So, what was "wrong" with my column as Harlow claimed? There was nothing incorrect. He told the Post reporters he had "warned" me that if I "did write about it her name should not be revealed." That is meaningless. Once it was determined that Wilson's wife suggested the mission, she could be identified as "Valerie Plame" by reading her husband's entry in "Who's Who in America."

Harlow said to the Post that he did not tell me Mrs. Wilson "was undercover because that was classified." What he did say was, as I reported in a previous column, "she probably never again would be given a foreign assignment but that exposure of her name might cause 'difficulties.' " According to CIA sources, she was brought home from foreign assignments in 1997, when agency officials feared she had been "outed" by the traitor Aldrich Ames.

I have previously said that I never would have written those sentences if Harlow, then-CIA Director George Tenet or anybody else from the agency had told me that Valerie Plame Wilson's disclosure would endanger herself or anybody.

One more section of interest. He repeats the paragraph in his intial column that caused the uproar:

"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 that Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA [Harlow] says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him."

There never was any question of me talking about Mrs. Wilson "authorizing." I was told she "suggested" the mission, and that is what I asked Harlow. His denial was contradicted in July 2004 by a unanimous Senate Intelligence Committee report. The report said Wilson's wife "suggested his name for the trip." It cited an internal CIA memo from her saying "my husband has good relations" with officials in Niger and "lots of French contacts," adding they "could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." A State Department analyst told the committee that Mrs. Wilson "had the idea" of sending Wilson to Africa.

Was this internal CIA memo leaked to Novak? Or is he using it as an after-the-fact justification for his first column?

Note that he says Plame's identity "could be" found in Who's Who. He doesn't say that's where he got it. He acknowledges asking Harlow about her. But from whom did he hear it in the first place? Will Novak's vanity in writing this piece come back to bite him?

Update: Former CIA agent Larry Johnson replies to Novak's latest column:

Novak attempts to take refuge in the so-called "bipartisan" Senate Intelligence Committee report on the matter, which makes note of a memo sent by Valerie Plame outlining her husban's bona fides to her boss in the Counter Proliferation Division (CPD). What the Senate Republicans conveniently left out of the report is the simple fact that Val's boss had first asked her to write the memo. Senior managers in CPD suggested the mission and authorized it. Plame's only role was to respond to a supervisors request for information.

Johnson will have additional comments tomorrow on his own blog, No Quarter.

Update: Crooks and Liars has a roundup of blogger reaction to Novak's new column.