Is Novak lying?

I found a quote from Robert Novak at Jane Galt's "Asymmetrical Information". The contention there is that Novak's comment sufficiently contradicts what we have been told about the Plame situation thus far, and someone must be lying. I'm not so sure its that clear cut. Here's what Novak had to say, apparently on Crossfire:

'Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this. In July I was interviewing a senior administration official on Ambassador Wilson's report when he told me the trip was inspired by his wife, a CIA employee working on weapons of mass destruction. Another senior official told me the same thing. As a professional journalist with 46 years experience in Washington I do not reveal confidential sources. When I called the CIA in July to confirm Mrs. Wilson's involvement in the mission for her husband -- he is a former Clinton administration official -- they asked me not to use her name, but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else. According to a confidential source at the CIA, Mrs. Wilson was an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operator, and not in charge of undercover operatives'...

First, lets address the obvious issue. Here he says that Plame (Mrs. Wilson) was an analyst, but in his original story, he said that she was an operative. One statement or the other is incorrect, and so far, the information I've seen indicates that she was a covert operative, who's cover was that she was an energy analyst. It is possible that when he called the CIA in July to get information on Plame that they, in following with her cover, said she was an analyst - I don't know - but it is possible. I've never tried to call the CIA to find out the status of someone who might be working for them, so I don't know what they say or how they would handle that, but I can't imagine that if someone - even Robert Novak - called them up and said "I was told so-and-so is a covert agent, is that true" that they're going to say "yes, she is." They did, however, ask him not to use the name, so that might be indicative of something - but at the moment, the analyst/operative issue is the only one I see as being a real conflict between what Novak has to say and what else has been reported.

As for the rest of his statement, I've seen posts around the blogosphere indicating that since Novak says he wasn't called with the story that "someone" must be lying. I don't think so. Novak says only that he wasn't called. He doesn't say no one was called, nor does anything in his statement rule out the idea that the senior administration officials in question could have or did call other reporters.

The Washington Post report says that the two senior administration officials called "at least six" reporters and gave them Plame's name. It doesn't say whether or not this includes Novak, so its possible that there are six others with the information in addition to Novak. In addition, Novak doesn't deny that he got the information from two senior administration officials. He said that in his initial report and he says again here thats who he got it from. He also notes that the information was given to him by one of the officials during an interview and he confirmed it by calling the 2nd. Again, nothing in that contradicts the Washington Post report.

It's very simply, really. The senior administration officials could have been calling other reporters seeing if anyone else would pick up the story. One of them had an interview with Novak and gave him the information during that interview, and Novak called the other to confirm it. It's likely there was no need for the senior administration officials to call Novak because they were able to given him the info through the interview and confirmation process.

So, unless I'm missing something major, I'd say Novak's statement doesn't cause any problems in regards to what the Washington Post reported.

Posted by thorswitch at September 30, 2003 04:19 AM | TrackBack