Valerie Plame â?"
> Novak not only put an end to her undercover work on weapons of mass
> destruction issues, possibly putting at risk the lives of any foreign
> sources who may have cooperated with her. He also may have abetted a
> federal crime: It's a felony for a government official to knowingly
> disclose the name of any undercover agency operative, an act serious
> enough that the Bush administration eventually agreed to name an
> independent prosecutor (the only one appointed during Bush's first term)
> to find out who was responsible. That prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald,
> has since subpoenaed other journalists who received the leaked
> information. Two of them â?" Judith Miller of The New York Times and
> Matthew Cooper of Time magazine â?" ran the information only after
> Novak first publicized Plame's name; both refused to disclose their
> sources, were held in contempt of court, and face prison time if their
> appeals don't succeed.
> And what about Novak? That's hard to say, because while Miller and
> Cooper (who is also a contributing editor of The Washington Monthly)
> have publicly disclosed the essence of their interactions with
> Fitzgerald, Novak has remained mum. The columnist has made hundreds of
> appearances on television since he printed Plame's name, but Al Hunt's
> tweak on "The Capital Gang" was the closest any of Novak's colleagues
> have ever come to asking him about the case on the air. Even Hunt's
> challenge was more of a reportorial reflex than anything else. He told
> me recently that he has "conspicuously avoided the topic" because Novak
> is "a close friend ... it's uncomfortable."
> This exquisite sensitivity is shared by much of Washington. For about as
> long as Novak has been a first-string Washington pundit and raconteur,
> after all, he's been dealing in factual mistakes, ethical slips and
> personal attacks that would have done in a less well-positioned
> journalist. Today, he thrives thanks largely to his prominence, his
> independence, and the clubby support of a media elite whose standards he
> openly mocks. Novak has created for himself a Cayman Islands like,
> ethics-free zone where the normal rules simply don't apply.
> Novak, Inc.
> The one ground rule for my interview with Novak for this article,
> conveyed to me by his assistant, Kathleen, was that I could not ask him
> any questions about the Plame case. It wasn't that Novak wouldn't answer
> such questions; that was so obvious as almost to go without saying. But
> if I raised the topic in any way, she told me, "the interview will be
> immediately terminated." The morning of the scheduled interview,
> Kathleen called me to say that Mr. Novak wanted to "make sure" I
> understood that if the Plame case came up during our talk, the interview
> would be over. I assured her that I got the picture.
> That afternoon, after walking to the offices of the "Evans-Novak
> Political Report," one block west of the White House, I find myself
> sitting across from Novak in a cramped, windowless room. Novak looks
> bored. He's slumped to a 45-degree angle in his chair â?" not an
> unusual posture for him, but more pronounced thanks to surgery he
> underwent a few weeks ago to repair a broken hip. With the ground rule
> in place, he has given me half an hour of his time, but it's clear he
> just wants to get it over with. The walls of the room are chockfull of
> photos charting Novak's career and life, and he perfunctorily points out
> a few to me. Here he is in the Oval Office with the first President Bush
> and a not-yet-balding Dick Cheney; over there he laughs it up with
> William F. Buckley Jr., while an extremely young-looking George Will
> huddles in a corner, gripping a glass and looking "kind of dorky,"
> observes Novak.
> He is not without the charm that serves to temper his reputation as the
> "Prince of Darkness." ("I think he gave himself that nickname," one of
> his colleagues later told me.) But it's a forced charm â?" I've read
> most of Novak's lines in previous profiles of the guy. I'm reminded of
> the description of Novak, sometimes attributed to Michael Kinsley, which
> a number of sources volunteered: "Beneath the asshole is a very decent
> guy, and beneath the very decent guy is an asshole." I am not under the
> illusion that he will reveal some new or interesting anecdote during our
> talk, and he is not under the illusion that I will press him on anything
> he hasn't already heard. At age 73, Novak has dealt with much tougher
> challenges than being profiled by a small-circulation political
> magazine.
> "Look, I'm not David Broder," Novak tells me. "I'm not one of the real
> good guys. They try to make things nicer. That's not my deal." What is
> his deal is something else entirely. Unlike many of his colleagues on
> the op-ed pages, Novak does not trade in witty prose or expansive
> theories, but instead offers a glimpse of Washington's innermost power
> dens. Novak provides the snack food â?" provocative bits of
> information from insiders that fill his columns and commentary. He takes
> particular glee in inciting â?" or at least enabling â?" inter-
> and intra-party warfare. When a Republican treasury secretary loses
> favor with conservatives in the party, we learn via Novak that the
> cabinet position may soon be open. With the war in Iraq not going as
> expected, Novak is the one who tells us that some power players in the
> administration want to pull out early in a Bush second term. And he does
> it by getting everybody â?" absolutely everybody â?" to talk.
> "It's kind of like [Bob] Woodward," says his "Crossfire" colleague,
> Tucker Carlson. "It's in the job description. You can't not talk to Bob
> Novak. It's the law."
> At this stage in his career, Novak is more than a reporter â?" he's
> a small business. He peddles his wares with the help of a team of
> researchers based at "Crossfire," "The Capital Gang," and the warren of
> offices in which we're sitting. Novak's thrice-weekly column is
> syndicated to more than 300 newspapers â?" including The Washington
> Post â?" making him one of the top five most-read columnists in the
> country. His scowling visage appears on television at least half a dozen
> times during an average week â?" he's a marquee name at CNN, where
> he headlines "Crossfire" and "The Capital Gang," acts as an analyst for
> "Inside Politics," and conducts interviews for "The Novak Zone," a
> feature on the Saturday morning news. He also pops up on NBC's "Meet the
> Press" as a frequent guest. On top of everything else, he still writes
> the bi-weekly political newsletter he and Rowland Evans started in 1967,
> the "Evans-Novak Political Report," which has a remarkable record of
> accurate election predictions.
> His journalistic judgment, however, is not always as keen as his
> political nose. Consider just a few Novak highlights from the past fall.
> In August, when the members of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth went after
> John Kerry, Novak used his column and television appearances to hype
> their claim that Kerry had lied his way into receiving medals in
> Vietnam, and flacked their book, â?oUnfit for Command,â?
> with a glowing review. When Novak attended a party at Morton's
> Steakhouse in downtown Washington to celebrate the book's success, he
> was joined by the director of marketing for its publisher, Regnery
> Publishing: his son, Alex Novak. In the six years that Alex has been in
> charge of promoting Regnery products, Novak has positively reviewed at
> least four Regnery books for conservative magazines and has favorably
> mentioned others in his column and on his television shows â?" all
> without disclosing his relationship to the publishing house. He
> dismisses any criticism as politically motivated, and insists that he
> and his son don't discuss the books. But he has another connection to
> the publishing house that also goes unmentioned. Tom Phillips, the owner
> of Regnery, also owns Eagle Publishing, which distributes the
> "Evans-Novak Political Report," available to subscribers for an annual
> $297 rate.
> In September, Novak wrote about remarks made at an off-the-record dinner
> party by the CIA's top specialist on the Middle East, Paul Pillar. The
> CIA officer was one of the authors of a recent National Intelligence
> Estimate and he claimed at the dinner that the CIA had warned the White
> House in January 2003 that war with Iraq could unleash a violent
> insurgency in the country. Novak wasn't at the dinner, which was
> conducted under established background rules â?" the substance of
> Pillar's remarks could be reported, but not his identity or his
> audience. But someone there told Novak about it. So Novak, apparently
> feeling bound by no rules, outed Pillar by identifying him as the
> speaker. It's a trick he uses often â?" others attend off-the-record
> meetings or briefings, tell him about it, and he reports not just what
> was said, but fingers those who spoke as well.
> Less than a week before the 2004 election, Novak resuscitated one of his
> favorite charges â?" that Democrats steal elections. He hit the note
> regularly after Mary Landrieu narrowly defeated Woody Jenkins to win
> Louisiana's open Senate seat in 1996, even though a congressional
> investigation dismissed similar charges. And he has repeatedly claimed
> that "the Indians" stole South Dakota's 2002 Senate election "by
> stuffing ballot boxes." Novak made the comment again on "The Capital
> Gang" in October, months after South Dakota's Republican governor had
> called his charges "ignorant" and the state Republican party chair
> deemed his statements "appalling" and "insane." It's a case, his friend
> and colleague Mark Shields observed to me, of Novak "toeing the party
> line even when it ceases to be the party line."
> Any one of these recent sins â?" plugging the books of the publisher
> that is providing income to one's family without disclosing the
> connection, repeatedly parroting an incendiary political charge that has
> proven to be false, or outing a CIA agent â?" might have been enough
> to put another journalist or columnist into scalding hot water. But
> Novak's actions have raised few eyebrows, and he brushes off the
> occasional complaints like crumbs from his vest.
> Billboard Bob
> There are many reasons why Novak gets away with these lapses. Foremost
> is the rather obvious fact that people on both sides of the aisle
> genuinely value much of the work that he does. Fundamentally, he's more
> ideologue than party man, not averse to whacking his own side when it
> suits his conservative predilections. His column exposing Republican
> attempts to bribe Rep. Nick Smith (R-Mich.) in exchange for a "yes" vote
> on Medicare reform led to a rebuke of DeLay by the House Ethics
> Committee. The establishment press corps loves iconoclasts â?" and
> it loves Bob Novak.
> Novak is also the rare conservative pundit who actually works the
> phones. The vast majority of right-leaning talking heads and columnists
> came up either through politics (such as Tony Blankley, Newt Gingrich's
> former communications director and now editorial-page editor of The
> Washington Times) or through right-wing think tanks (such as Jonah
> Goldberg, who began his career at the American Enterprise Institute). As
> one of the few significant conservatives who launched his career in the
> newsroom, Novak earns grudging respect even from his liberal colleagues.
> He got his start as a cub reporter at the Joliet Herald-News (where he
> grew up) and the Champaign-Urbana Courier (where he attended college).
> After stints in Nebraska and Indiana, where he covered politics as a
> regional reporter for the AP, Novak arrived in Washington at age 26,
> assigned to the AP's congressional beat. He rose quickly, breaking
> stories through sheer tenacity, and building what would become an
> unparalleled network of sources. After less than two years, The Wall
> Street Journal made him its Senate correspondent, and in 1961, Novak
> became the paper's chief congressional correspondent. He established
> such a reputation for his work ethic that when Rowland Evans â?"
> then a congressional correspondent for the New York Herald-Tribune
> â?" was casting about for someone to share the load of a
> six-day-a-week syndicated column, it didn't take him long to decide that
> Novak was his man.
> So after six years as a national political reporter, Novak became an
> opinion writer. He was still a reporter, but a certain kind of reporter.
> He wasn't a Jack Anderson, who trafficked in leaked documents and facts,
> or a James Reston, who offered in-depth analyses after conversing with
> the powerful. Novak was â?" and remains â?" more of a political
> Walter Winchell. His currency is opinion, his specialty "people are
> saying" reportage. Whose nose is out of joint about the arrival of a new
> White House aide? What do some conservatives at the State Department
> think about the change in leadership there? Novak's popularity grew
> throughout the 1960s, as readers learned that they could turn to his
> column to discover something new.
> These fascinating little nuggets could come at a price. On occasion,
> Novak proved too reliant on sources who dished their side of the story.
> "The danger in this kind of reporting and this kind of column," he tells
> me as we talk, "is that you're a sucker for anything that's new." This
> is less an admission than the designated point in the interview for him
> to display humility and self-awareness. "Do you want to hear about my
> worst column?" he asks, not pausing for an answer before launching into
> the tale of a 1972 item in which he reported that Nixon aide Chuck
> Colson was going to sue Time magazine for libel unless it retracted a
> story claiming that he was part of Watergate. "He really euchred me
> there," says Novak with a grin. "He conned me on it because he didn't
> sue, but he got this publicity out of it."
> Does that kind of experience fine-tune his radar for dealing with
> sources? Novak begins to agree and then stops. "That's the problem," he
> says. "You get a great story, and you say, 'Boy, this is really
> interesting and new.' It was so juicy, the president's political advisor
> is suing Time magazine for seven million dollars." When I ask about
> criticism he has received for other columns, Novak just shrugs, having
> lost interest in this subject. "I don't think we've ever printed
> anything that really did any damage to someone."
> George McGovern might disagree with that assessment. In 1972, his
> politics were famously derided as about "acid, amnesty and abortion."
> The description first appeared in a Novak column as an anonymous quote
> from a Democratic senator, but its veracity was immediately contested
> and many believe that the quote was fabricated. Novak himself told a
> reporter from Cox News last year that this was probably when the column
> was first dubbed "Errors and No Facts."
> Such leaks became a pattern for Novak: Sources came to him to push a
> partisan agenda, he allowed himself to be the conduit for their leaks,
> and in return they rewarded him with future scoops and access. It was an
> irresistible cycle that made him one of the most talked about â?"
> and talked to â?" columnists in town. Former Nixon campaign aide
> Herbert Porter testified that he leaked to Novak "on plain bond"
> Democratic presidential campaign memos obtained in the Watergate
> break-in, while Reagan budget director David Stockman found the fiscally
> conservative columnist a willing ally in the effort to win supporters
> for supply-side economics. In his memoir, Stockman wrote that he
> considered Novak's column his "billboard" while he was in the White
> House.
> "Reckless Hyperbole"
> By the 1980s, Novak had come to occupy a unique position in Washington.
> His peculiar status as a conservative reportorial columnist insulated
> him from any meaningful pressure to improve his standards of accuracy or
> ethics. Novak likes to trade on his reputation as a reporter to retain
> credibility as a journalist. But if challenged, he shifts and claims
> that he is only a columnist, voicing opinions. In 1984, he and Evans
> were sued by a New York University professor after Novak penned a column
> arguing that the professor should not be made chair of the University of
> Maryland's political science department; the U.S. Court of Appeals
> decided that opinion columnists â?" as opposed to reporters â?"
> had First Amendment rights to use "reckless hyperbole," as none other
> than Robert Bork's concurring opinion put it. Furthermore, whereas
> columnists employed directly by newspapers are at least theoretically
> under the oversight of an editorial-page editor, Novak's column was
> syndicated, which means that, where his written work is concerned, he
> answers to no boss but himself. If a paper objected strongly to his
> work, they had only one possible course of action: to drop his column.
> He soon established a relationship with a television network that would
> provide him even more free reign. When CNN launched in 1980, Novak's
> status had swelled to the point that the network considered the
> columnist a must-have. Ted Turner put Novak on the air the very first
> weekend to bring attention to the fledgling network. He and Evans were
> also given their own weekly interview program, which ran until Evans's
> death in 2001. In 1982, Novak became an original member of "The
> McLaughlin Group," a syndicated show hosted by former Jesuit priest John
> McLaughlin. The show was an instant success, casting political debate as
> the verbal equivalent of professional wrestling. From the beginning, it
> was clear that Novak had the knack, reveling in the program's
> vaudeville-like atmosphere. He also began co-hosting "Crossfire," where
> he did one-on-one battle with a series of (usually overmatched) liberal
> commentators.
> Novak clashed frequently with the strong-willed McLaughlin, and their
> feud led him to leave the show in 1985. "I just couldn't stand being on
> that show anymore," he says, "but I enjoyed that format." So he took Al
> Hunt and Mark Shields out to breakfast, signed them up for an idea of
> his own, and went to the brass at CNN. Novak offered to provide the
> network with its own version of "The McLaughlin Group" â?" but he
> would be an executive producer, with ultimate control over topics,
> guests, panelists, and format. While his over-the-top, leak-driven style
> would never fit in at The New York Times or Newsweek, cable television
> rewarded controversy. CNN had launched a revolution in cable news, but
> it was struggling to compete in the world of political commentary, and
> network executives jumped at the chance to put one of the country's most
> prominent â?" and pugnacious â?" conservative pundits at the
> heart of their lineup. Novak did not disappoint: On the Thanksgiving
> broadcast of his new program, "The Capital Gang," he complained that his
> holiday dinner had been ruined by the sight of so many homeless people
> on television.
> All the while, Evans and Novak kept up their juicy, gossipy column
> â?" along with their tendency to let sources lead them onto
> factually and ethically dubious ground. In 1989, they were the first to
> publicize a rumor about then-Rep. Tom Foley's (D-Wash.) sexuality,
> referring in their column to "the alleged homosexuality of one Democrat
> who might move up the succession ladder." At the time, the Republican
> National Committee was waging a parallel whispering campaign against
> Foley, the presumptive Speaker of the House, which relied heavily on
> phrases like "out of the liberal closet." Novak's column gave legitimacy
> to the rumor, and other commentators followed suit with speculation,
> eventually leading Foley to declare on national television, "I am, of
> course, not a homosexual."
> But by then, Novak was well-insulated against minor, over-in-a-week
> scandals. Even the election of Bill Clinton didn't diminish his access.
> "Bob's sources tend largely to be on the right," one of his colleagues
> says, "but he always has olive branches at work with Democrats that he
> then pretends to criticize." For example, liberal political consultant
> Bob Shrum â?" a Novak friend and source for thirty years â?" has
> long provided Novak with scoops from inside the Democratic Party
> because, this colleague says, "they have a good-natured, locker-room
> type of relationship where it's okay for Bob to make fun of Shrum on the
> air." Novak takes pains to flatter his sources in print, and refers to
> Shrum in his column as "one of the nation's premier campaign
> strategists, media designers, and speech writers."
> Novak's bipartisan networking helps explain how he survived what was,
> until recently, arguably his gravest error. In 1997, he relied on Robert
> Hanssen â?" later caught for and convicted of spying for the Soviets
> â?" as the primary source for a column accusing Attorney General
> Janet Reno and the Justice Department of covering up campaign finance
> scandals. Novak later disclosed the identity of his famous source,
> explaining his decision to do so on the grounds that the circumstance
> was "obviously extraordinary." Writing about his relationship with the
> spy, Novak admitted that it was possible "he was merely using me to
> undermine Reno."
> Circle of Friends
> The election of George W. Bush elevated Novak's power and reputation to
> their apex. The administration's tightly controlled press shops released
> so few pieces of information â?" and so few sources were willing to
> talk to reporters â?" that any journalist who could gain significant
> access to administration officials could be sure of a wide audience.
> Novak did just that.
> On July 6, 2003, a retired American ambassador named Joseph Wilson
> published an op-ed in The New York Times disputing the administration's
> claim that Iraq had attempted to purchase concentrated uranium oxide, or
> "yellowcake," from Niger â?" a crucial piece of evidence in the
> president's case that Iraq represented an urgent threat to U.S.
> security. Wilson had previously traveled to Niger at the behest of the
> CIA to investigate the allegations and he reported back that it was
> highly unlikely that any such sale had taken place. Nonetheless,
> President Bush's State of the Union address one year later cited the
> alleged uranium purchase as proof of Iraq's capability to produce
> "weapons of mass destruction." Wilson's disclosure, then, was a major
> embarrassment to the White House â?" and someone there decided to do
> something about it.
> Several phone conversations later, Novak wrote the following sentences
> for his syndicated column for July 14: "Wilson never worked for the CIA,
> but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an agency operative on weapons of mass
> destruction. Two senior administration officials told me his wife
> suggested sending Wilson to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The
> CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked
> his wife to contact him." This would have been little more than your
> standard-issue leak but for one small fact: It's a federal crime for a
> government official (say, Novak's source) to knowingly disclose to the
> public the name of an undercover CIA agent. And while it was not illegal
> for Novak to publish Plame's name, it was ethically questionable,
> according to former Washington Post ombudsman, Geneva Overholser. "He
> turned whistle-blowing on its head," she told me. "The point of
> protecting whistle-blowers is to protect them from recrimination. Novak
> enabled those in power to bring recrimination on the head of Joseph
> Wilson, and he did it by outing a covert agent."
> One week after Novak's column appeared, Newsday reported that Plame had
> indeed been working under cover on weapons of mass destruction issues
> until outed by Novak. They also broke the news that Novak claimed that
> his "senior administration sources" came to him with the information
> about Plame's identity. "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me," he
> told Newsday in an interview. "They thought it was significant, they
> gave me the name and I used it."
> And then, for 10 whole weeks, the story almost completely disappeared
> â?" save for the efforts of The Nation's David Corn and various
> left-of-center bloggers. The establishment media, including Novak's
> buddies, somehow did not notice that their friend had abetted an act of
> near-treason in broad daylight. It took the Bush Justice Department, of
> all places, to put the story of Valerie Plame and Novak back on the
> airwaves, when it announced on Sept. 29 that it was launching a criminal
> investigation into who blew Plame's cover. That day, Novak was scheduled
> to co-host "Crossfire" with Paul Begala, and they had no choice but to
> focus the show on the leak investigation. Begala managed to ask Novak
> some reasonably tough questions, but for the most part, it was a surreal
> half-hour. Swiveling in his chair, Novak went on the attack â?" "It
> looks like the ambassador [Wilson] really doesn't know who leaked this
> to me" â?" punching back against the challenges of his guest, Rep.
> Harold Ford (D-Tenn.) â?" "Do you know whether my source was in the
> White House? Do you know that at all?" â?" even though Novak was one
> of two people on earth who knew for sure the identity of the leaker.
> Novak also disputed the Newsday account, asserting that "nobody in the
> Bush administration called me to leak this."
> Two days later, Novak went further, devoting his Wednesday column to the
> issue and then submitting to an interview with CNN colleague Wolf
> Blitzer. Novak assailed criticism of the White House leak and his
> column, telling Blitzer, with no apparent sense of irony that, "this
> kind of scandal ... is Washington at its worst." That Saturday, "The
> Capital Gang" turned to the subject for the first few minutes of its
> program, but Novak's only comment was to defend his source as someone
> who is "not a partisan gun-slinger." And on Sunday, Novak spoke his last
> public words about the incident. Appearing on "Meet the Press," he faced
> an uncharacteristically timid Tim Russert, who mainly seemed concerned
> with determining whether Karl Rove was Novak's leaker.
> Far from requiring Novak to explain or apologize for his actions,
> Novak's corporate sponsors have gone out of their way to praise him.
> During a CNN news segment after the investigation was announced, Blitzer
> offered a "personal note" about the scandal: "All of us who know Bob
> Novak know he's one of the best reporters in the business and has been
> for nearly half a century." Blitzer's guest â?" Steve Huntley, who
> is Novak's editor at his home paper, the Chicago Sun-Times â?" was
> likewise effusive, calling the columnist "one of the best reporters in
> this country." When I called CNN to ask if Novak's statements to Blitzer
> and on "Crossfire" were part of an arrangement where he would talk about
> the case just that once and then never again, the network declined to
> comment. Similarly, Novak's lawyer James Hamilton chose not to comment
> when I asked if there was any legal reason Novak could not discuss
> whether he had ever been contacted by Patrick Fitzgerald. But Floyd
> Abrams, the attorney and First Amendment expert who is representing
> Matthew Cooper and Judith Miller in the same Justice Department inquiry,
> is not so tight-lipped. "Mr. Novak is not under any legal prescription
> to disclose what his status is with the investigation," he told me.
> "Whether he has decided because of some particular â?" and to us
> unknown â?" reason that he shouldn't, it's not because he can't."
> Colleagues like Begala say that they don't question Novak about the
> Plame case out of personal loyalty. "Look, he's a friend of mine,"
> Begala said to me. "I
> know that he can't talk about it. I respect that fact, so I don't
> bring it up." But there's another reason they don't ask. Novak won't let
> them. The topic hasn't come up on "The Capital Gang," for instance,
> because, according to one source at CNN, "Bob is the executive producer
> and he has more say than anybody else. ... He won't talk about it."
> Novak's role at the show means that he gets to determine what subjects
> do â?" and, more importantly, do not â?" get discussed. But
> couldn't one of the other panelists bring it up, even so? "You have to
> understand," said the source, "this is Bob's show. He's the boss."
> Novak is an Island
> Bob Novak is, he tells me, writing his memoirs. It is unlikely that
> there will be a citation for "Plame, Valerie." His set-up is nearly
> perfect â?" as a syndicated opinion columnist and executive producer
> of his own show, Novak can say what he wants without fear of punitive
> consequences, and he can ignore what he wants, safe in the knowledge
> that no one of significance will ever press him. He is hardly alone in
> being used by sources or having dicey conflicts of interest. But unlike
> journalists Dan Rather and Howell Raines, who provided full explanations
> and apologies once their errors were revealed â?" and who faced
> well-organized mau-mauing campaigns waged by critics on the right
> â?" Novak is an island, untouched by criticism. His privileged
> position would count for nothing if his peers and colleagues held him
> accountable.
> On one special occasion during the past year, Novak made an exception
> and broke his radio silence on the Plame case. In March, at the ultimate
> Washington insider event â?" the annual Gridiron Club dinner â?"
> Novak starred in a skit about the Plame leak. Dressed in a top hat and
> cut-away coat, the columnist hammed it up in front of an audience of his
> peers, crooning to the tune of "Once I Had a Secret Love." Novak sang
> off-key about outing "a girl spy" thanks to "a secret source who lived
> within the great White House." And he finished it off with a killer
> closing line, delivered with a wink and a grin: "Cross the right wing
> you may try / Bob Novak's coming after you." The audience
> howled.
>
> © 2004 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved. View this
> story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/20663/
>
>
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