Bob Novak Points Finger at President
By Balfour Posted in User Blogs — Comments (23) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
We haven't heard much at all from the man who publicly started the whole Valerie Plame mess, Bob Novak. Now Novak is generally viewed as a very loyal Republican, and a strong, strong conservative. He's not one to go after GOP luminaries in any sort of reckless way.
So it seemed odd that Novak would publicly call out President Bush on the Valerie Plame case. But he did just that speaking at a luncheon in North Carolina.
Said Novak:
"I'm confident the President knows who the source is," Novak told a luncheon audience at the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh on Tuesday. "I'd be amazed if he doesn't."
"So I say, 'Don't bug me. Don't bug Bob Woodward. Bug the President as to whether he should reveal who the source is.' "
http://www.newsobserver.com/659/story/377675.html
It stands to reason, given his very early involvement in the case and his extensive network throughout the Bush Administration, that Bob Novak knows a thing or two about what really went down.
So why would he say something like this publicly? Is Bob Novak off the reservation?
No one on this side of the Great Divide would ever actually claim that Novak was a good Republican or that he has ever been on the party reservation.
He's conservative, sure. He likes Republicans better than Democrats (who doesn't?). He socializes with Republicans. But he ain't no party Republican.
He's not been a staunch friend of the Bush Administration and has criticized the Bushies when he wanted to. He criticizes Republican leaders frequently and with relish. Often justifiably so.
That Novak's willing to say that he thinks Bush knows who his source was is no sign of some great split with the President since he's never been part of the Bush circle. And assuming that Novak's source is either Rove, Cheney, Powell, Hadley, Card, or Rice (who else could it really be?), Novak naturally assumes that Bush knows. I assume Bush knows, I just don't particularly care about this non-story to make a big deal of it.
He only says the Prez knows who knows.
But it turns out that everyone knew.
some are reading it to spin it into a claim that W directed the whole 'leak'. But it was not an illegal leak.
Since Plame was not a NOC, this is literally turning into an Alice in Wonderland tea party.
It really does not matter at all.
I read Novak all the time. Think he's a great journalist. And one of the most principled conservative journalists out there - even if I disagree with him on a variety of things.
Can anyone think of any other notable conservative journalists that have publicly suggested that the President, specifically, knows the source of the leak?
Has this happened before with another prominent journalist?
...that Novak is in a different faction than the President. Novak always struck me as more in Bush-Senior's camp: more prone to realpolitik and adverse to the neocon paradigm*.
As to why he's doing it now - hey, there's a nomination coming up in two years or so.
Moe
*Which is pretty much why I'm not all that fond of either Bush Senior or Novak, frankly.
I wouldn't consider him to be a somewhat loyal Republican, much less very. Better than Buchanan maybe. This isn't the first time he has crossed this administration and it won't be the last.
I figure Novak is trying to keep himself in the journalism camp. These reporters have started something they aren't going to want to finish.
They got Scooter Libby indicted. Big Victory, right? Wrong. It's going to be their worst nightmare. They have just handed Dick Cheney's chief of staff the power of subpoena, with half the reporters in the liberal media potentially having information that could aid his defense. Libby will haul every one of these clowns in for a deposition under oath. They are going to be sorry they ever mentioned Valerie Plame.
he also feels like he's in the clear because he's already testified and likely told Fitzgerald who the leaker was.
My sense of his comments was frustration that such a big deal is still being made of what was essentially a throw away line in one of his columns. His jab at the President probably had its roots in the fact that Bush's Justice Department (Ashcroft) helped the MSM and the Dems make this mountain out of a molehill by assigning an independent prosecutor in the first place.
That begs the question, where was the President's buddy Al Gonzales? Wouldn't any second year law student have recognized that neither the Sedition Act nor Victoria Teonsing's Covert Agent law from 1982 should be applied to this leak?
Finally, it seems that Langley has declared war on this President. When will the investigation of the CIA begin?
I know that Pat Buchanan was against the Iraq invasion based on his own conservative principles.
Was Bob Novak opposed to the war too?
Anyone know what Novak's position was initially on the invasion and real politik et al?
column archive, to the extent he even mentions Iraq, is heavily weighted against the Administration. Probably a direct result of his contacts being members of the the Bush41 administration. He writes a "quagmire" column on March 27, 2003 just 4 days before Baghdad fell. Doesn't put him in the Johnny Appel category but pretty close.
Hasn't Bob Novak been one of Karl Rove's oldest contacts in the Washington the press corp?
Why was Bob Novak one of the first, if not THE first press contacts that Rove spoke to regarding Plame, if he wasn't a reliably friendly reporter?
That doesn't make much sense.
(Commentary about Buchanan deleted: there's darn little I can do to the man that's worse than the fact that I have more influence over the GOP than he does, these days.)
laboring under a misconception.
Novak isn't much a Republican and he certainly isn't a conservative by any stretch of the imagination. His motto is said two be, "there are two types of people in Washington: sources and targets."
Novak has been very hostile to the administration since its inauguration, largely because he doesn't have very good sources in the Administration.
I'll have to take your word as to when Novak spoke to Rove about Plame, but I doubt that you know this to any certaintly and does that imply that Matt Cooper - who I believe was the first person to talk to Rove about Plame - is also a Republican. I don't want to revisit or participate in a threadjack the Plame thing because I am of the fairly knowledgeable view that Andrea Mitchell was right when she said who Plame was and what she did was well known on the cocktail circuit even during the Clinton administration.
No interest in debating or threadjacking on the Plame story either.
But I am rather shocked at your previous suggestion:
"Novak isn't much a Republican and he certainly isn't a conservative by any stretch of the imagination."
What the? Does Bob Novak know this?
Bob Novak is arguably more conservative than 90% of the people on RedState.
What do you base your conclusion that Novak "certainly isn't a conservative by any stretch of the imagination" on? What evidence is there for a "certain" statement like that?
in your world maybe.
It's funny that you guys, who couldn't pick a conservative out of a two-man line-up, are such authorities of who is a conservative. Just because Novak passed for a conservative on CNN for some years doesn't make him one.
Novak was more conservative than the Bush41 administation but he's nowhere near being a movement conservative or even a mainstream Republican today.
because I am of the fairly knowledgeable view that Andrea Mitchell was right when she said who Plame was and what she did was well known on the cocktail circuit even during the Clinton administration.
So you don't find her retractionof that statement believable, then?
because in context, you have to consider 1) what did she have to gain by saying it in the first place and 2) what did she have to gain by renouncing it.
Wilson and Plame were active on the Washington social circuit going back to 97-98. It's a safe bet, her neighbors nothwithstanding, that several hundred people in Washington knew she worked at the CIA as her day job, the extent to which people knew she'd ever been "covert" was probably only limited by the number of people Wilson shot off his mouth to.
Most of my good friends are conservatives so I'm well acquainted actually with who passes for a conservative.
But I'm still curious what evidence you actually have to support the notion that Bob Novak is "certainly" not conservative "by any stretch of the imagination".
How about one two examples?
I can see your point about him not being a movement conservative. Few if any of the conservative elite media are movement conservatives - not Brit Hume, not Krauthammer, not Brooks, not even Kristol. So I get all that.
But Bob Novak is not an actual conservative? Laughable. Is it Novak's very conservative Opes Dei religion that disqualifies him, in your mind, from being a conservative?
What is it?
"W.House takes issue with Novak on CIA leak claim"
"The White House on Thursday dismissed a claim by syndicated columnist Robert Novak that President George W. Bush knows who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame."
So apparently the President didn't know. According to the White House.
Then again, what else did we expect them to say?
Rats, I was hoping to get some examples or evidence from Streiff on why Bob Novak is "certainly" not conservative "by any stretch of the imagination", but Strieff's gone radio silent.
Looks like I'm going to have to wait a bit lon- .... zzzzzzzzzz.
the President knows. It was someone under his direct supervision that did it, whatever it was that was done.
If the boss can't (figuratively) poke his head into the hallway and ask his own staff, "who did this?" and get a straight answer, he's got serious managerial problems on his hands.