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Was She Covert?

Questions the Democrats didn't ask Valerie Plame.
- By Robert D. Novak

Comments

So, Mr. Novak: In order to cover your own sorry, but sadly not illegal actions in this matter, you are now accusing Gen. Michael Hayden, appointed by your president and approved by a Republican-controlled Senate, of lying - not just shading or spinning things, but outright LYING - about Plame because he is too close to the Democrats? Did it never occur to you or your conspiracy-theorist Republican friends that perhaps Hayden had rebuffed their queries because it was a national security matter at the time of the queries, one that ceased to be so needful of concealment by the time Hayden made his statement? No, none of that is possible, is it Mr. Novak? For anyone, even a Republican appointee to the leadership of our most covert spying agency other than NSA to put out information damaging to the White House spin machine is prima facie evidence that said leader must be too close to the Democrats. It never even occurs to you that he might just be telling the truth. Not that truth matters to you unless it can be used to hurt the opposition. No one has ever asked you, at least not in a public forum that Ive seen, but Im asking you now: regardless of whether you had a legal right to publish Plames CIA status which you did under the First Amendment, and regardless of whether she was a covert operative which she was, apparently to everyone but you - did it never even occur to you that you might have a responsibility as a citizen of these United States NOT to publish it? Did it never even cross your mind simply to keep your mouth shut about her covert status, until you could check around a bit and see if anyone would be harmed by the revelation? Or are you just too close to the Republicans to demonstrate that sort of good judgment and patriotism? Your column today, as with so many of your pronouncements on this topic, is disingenuous in the extreme. No matter what anyone else has done or not done in the Plame matter, you seem perfectly willing to let yourself off the hook for your failure to exercise self-restraint. You may legally get away with it, but youre not innocent. Not by a long chalk.

By richmiles | Mar 22, 2007 9:54:57 AM | Request Removal

WAXMAN is a bully????!!! Please Mr. Novak...did you watch the same hearing we did?? Toensing is the one who continually interrupted not just Watson, but Waxman and anyone who questioned her supposed *Facts* ... Tom Davis was smart not to beat your dead horse and instead put the blame where it should lie, with the CIA for not more forcefully telling YOU and other White House officials NOT to expose her unless you wanted to land in jail. But, unlike Davis, you and Toensing have lost the ability to process new information that might alter your version of the FACTS. Arent Journalist supposed to be pursuers of FACTS? If you want to write opinion that ignores new facts, quit calling yourself a journalist... Go into politics where you belong! yesterdays Senate hearings showed the damage just one well-placed idealog can have...what a national disgrace that Oklahomas Inhofe as past committee chair, led the Republicans and therefore the Congressional *investigation* into global warming for how YEARS while the glaciers melted? Let me guess what side of the issue you are on in THAT *debate* But you seem to think the more you question even obvious facts, the more you say it is a lie or a hoax, the more people believe you. And SOME feeble minded Republicans DO believe you, but most of us just think youve become addled in your old age and unable to think with even a modicon of journalitic objectivity. So I agree with the post that says, YOU, Bob Novak, are NOT a journalist, just because you SAY you are. And if i say it loud enough and often enough it IS true, because I say so. Did you write the same old lies in todays column just to keep the Plame story alive so that your 15 min. of fame continues? That is sad. Do you really want ruining one womans career to defend a decision to go to war that has turned out to be such a monumental mistake to be your *journalistic* legacy? The keep it up...why the Wash Post doesnt gently tell you to give it a rest is beyond me.

By sgoewey | Mar 22, 2007 10:03:47 AM | Request Removal

If her status is so difficult to determine that it requires rambling, dull columns such as the above, then the administration should never have taken the risk by leaking her name. Did they bother writing essays on the minutiae of CIA status distinctions? No. Did they actually check to ensure that she was overt? No. They didnt bother. Did they consider her at all, beyond calculating the political mileage she could provide them? No. Everyone acknowledges that Plame was never in danger from the leak. The reason the case has caught traction is because it reeks of the whole manipulative, clumsy, self-righteously narcissistic way the administration took us into this stupid war. Mr. Novak rather pathetically tries to exonerate them against wrongdoing in this instance - and hes right - but he misses still misses the point by a mile.

By lauren.rogal | Mar 22, 2007 10:08:05 AM | Request Removal

Mr. Novak, according to the New Testament, Christ once rebuked the Pharisees and the Sanhedrin with this wondrously pithy quote: You strain at a gnat yet swallow a camel. A precise description of what you and so many other right leaning republicans do when you discuss such arcane notions as to what constitutes covert status. That question involves straining at the gnat. The camel you expect us all to swallow is that the Bush administration--Bush, Cheney, Rove, Libby, et. al., were all acting honorably and would never do anything that could be construed as leaking infromation on a CIA employee that could in any way damage the security of the country. Look. We could strain at the various gnats of wheter a crime as defined under these inordinately complex laws on classified information occured or not. But the fact is that such considerations were far from the minds of the officials from the President on down when they decided to declassify and relaease this information about Ms Plame. They didnt care. It didnt even occur to them that there might be a possiblity that they were breaking the law and that their actions could endanger national security not to menation the lives of Valerie Plame or the people who were associated with her over the years. You didnt care either Mr. Novak. Why? Because you were blinded by anger and partisan bitterness. All of you were. Quite understandable because what was coming out of all of this was just how utterly, completely, devastatingly wrong you all were in supporting this President so blindly. To your credit, you have said you never supported this decision. But I do not recall any passionate editorials warning the Bush administration about undertaking such a murderous folly just over four years ago. If a fair number of you conservatives had done that, your movement would not be in the state of implosion that now aptly characterizes it.

By jax | Mar 22, 2007 10:12:59 AM | Request Removal

Novak will burn in hell with his war-mongering neocon buddies who fraudulently took our country to war on manufactured unvetted intelligence. They really had me going with that smoking gun mushroom cloud myth and the Mohammed Atta meet Saddam Hussein fabrication. Once you understand that, it shouldnt surprise you that the same group would think nothing of outing a CIA agent and destroying her cover company and the covers of all the other agents working for Brewster-Jennings. Today Congress votes on appropriating another $100,000,000,000 for Georges pre-emptive war of choice. Oh its good to be a defense contracter or an oil company but its bad to be a US soldier and US taxpayer. This war is the biggest US foriegn policy debacle in the history of our country. 3200 Americans dead. 72000 us soldiers serious injured or amputeed. 655000 dead Iraqi civilians.

By nfsagan | Mar 22, 2007 10:17:44 AM | Request Removal

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