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September 30, 2003

A bit more on Novak

One more bit on Robert Novak's comment on crossfire yesterday. This is from Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo

Another big problem with Novak's comments on Crossfire today. Today he said ...

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.

But then there's this passage in a July 22nd article in Newsday ...

Novak, in an interview, said his sources had come to him with the information. "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me," he said. "They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it."

I'd say the story's changed.

Here's my thoughts on it: I may be missing something, but I'm not sure his two statements are inconsistent. Initially he said that the information was "given" to him by a source. Now he's saying that he was told this by someone he was interviewing. It's possible that he was given the information during the interview. Essentially, I think that he may have had an interview set up with whomever was trying to get this information out (most likely about some other subject), and during the course of that interview, his source brought up the Plame information and presented him with the idea that Wilson's credibility was allegedly shaky because of the "nepotism" angle. He then contacted a different senior administration official to confirm the story and called the CIA.

The only thing that might contradict that kind of a scenario is his comment that a source "brought" the story to him - but even that could be an accurate way of describing some information brought up voluntarily by the person he was interviewing, especially if the interview was basically covering an unrelated (or only semi-related) topic.

Remember, though, I'm just speculating, and its possible that Josh, having experience as an actual reporter, may be aware of something in Novak's statement that has a specific meaning I don't know anyhting about. But I think its possible, at least, that the statement's do make sense together.

Posted by thorswitch at September 30, 2003 06:18 AM

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Posted by: Catnmus at September 30, 2003 08:26 AM