HUME: Did you call Rove or did he ...
NOVAK: I called Rove.
HUME: And did you call for the purpose of getting this confirmed or did this come up in passing?
NOVAK: I called him for several reasons. I wanted to talk about the column I was writing about the mission to Niger. Almost all of my conversations with Rove were not for attribution and in the course of that I told him. I asked him about Wilson's wife at the CIA, working with the CIA and initiating this visit and as I remember the conversation very distinctly, Karl said to me, "Yes, I know that, too." (my emphasis)
HUME: "I know that too?"
NOVAK: Yes.
HUME: He didn't say, "You know that, too?"
NOVAK: No. He said, "Oh, you know that, too?"
Then there's his comments about Harlow which also make little sense. And on Valerie Plame's role at the CIA:
NOVAK: No. I had no idea that she was a covert person, that she was not just working as an analyst at the CIA.
Then why did his original July 14 article say she was an "operative"? Remember this from Joe Wilson?
"Bob Novak called me before he went to print with the report and he said a CIA source had told him that my wife was an operative," Wilson said. "He was trying to get a second source. He couldn't get a second source. Could I confirm that? And I said no."
On the source:
NOVAK: ....Whether it was inadvertent or not, I don't believe that it was a conscious leak. He always said a couple times in the column, I said, this is not a political gunslinger, this official was not known as somebody who did a lot of political manipulations. He is more of a substantive person.
HUME: More of a policy person?
NOVAK: Yes.
Novak in 2003:
During a long conversation with a senior administration official, I asked why Wilson was assigned the mission to Niger. He said Wilson had been sent by the CIA's counterproliferation section at the suggestion of one of its employees, his wife. It was an offhand revelation from this official, who is no partisan gunslinger. When I called another official for confirmation, he said: "Oh, you know about it." The published report that somebody in the White House failed to plant this story with six reporters and finally found me as a willing pawn is simply untrue.
....A big question is her duties at Langley. I regret that I referred to her in my column as an "operative," a word I have lavished on hack politicians for more than 40 years. While the CIA refuses to publicly define her status, the official contact says she is "covered"-working under the guise of another agency. However, an unofficial source at the Agency says she has been an analyst, not in covert operations.
Wiggle, Wiggle, Mr. Novak. Why won't you come out and tell us what was not true in Murray's article? Why won't you talk about the September 29 conversation with Rove, where Waas, MSNBC and Bloomberg allege you and Rove devised a cover story?
Media Matters has more as does News Hounds.
