Robert Novak on The Huffington Post

Paul Begala: A Sign of the Times

2009-09-13T01:42:22Z

The sign said it all. It was not some last-minute message some meth addict scrawled in crayon on a scrap of cardboard. No, this sign was professionally printed. White block letters on a blue background, the four-word message was in all caps. Someone had to have thought this through. Someone wrote it, edited it, planned it, designed it, ordered it, paid for it. Someone approved it, printed it, distributed it. And then someone thought this was a message he or she wanted to convey to the world. Thank goodness someone had the courage to take a photo of it, and then Huffington Post had the guts to post it on its home page.

The sign made me nauseous, made me embarrassed, made me wonder if at long last there is no decency on the far right. The sign said:

"BURY OBAMACARE WITH KENNEDY"

Oh, I get it. Sen. Kennedy is dead, and these slugs want health care reform to be dead too. That is so clever.

Fourteen days after Edward Kennedy was laid to rest in the company of his fellow American heroes in Arlington, right-wing hate-mongers decided to use his burial to make a cheap point about their opposition to health care reform.

What would they have done if liberals had printed signs that equated Ronald Reagan's burial with the hoped-for death of George W. Bush's plan to privatize Social Security? Or Bill Buckley's painful passing with the GOP's loss of the White House in 2008? Or the demise of my right-wing former colleague Bob Novak with the expiration of the Bush tax cuts? You can't imagine that, can you? Because, while we progressives have our moments of frustration and our occasional lack of couth, there is nothing I can think of that compares to the sick, savage sign that the teabaggers were waving in Washington.

The inmates have taken over the asylum. The ever-sunny Reagan is dead. The congenial Buckley is dead. The old-school conservative Novak is dead as well. In their place is the party of Joe the Shouter and Joe the Plumber and Sarah the Death Panel Screecher.

They hate Pres. Obama - even though he has bent over backwards to accommodate Republicans. They hate tax increases - even though the Democrats have cut taxes for 95% of Americans. They hate health care reform - even though Ted Kennedy fought his whole life to get them the same health care millionaires like him already had.

There was not, to my knowledge, a sign that said, "Let's Bury Medicare," even though Medicare is precisely the sort of single-payer, government-run, socialized health insurance the whack-jobs say they hate. Nor did I hear about a sign that said, "Let's Bury Tricare," although the military health system is as socialized as Britain's, its beneficiaries (including, according to Newsweek, Congressclown Joe Wilson of South Carolina) are very happy with their socialized health care. Nary a sign, so far as I know, decried the Bush prescription drug entitlement, even though it ballooned the deficit, enriched the pharmaceutical companies and furthered the supposed slide toward socialism. Nor, I'm told, were there any signs criticizing the $2 trillion Mr. Bush's unjust, unwarranted, unwise war in Iraq will cost our children and grandchildren. Nor ever a single sign about the Bush tax cuts, which helped squander the Clinton surplus. If this were about fiscal policy, the protests would have happened long ago.

These tea parties are, at least for some, more about hate than high-minded debate. Anyone who needed proof need look no further than the sign captured in the photo on the front page of the Huffington Post.

Marcel Pacatte: Was Robert Novak a Journalist?

2009-08-21T21:42:21Z

Here is Clarence Page on Robert Novak, who died earlier this week:

We seldom agreed on political issues, but he always knew how to make a good case for his side. More important, at a time when just about everyone who has a keyboard seems to think they can be a journalist, Novak showed how the best way we can serve the public is through solid, glamour-free fact-gathering. Our audiences will be the final judges of whether we have done the right thing.

You probably know where this is going, but Page was doing fine until he heaped his scorn on the "unprofessionals" -- the folks with no press credential other than their keyboard.

Page is confusing a couple of things here. First, no journalist should have a "side." At least not one that shows. The job of the journalist is to give both or all sides their due, to give them a fair hearing. Page and Novak, however, long ago transcended the definition of "journalist" to become members of a different caste, that of the commentator. Commentators espouse opinion. They approach issues from a perspective.

A problem with where media finds itself today is that all the roles are confused. Feeding the beast means that reporters find themselves pressed into video duty to explain their stories before the copy is filed. True, some go gladly into the glare. And, honestly, doing so is smart and inescapable.

But asking reporters what they think of the stories they are covering blurs the line between what reporters do and what commentators do. So if we know what a commentator is, what is a journalist?

Page seems to think -- if I may put words into his mouth -- that journalists can only be those who are in a fraternity of ... of ... what?

For the longest time, what made a journalist was a city editor who decided, based on the cut of someone's jib or gleam in their eye or turn in their phrase. Then the ranks were mostly filled with the professionally trained, holders of degrees similar to mine.

Under the watch of my degreed cohort, journalism has entered what most say is a death spiral, but what even the most charitable say is a time of flux.

Where the Pages see anarchy and mountebanks with laptops, I see a democratization, a rebelling against being spoonfed information that leaves us starved and suffocated.

I'll take the democracy, even if it borders on anarchy, over the cloister of the fraternity.

But Novak or Page could not be commentators without first having been journalists. What made Novak a good commentator -- regardless of what you thought of his politics -- were the same things that made him a good journalist. People other than Page, who are unable to see past Novak's politics, don't understand journalism.

Novak was nobody's lapdog and he was unafraid to say -- and write -- what he thought.

Best of all, love him or hate him, he was always interesting.

Most people vilify him for his role in the Plame-Wilson affair as the person who 'outed' Plame. However, a close reading of the whole matter shows, first, that there were no heroes in that whole saga and, second, Novak was just doing what a good reporter does, tenaciously going after a story and the flatulent posers trying to peddle their own versions of it.

So with journalism lumbering through a period of spasmodic ineptitude, the people with hopes for its future could do worse than to emulate Novak's joy of the hunt, his fierce determination in getting at the crux, his refusal to be cowed and his understanding of the darker natures of the folks at the levers of power.

I blanch at the thought of a press corps without his sturdy sense of what's right and true.

The Robert Novak Journalism Room? Joliet High School Mulls Honor For Late Alum

2009-08-21T12:11:39Z

Joliet Township High School officials are considering honoring longtime syndicated columnist and TV commentator Robert Novak where he got his start -- in the journalism room at what is now Joliet Central High School.

Julia Reed: My Life With Bob Novak

2009-08-21T09:34:34Z

The first time I met Bob Novak, I was eight years old. I remember what I was wearing -- a sleeveless tomato-soup-red wool knit jumpsuit with swingy wide legs and a brown turtleneck beneath (my most soigné and mature-looking outfit at the time) -- and that I sat in it, cross-legged on the trunk of my mother's car, waiting patiently for him to come up the driveway with my father. All I knew then was that he was a famous journalist, part of a team (with Rowland Evans) that produced a column called Inside Report, which I had seen in our newspaper.

Read more: Bob Novak, Julia Reed, Media News

Esther J. Cepeda: Bob Novak and Me: A Journalistic Journey From Old School to New School and Back

2009-08-19T09:41:57Z

There was no "me and Bob Novak" per se, it's not like we'd walk out of the Chicago Sun-Times building together -- back when it wasn't the basement of the Trump Tower --
and head over to the Billy Goat for a cold one after deadline had passed and the paper was most of the way put to bed for the night.

No, Bob Novak was my frequent companion as I grew up in Wrigleyville in the eighties, a weirdo kid who would always read nearly every word of the paper and whose bedroom wall was a mosaic of cutout columns and pictures from the Sun-Times.

So Novak, the "pugnacious political columnist" as Wednesday's New York Times called him, has been with me every step of the way even though he didn't know it.

Keep in mind that I really was a weirdo kid: the kind who, as young as 10, looked forward to getting up early on Sunday mornings to flip around all the channels and catch pieces of all the political talk shows where staid white men raised their voices at each other about important people and things.

During the week, through his column, Novak whispered in my ear about who these people were and what the important issues they were talking about meant.

Novak taught me -- a child of immigrant parents who spoke only Spanish at home -- how to construct a sentence, turn a phrase, use a big word when necessary and stick to the smaller ones to make important points.

Through the TV Novak taught me how to be cool in front of the camera, how to wither a sparring partner with a well-informed-glare, and smile honestly when it was all over.

Novak taught me -- and the country -- that there is great power in sashaying behind closed doors, digging for the truth, and then getting it out there in the paper, on the TV, on the radio, in magazines, in books, and on the internet.

Novak became a star by letting the story -- and the reporting -- be the star of his work, he taught me that too.

In her remembrance today, my Sun-Times colleague, Lynn Sweet quoted Jim Walton, the president of CNN Worldwide talking about what a treasure Novak was.

What better way to honor the passing of this giant than to pledge that in Novak's passing I, too, will strive to be "a journalist of the old school, hardworking, practical, and passionate about our profession."

If I can have a tiny fraction of impact on a young journalist that Robert Novak had on me, I'll consider it a job well done.

Esther J. Cepeda carries on the old school and new school traditions on www.600words.com

Dave Astor: Robert Novak and the Hypocrisy of Many Media People

2009-08-19T09:12:16Z

Robert Novak liked to think of himself as a tough journalist -- "The Prince of Darkness" and all that. But like a lot of "tough" journalists, he wasn't so tough when things got tough for him personally.

When I was working for a journalism magazine, I wrote a March 2003 story about columnists and cartoonists who multitask -- i.e., do their regular newspaper features while also doing TV work, radio work, stand-up comedy, etc. One of the people I interviewed was Robert Novak, who was still doing commentary for CNN at the time along with his syndicated column. Novak was happy to participate in the story because it was basically a puff piece that put him and everyone else I interviewed in a positive light.

Several months later, Novak wrote the infamous column outing CIA agent Valerie Plame. After that, I left a phone message with the conservative pundit asking for comment. He never called back. Over the next few years, as the Plame case went through its various twists and turns, I called Novak several more times. Again, no reply from the "tough" guy.

I know, I know. His lawyers probably told him to stay mum. But would Novak have tolerated that defense from people he was trying to write about?

Which leads me to this point: Many journalists, editors, and media owners expect politicians and others they cover to talk when controversy arises. But most media people clam up when they themselves become embroiled in controversy. What a double standard! If you dish it out, you should be able to take it.

"The Prince of Hypocrisy"?

Scott Shrake: Robert D. Novak Is in the Book

2009-08-18T18:30:04Z

In the context of this sweltering Summer of Death, Robert Novak's demise was not greeted with surprise. It probably shouldn't have been anyway, since he was a 78-year-old man with brain cancer, which he had had for some time.

Little tributes poured onto Twitter and the Facebook Newsfeed, from his fellow journalists and various D.C. types. Some bid him fonder farewells than others. Lots of qualifiers about "I may not have always agreed with him..." etc. Kind of like the uncomfortable Livia Soprano wake on The Sopranos.

An ultimate Washington insider to the sword hilt, he was the catalyst for the Plame Affair, which for my money (follow the money!) was the most fascinating real-life crime mystery ever, with all the classic elements: spies, traitors, journalists sworn to protect their scumbag sources, smoking guns, powerful people up to and including the president of the United States, a sexy blond lady as the victim. For someone like him, a perfect caper and a perfect career capper. Life capper, even.

The obituaries said he lived in D.C. I was curious whether that was accurate: Did they mean he lived in Northern Virginia with the other princes of darkness? Did they mean he lived somewhere in the metro D.C. area? So I Googled "Robert Novak's house" -- nothing. "Robert Novak lives", which yielded "Robert Novak lives to drink blood another moonless night", part of a post on on some lefty blog. That doesn't help me! Then I thought, well, maybe if...

Of course he's listed in the phone book.

Or is it an "of course"? Let's break it down. He said publicly he thought he had a lot of enemies after exposing the foibles of the Washington establishment for over 50 years. Is it a tough-guy thing? "Come and get me, if you dare!" Now, look, the address in the phone book is that of a doormanned high-rise building (including apartment number). Access would depend on how strict his doorman is. Yet there's his phone number, too, just crying out "Harass me. Make my day."

Maybe it's just a matter of generations. I mean, he was of the landline generation, for sure. But he was quite famous (Crossfire and all). Or, at least, famous for D.C. Maybe that's it, maybe it's a function of D.C. provincialism. He was, after all, a born Midwesterner, and we're neighborly.

Wonder how many journo-celebrities of his age could say "I'm in the book" (if anyone still says that)? Andy Rooney probably is. Mike Wallace probably isn't. Walter Cronkite probably was. Andrea Mitchell probably isn't.

Maybe he wanted to be available for killer scoops from unexpected sources. That's probably it. He hoped some Deep Throat-type figure might drop a dime, and when they were ready, that shadowy person could find him with no problem.

I won't give his exact address and home phone number myself here. You too can easily find his contact information in a Web search. Anyway, in point of fact, he doesn't live there anymore.

Richard Laermer: Nobody Out-Novaked Novak

2009-08-18T16:55:22Z

Robert Novak was a man.

He served this country steadfastly during the Korean War; was one hell of a journalist; and, in very many ways, was a pioneer in cable news. His six-times-weekly Evans-Novak Political Report was -- from 1963 until this year -- one of the most important and accurate political columns in America. Its forecasts of competitive Congress races were more often than not right on the money.

He joined CNN as a political "pundit" -- let's say analyst -- way back in 1980. Can you imagine: 1980! Hard to believe basic cable even existed when we look at the on-screen program guide of 10 thousand channels on our digital cable. Novak was the right wing combatant on Crossfire right up until the end. He debated Carville hundreds of times with cogent arguments that often embarrassed the seemingly unflappable Southerner. After Jon Stewart decimated the need for Crossfire during his brilliant 2004 appearance on the show, where he tossed Tucker "Bowtie" Carlson and Paul Begala into a shameful throw down, that program quietly rode off into the sunset with its Novakian glory days behind it.

And then came the last six years. Novak was cast as a divisive figure in the tortuous political decade. He was a staunch public advocate for the decisions and acts of the Bush administration, and much of the last part of this man's career (and maybe all of it) will be remembered for one decision: to leak the name of a covert CIA agent in a newspaper, without reason other than political retribution. While that may have been a bad choice -- and it will prove to be even worse if someone like Billy Bob Thornton is cast to play a cartoonish Novak in the 2010 film of Plame's CIA-redacted account of the whole mess, Fair Game -- it may have been proof that Novak's sources were in the long run too good.

You know that when a Deputy Secretary of State calls you to leak classified information, you got to be doing something right.

Robert Novak was disliked by many -- liberals, mostly -- but he was a soldier, veteran, and a remarkable, unceasing journalist. He lived for more than one year with the worst cancer diagnosis medicine can provide, writing the whole time and trying to beat the odds. In a few respects he did.

Nowadays, the existence of a reporter like Novak is rare. Today, those brethren lost a lion.

Robert Novak RIP.

Ron Mwangaguhunga: RIP Robert Novak

2009-08-18T14:54:34Z

Robert Novak was a sour man. He had a fixation on three-piece suits and capital gains tax cuts. Novak often spat when he talked. He must have been thoroughly unpleasant company if you did not agree with him philosophically. These factors made him ripe for satire. Robert Novak looked and acted like a Dickensian villain come to life. But there was more to him. Robert Novak, despite the high quotient of funny that he brought to any conversation, was not evil. He was, I believe, a good, if misguided man.

The Prince of Darkness lacked a natural empathy at the outset for the poor, the weakest members of the human society. It is not inconceivable that the virtues that make a good Republican -- that go-go competitive edge, the high productiveness, the aggression -- they come at the expense of human empathy and compassion. Could that be why George W. Bush -- a born-again Christian -- touted, often, a "compassionate conservatism" on the campaign trail and throughout his Presidency? Did he intuit that robust libertarianism is as imbalanced, philosophically, as the liberty crushing, ultra-egalitarianism of the left? I believe so. Novak, aware of that natural weakness in his personality, never tired of seeking a more harmonious sense of being. That, I think, is what made Novak ultimately a good man. He was aware of his deficiencies, and he worked to correct them. How many people at that age work to change their lives? Late in his life, Novak became a Roman Catholic. That, I think, is in itself an heroic gesture. Most people stop growing -- or stop giving a damn about growing -- after middle age. The sour, disharmonious souls who scream -- pink faced -- at Town Hall meetings are a testament to that sad truism.

But Robert Novak was different. Through his discovery of Roman Catholicism, Robert Novak tried to offset his natural sourness towards the weak and society's less fortunate. This from CatholicOnline, on his conversion process:

"A friend gave Novak Catholic literature after he came close to dying from spinal meningitis in the early 1980s. About a decade later, the columnist's wife, Geraldine, also not a Catholic, persuaded him to join her at Mass at St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Washington. The celebrant was a former source of Novak's.

"Father Peter Vaghi, now Msgr. Vaghi and pastor of the Church of the Little Flower in Bethesda, Md., was a former Republican lawyer and adviser to Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. He had been a source for the Evans and Novak column that Novak wrote with Rowland Evans.

"Novak started to go to Mass regularly, but it wasn't until a few years later that he decided to convert to Catholicism. The turning point, as he recounts in his book, happened when he went to Syracuse University in New York to give a lecture. Before he spoke, he was seated at a dinner table near a young woman who was wearing a necklace with a cross. Novak asked her if she was Catholic, and she posed the same question to him.

"Novak replied that he had been going to Mass each Sunday for the last four years, but that he had not converted.

"Her response -- 'Mr. Novak, life is short, but eternity is forever' -- motivated him to start the process of becoming a Catholic through the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. He was baptized at St. Patrick's Church in 1998. His wife was also baptized a Catholic."

Catholicism added a missing dimension to Novak's personality. It lifted him beyond a hard materialism that, in his case, made him an almost comically cruel political commentator. That sense of metaphysics led him to work with fellow "bleeding heart conservative" Jack Kemp on a rather strange -- but politically interesting -- collaboration to bring Louis Farrakhan's fringe group of disenfranchised Americans into the Republican party. Catholicism clearly worked a miracle in making Bob Novak care about poor African-Americans.

One cannot memorialize the life of Robert Novak without noting that he was a tremendous reporter. His scoops were legendary. Especially during Republican administrations -- Reagan's, in particular -- his inside information and contacts were second to none. To be sure, Novak's column was used by Republican administration officials with an agenda. But like any good journalist, Novak tried to provide context. This blog quoted his column often and we will miss the extremely inside information that he brought to light.

I am not a religious man, so I will not attempt to predict the future of Novak. But here, on this planet, his legacy will be that of a solid journalist, an interesting human being, a searcher after the Truth, a man who tried to be compassionate -- even though it was not a natural component of his personality -- and an advocate for growth and wealth.

May he rest in peace.

Phil Bronstein: Robert Novak, the Prince of Darkness for better or worse...

2009-08-18T14:13:48Z

Criticizing the recently deceased is as rude as punking the Queen of England at an official event: it's bad form both in terms of timing and reasonable respect.

As a journalist, I know I should revere Bob Novak, whose death from brain cancer was announced this morning, almost as much as the genuflecting and genuinely saddened colleagues are now doing on his alma mater, CNN. I doubt this mourning will reach Cronkite proportions, but Mr. Novak did have lots of influence over many years, was seemingly fearless in his views, straddled print and broadcast reporting successfully and made it nearly fashionable for TV guys to have combovers (see: David Gergen.)

Someone noted in one of the black-bordered eulogy TV segments this morning that he was called "The Prince of Darkness," not by his enemies but by his friends because of his contacts and his power to move the D.C. discussion. I remember once being at dinner in a capital steak house when Bob Novak came in. He had that invisible wake around him that surrounds celebrities, that sense that the molecules in the room bend when someone famous arrives.

There was a line-up to shake his hand, adulation he accepted graciously but that seemed to make him grow larger and more luminescent with each fawning comment.

But the Darkness thing reminds me of a very different Novak moment.

I was covering the bloody conflict in El Salvador in the late '80s. I'm not an either/or person, generally, and I had good relations with colonels on the right and guerrillas on the left. As in most of real life, the situation was more complicated than slogans or sound bites.

So I go to a disinterment of a couple of murder victims on the dusty outskirts of town. The grave re-diggers were, as they mostly were for these things, drunk, so it took a painfully long time. The few of us who were witnesses had to put some kind of cloth over our noses and mouths because there's nothing as horribly ripe as a decomposing human body.

The two dead men had been buried hastily in a shallow grave. Their thumbs were tied together behind their backs and there were other infamous signatures of a Salvadoran death squad hit that are too gruesome to describe even for this blog. The fact that the victims were seen being hustled into a Cherokee Chief with smoked windows, the signature Death Squad vehicle of choice, and that they were leftist labor organizers made it clear what was up. (The guerrillas had their own killing apparatus, but it was mostly aimed at mayors in rural villages.)

Once they were dug up and carted off for more examination, I left, the stench of the grim, hazy afternoon event still in my nostrils. I was sure it was also on my clothes and in my pores. How could such a vital and vile thing not be?

I went to my rented house in the Escalon district of Salvador and slumped in a chair in front of an old TV set with rabbit ears. At certain times in the late afternoon, if the weather was just right and you fiddled with the antennae, we could get a few minutes of CNN.

There was Robert Novak, screaming at someone -- probably Michael Kinsley on "Crossfire" -- like an enraged health care town hall meeting participant: "Death squads in El Salvador is a liberal MYTH!"

I haven't been accused of being a liberal all that much, and, as Christiane Amanpour said so wonderfully in Iraq, "Wolf, I can only tell you what I can see," but I can tell you reliably that Salvadoran death squads were as real as Scooter Libby and Evans and Novak.

At the time, I wanted to reach through the TV screen and strangle the guy into sensibility. Or have the two tragic dead men delivered, without benefit of makeup, on his front lawn.

It wasn't a liberal-conservative thing. Death squads were a fact.

Whatever else Bob Novak did well, even superbly in his professional life -- a great deal, I don't doubt -- at that moment he did a huge disservice to the truth and to the memory of thousands of people who died violently, painfully and without justification in El Salvador.

Now, please let's return to our ritual of respectful remembrance.

Greg Mitchell: Robert Novak's Final Words on Plame Case? "The Hell With You!"

2009-08-18T13:33:21Z

Ailing from his fourth battle with cancer last autumn, famed columnist Robert Novak -- who died today at 78 -- was interviewed at length for one of the final times by The Washingtonian's Barbara Matusow. The magazine published on its web site the full Q & A, which concluded with perhaps Novak's final published re-assessment of his role in helping to out CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson.

It shows that near the end he had reversed his partial feelings of regret and, angered by liberal critics, went back into attack mode. Of course, two years ago, he had predicted that "unfortunately" his Plame connection would probably make the opening sentence of his obituary. This proved true in the case of the Associated Press bulletin on his death, but the Washington Post waited until the third paragraph.

Here are the passages from the Matusow interview on the CIA leak case.

Let's talk about the Valerie Plame affair, which caused you so much grief. If you had it to do over again, would you reveal who she was?

If you read my book, you find a certain ambivalence there. Journalistically, I thought it was an important story because it explained why the CIA would send Joe Wilson--a former Clinton White House aide with no track record in intelligence and no experience in Niger--on a fact-finding mission to Africa. From a personal point of view, I said in the book I probably should have ignored what I'd been told about Mrs. Wilson.

Now I'm much less ambivalent. I'd go full speed ahead because of the hateful and beastly way in which my left-wing critics in the press and Congress tried to make a political affair out of it and tried to ruin me. My response now is this: The hell with you. They didn't ruin me. I have my faith, my family, and a good life. A lot of people love me--or like me. So they failed. I would do the same thing over again because I don't think I hurt Valerie Plame whatsoever.

You saw up close what it's like to be the subject of so many news stories. Has this changed the way you view the journalistic profession?

I thought the journalistic community was terrible to me -- even members of the Gridiron Club, which is supposed to be a band of brothers and sisters. I thought one of the worst columns written on the Plame affair was by William Safire. He wrote a stupid column saying I should reveal the name of my source. He wanted to get his colleague at the New York Times, Judy Miller, off the hook with the prosecutors. He didn't know, as I knew, that my source, Richard Armitage, had long before identified himself to the FBI and the Justice Department. But my attorneys advised me to keep silent about the whole affair.

Having thrown a lot of darts throughout your career and then being on the receiving end, did you ever stop to think how your columns might have made other people feel?

No. [Laughs.] That's not my nature.

Greg Mitchell's latest book is "Why Obama Won." He is editor of Editor & Publisher and has written widely about the Plame case.

Robert Novak Storms Off CNN Set (VIDEO)

2009-08-18T12:24:09Z

Robert Novak died early Tuesday morning in his home after a year-long battle with brain cancer.

One of his more legendary moments in recent memory came in 2005, when he said "Bullshit!" on the air on CNN and stormed off the set after a comment by James Carville.

From the transcript:

NOVAK: Just let me finish what I'm going to say, James. Please, I know you hate to hear me, but you have...

CARVILLE: He's got to show these right-wingers that he's got backbone. Show them you're tough.

NOVAK: Well, I think that's bullshit. And I hate that. Just let it go.

(Novak leaves set.)

A young Ed Henry, who had been moderating the Carville-Novak discussion, later said, "I'm sorry as well that Bob Novak obviously left the set a little early. I had told him in advance that we were going to ask him about the CIA leak case. He was not here for me to be able to ask him about that. Hopefully we'll be able to ask him about that in the future."

Watch:

Robert Novak Dead At 78

2009-08-18T11:46:43Z

WASHINGTON — Political columnist Robert Novak, a conservative, pugilistic debater and proud owner of the "Prince of Darkness" moniker, died Tuesday after a battle with brain cancer that was diagnosed in July 2008. He was 78.

His wife of 47 years, Geraldine Novak, told The Associated Press that he died at his home in Washington early in the morning.

Keith Thomson: Are the 14 Million "Found" White House Emails the New Watergate Tapes?

2009-01-27T13:58:18Z

Perhaps the most frequently-asked question about Watergate is: "How could the conspirators have been so foolish, gabbing away even though they knew the tape recorder was on?" The answer: They were human, and, as such, erred.

Anne Weisman, chief counsel for the non-profit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, compared the infamous gap in the Nixon-Haldeman Oval Office tape to the 14 million White House emails from March 2003 to October 2005 that were missing during the investigation of the Valerie Plame CIA leak, when they might have yielded a smoking gun.

"The Watergate Tapes had an eighteen-and-a-half minute gap where [Nixon secretary] Rosemary Woods did whatever she did," Weisman told me. "We're talking here about a gap of at least fourteen million emails."

Rosemary Woods demonstrates how she accidentally may have erased tapes

Early this year, the White House found the emails -- it turns out they never were missing but rather, unaccounted for due to a "flawed and limited" internal review. On January 14, Weisman convinced a federal court to order the White House to preserve the emails and all relevant records.

Now, filling in the gaps in the CIA leak case -- like why Bush administration officials exposed Valerie Plame Wilson's covert operative status to Robert Novak and other journalists -- may be as simple as entering "plame" as a search term (or "plane," allowing for misspelling).

"Email is a blessing, and it can be a curse, because it's a written record," Weisman said. "And people know that intellectually. Still they dash off emails, without thinking about what they're saying, as if they're talking on the phone. As a result, you get a lot of very honest information that isn't scrutinized the way official memoranda are."

Weisman also recognizes the possibility that the perpetrators of the leak had the good sense not to chronicle their activities. Or they may have simply deleted their emails.

I interviewed two computer forensics experts familiar with the White House system. Per requests for anonymity, what follows is an amalgam of those interviews:

Q: Can you recover a deleted email?

A: Piece of cake.

Q: Is there a way to delete an email so that computer forensics experts would be unable to find any trace of it?

A: There are hundreds of ways.

Q: If the deleted email had been sent using the White House server, could you still locate it on the backup tapes? [Every night, backup tapes of all White House emails are made and stored in a separate location in case of fire or disaster; the March 2003 to October 2005 tapes also were unaccounted for during the leak investigation].

A: The backup tapes could contain the deleted email, absolutely.

Q: Could someone delete an email that's on a backup tape?

A: You could easily just make a new backup tape. Put on whatever time and date stamp you want. From an evidentiary standpoint, the stamps are meaningless.

Q: So if a perpetrator pulled that off, is that the end of your investigation?

A: More like the beginning. Like an old-fashioned gumshoe, you try to sniff out clues.

Q: For instance?

A: A very simplistic example is, even if there's no evidence of emails written to robert.novak@washingtonpost.com, that address may still be in the email address book on a staffer's computer or BlackBerry. [The Bush administration was also ordered to turn over all devices containing emails.] Something as little as that can broaden the scope of the investigation.

Q: What if that address has been expunged from the address book?

A: The entire hard drive may have been swapped out. But the trail doesn't necessarily go cold there.

In other words, the computer forensics investigation, fundamentally, is as old as hide-and-seek, and will continue to be so until computers can be programmed to remedy human error. Assuming mistakes were made, the scope of the investigation would conceivably expand beyond the 14 million existing White House emails to every email the leakers ever have sent and received: In the digital age, the world increasingly is becoming an Oval Office Tape Recorder 2.0.

I spoke to perhaps the world's foremost expert on the subject, James Bamford, a former intelligence analyst who wrote The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA From 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America, his third New York Times best-selling book about the National Security Administration. "In order to send an email, the White House has to send it via Novak's server," he said. "Novak's email provider would have the content, if they've kept it until now."

Internet service providers routinely make daily back-up tapes. Moreover, a Yahoo! official told me that her company has retained a majority of individual user emails, since 1997, and has no plans to throw them out. Google has a similar offline backup system. So even if one of the leakers eschewed the White House server and sent the smoking-gun using a personal Yahoo! account from his mother-in-law's laptop computer in Cheboygan, then flung the computer into Lake Michigan, the correspondence likely would be available in its entirety.

Bamford noted that logs of telephone calls placed and received by the leaker would be readily accessible at this juncture as well. In addition, according to a CIA source, it's not out of the realm of possibility that some of the audio was captured by intelligence agency communication intercept systems.

The sum total is Anne Weisman's prospects for reeling in the new Haldeman or Erlichman may be greatly enhanced. Weisman wouldn't mind if, in the process, light were shed on such issues as the U.S. Attorney firings controversy, editing of government reports to downplay scientific findings about global warming, and how exactly 14 million emails were lost to a "flawed and limited" internal review in the first place.

So what is her immediate plan?

Wait.

For five years, at least.

The 14 million emails have been transferred to the National Archives and Records Administration along with 300 million other documents. In accordance with the Presidential Records Act, it will be five years before the Freedom of Information Act allows her to seek a single correspondence.

In the interim, the Supreme Court may hear her case, Wilson v. Libby, potentially giving her subpoena power. She considers her best shots, however, to be either an Act of Congress or an initiative taken by the Obama administration. "They may not want to have to defend the old administration," she said. "They may think the American public deserves to know what happened."

Failing that, the hope is to receive an email from deep.throat2009@hotmail.com.

H.R. Haldeman, Nixon's White House Chief of Staff

Former CIA covert officer Valerie Plame Wilson

Stu Kreisman: A Dick Cheney Christmas Carol

2008-12-11T17:07:15Z

Dear Diary,

After the last of the spiked eggnog was guzzled, after the last sloppy smooch under the mistletoe had been delivered, I went to sleep with thoughts of candy canes and anthrax attacks dancing inside my head. No sooner had my head hit the pillow than I was awoken by a chilling wind that swept through my bedroom. I looked up and saw an eerie blue light shimmering at the foot of my bed. I pressed the panic button, but the usual floodlights and sirens didn't go off. Something was wrong. I thought about waking the Ol' Ball and Chain, but she'd taken her usual fistful of Xanax before bedtime and could sleep through anything.

The light began to speak with a Texas drawl. "Howdy, Dick. Good to see ya again." The voice sounded familiar, but I said nothing. The shimmering light disappeared, and out of the darkness strode my old buddy Ken Lay. I grabbed the loaded Glock I keep under my pillow and fired three shots, but the bullets went right through him. "Kenny Boy. What are you doing here?" I said. "Don't you know you need level five security clearance to get in this room?"

"Fer cryin' out loud, gimmie a break, will you?" he whined. "I'm dead."

"What do you want with me? Didn't I give you enough government handouts when we drew up the energy budget? You need some more?"

Ken sighed. "Here I am, a friggin' ghost, and all you can talk about is business. Jesus, aren't you a little curious about what I've been up to?"

I felt a fleeting flush of embarrassment, so I played along with him. "Sorry. So, what's new? How's the afterlife?"

"It sucks," he replied. "People all drive Priuses and electric cars. I'm stuck on a commune with a bunch of vegans growing soybeans. Soybean soup, soybean pizza. Haven't had anything that looks like meat since I got there. They actually make me hug a tree for an hour each day. I feel like an idiot. Every night I have to go to the same concert, where Woody Guthrie sings the same boring union songs. The only radio is NPR, and the biodegradable toilet paper is givin' me a rash!"

"Sounds like hell."

"It IS hell, ya durn galoot! I ran into Jerry Falwell, and he told me when he's not canvassing for Greenpeace, he's forced to take yoga lessons in the nude!"

"Look, this is all really interesting," I lied, "but I've got to get back to sleep. I have a lot of presents to open tomorrow. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out." I said as I laid back down in bed.

Kenny Boy turned to leave, then stopped. "Oh, I almost forgot. The reason I'm here. I have to warn you that you'll be visited by three ghosts."

"What the...? I've got to go through this three more times? Shit."

"Sorry, Dick. Gotta go. I play zither in the commune folk band, and I'm late for rehearsal. We're opening for Burl Ives next week." Kenny Boy started to fade away. "Remember, don't believe what you read in the business section..."

He was gone. I leaned back and tried to catch some Z's. Suddenly I felt someone shaking my leg. Slowly I reached under my bed and grabbed the loaded crossbow I'd kept for emergencies like this. I sat up and fired. The bow went right through the ghostly figure, shattering a Tiffany lamp that was a gift from Nicolas Sarkozy.

I looked at the specter. It was my mentor, Ronald Regan. "Why hello, Dick. Good to see you again."

"Hello, Mr. President. I'm honored."

"Aw shucks, Dick, we're old friends. Just call me Ronnie. That reminds me of a story. You know, back in the day when I was at Warner Brothers, Humphrey Bogart and Betty Bacall used to give these wonderful parties. Well, one night I was at their place hanging out with Jimmy Stewart when the phone rang. I happened to be the nearest to the phone so I picked it up, and you'll never guess..."

"Gee, Mr. President, I'd love to hear another of your pointless anecdotes about old Hollywood, but I don't think that's why you're here."

He thought for a moment and then brightened. "You know, you're right. I've got something to show you. Come on over here." He motioned for me to join him at the foot of my bed, so I got up and walked into the twilight that surrounded him.

Suddenly I was back in the Wyoming plains of my youth. The old red schoolhouse I attended. A group of children romped in the playground. It was Miss Johannson's second grade class. A young me was just finishing beating up one of the weaker kids in the class. Then I shoved a firecracker up a kitten's ass and blew it up. Gosh, those were fun days. "This is all fine and dandy, but what's the point of coming here?" I asked Reagan.

He looked a little bewildered. "Gee, I don't know. I don't have my note cards. You know what I'm like if I try to go off script. I think I was supposed to say something about what a great kid you were or tell you my old Chicago Cubs wire reader story. Oh well, let's go back to your place."

We turned around and I was back in my bedroom at stately Cheney Manor. "Ronnie? Mr. President?" I whispered, but he was gone. Must have taken a wrong turn and got lost again. I shrugged my shoulders and hopped back into the sack. I was just drifting off to snoozeville when I felt someone tapping my foot. I reached under the mattress and grabbed my antique but still active WW2 German stick grenade (a gift from Prime Minister Merkel) and threw it at the ghost. It went through him and exploded, blasting a hole in the wall between the bedroom and my personal bathroom. I looked over at the Ol' Ball and Chain. She was still snoring away. I made a mental note to buy some shares of whoever makes Xanax. I looked at the blue shimmering light. It was a ghost all right, but not one that I expected.

"Bob Novak? What the hell are you doing here? You're not dead!"

"Oh yeah?" Novak replied. "My career is, thanks to you and your damn Valerie Plame fixation. This is the only paying gig I could get. CNN kicked me out on my keister, newspapers everywhere are dropping my column, and my latest book went straight to the bargain bin. Thanks for the exclusives, jackass."

"Why I oughtta..." I said as I jumped out of bed, ready to punch the ungrateful bastard in his new set of oversized dentures when I realized that since he was a ghost, my fist would just whiff the air. I decided to cut my losses. "Okay, let's get this over with. Where are you taking me?"

"Hold on a minute, Cheney," he said as he waved his hands in the air and started making ridiculous spooky sounds.

"What the hell are you doing?" I said as he went "Whooooooo" and did some kind of spastic jig around my bed.

"It's in the contract. I have to do this or I won't get paid. Whooooooooo! Okay. I'm done. Let's go." We walked into the blue mist.

When the mist cleared, we were standing in the foyer of a well-to-do home. I heard a young girl cry, "But I wanted a diamond Rolex for Christmas!" I looked into the dining room and spotted Lil' Alberto comforting his daughter while the rest of the family ate their holiday dinner.

"I told you, honey, it's been a rough year," he said. "Daddy isn't able to skim money off the judicial budget anymore. We're all going to have to tighten our belts."

His daughter continued to cry. "It just isn't fair!"

"She's right," said his shrewish wife. "They promised you a seven-figure book deal. So where is it, Mr. Big Shot?"

"Vice President Cheney said he'd take care of it. We just have to be patient. Now finish your duck l'orange."

"We can't even afford a Christmas turkey or a new seventy-two-inch hi-def TV!" his son whined.

"It's that damned Cheney's fault," moaned his wife. "I told you to stay away from that creep. Why you took the fall for him I'll never know."

"I hate Dick Cheney!" cried his daughter. "I wish he was dead!"

"Now, now. Don't say that. It's a federal offense, and I'll have to arrest you," said Lil' Alberto. "The vice president is a good man. He's diverted millions to us so we can live this lifestyle. It could be a lot worse. We could be middle class. Dick Cheney is a man of his word. I'm positive he'll come through with the book bonus, and you'll get your diamond Rolex. Now please pass the caviar."

"You're such a sap, Alberto," his wife muttered. "You're such a sap."

"Why, that bitch!" I sneered. "Let's sneak into the kitchen and screw with her appliances. That'll fix her."

"Nope, gotta go," said Novak as he spun me around.

We were back in my bedroom. "What's the rush, Novak? Got a deadline to make? Heh heh heh."

"I wish," he sighed. "Gotta run to my other job. The only steady TV gig I could score was a weekly minute of news commentary for the Food Network. You really screwed me good, you jerk weed! Whoooooooo!" He disappeared into the blue mist.

"What an ungrateful bastard," I muttered as I crawled back into bed. I tried to catch some shut-eye, but I heard another noise. I reached to my night table, grabbed my ninja star, and threw it at the figure lurking in the shadows.

"What the...? Owww! That hurts! Why'd ya do that, boss?" It was Rusty, my limo driver.

"Rusty! What the hell are you doing in here?"

"I was cleaning out the limo and found your Blackberry in the backseat, boss. I thought I'd leave it up here 'cause I know ya got all them big government secrets on it. And now I got a ninja star stuck in my arm. What gives? Jeez, boss, I'm losin' a lot of blood here. Ya got a Band-Aid or somethin'?"

"Go downstairs and get Francisco to clean you up," I muttered.

Rusty turned to leave but stopped at the door. "You alright, boss? Ya look like you saw a ghost."

"I'm fine. Now get out of here before your blood ruins the carpeting."

"Sure thing, boss. Oh, and thanks for my Christmas bonus. How'd you know I like caramel corn?"

"I have my sources. Now scram," I said as he closed the bedroom door.

I was just about to hit the road to dreamland when I heard rumblings at the foot of the bed. Instead of grabbing for the bowie knife I kept strapped to my leg, I just sat up. In the mist was a hooded figure who said nothing. His skeletal finger motioned me to join him. "Yeah, yeah, I know the drill," I said as I trudged with him into the mist.

When the smoke cleared, we were standing in front of a large, imposing building. "Where are we?" I asked. The hooded figure pointed to the building. Suddenly a young man and woman dressed in Dutch outfits, wearing wooden shoes and eating hunks of Gouda cheese, walked by. "Welcome to The Hague," said the Dutch boy. "The Hague?" I sputtered. "Then this must be the tribunal for war criminals!" My spooky sherpa nodded in the affirmative. He led me to the back of the building, where there was an unkempt graveyard. My hooded companion pointed to a mass paupers' grave. I read the names etched on the wooden grave marker.

"Here lie the remains of convicted war criminals George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Antonin Scalia, David Addington, Paul Wolfowitz, Alberto Gonzales... No! Not Lil' Alberto!" My eyes started to tear up, but I realized that it was just allergies. The stranger in the hood pointed at the last name on the marker. I cleared away the weeds and animal feces and read aloud, "...and Richard Bruce Cheney." I turned to the dark specter. "Gee, there's a surprise. I didn't see that one coming." I chuckled sarcastically. Mr. Death poked me in the eye with his skeletal index finger. "Okay, you win. I'm scared," I lied. He spun me around and I was back at home.

I awoke some time later just as the dawn was breaking. I ran to the window and opened it. Down below were Francisco, my trusty manservant, Mr. Bacciagalupe, my pastry chef, and Rusty the limo driver, all grabbing some smokes in the backyard. "What day is today?" I asked.

"Hey, whatsamatta you? It's a Christmas," said Bacciagalupe.

"Great! Then I still have some time left!" I grabbed a fistful of twenties and tossed it to the guys.

"Here you go, fellas. Buy a couple of cartons of Luckies on me! And clean the butts off the patio before you leave!"

"Gee, that's swell. Thanks, boss," said Rusty.

Feeling invigorated with the Christmas spirit, I got on the secure phone, made some quick calls, and pardoned everyone on my staff, the cabinet, and even Lil' Alberto. But not Harriet Miers. Screw her. Then I leaned back and laughed. A nice hearty laugh. I guess this year WILL be the best Christmas ever.

Dick

This is an excerpt from Dick Cheney's Diary available here, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.

Bob Novak: I Would Out Valerie Plame Again

2008-12-04T09:01:12Z

During a recent interview with the National Ledger, conservative columnist Robert Novak was asked if he would reveal Valerie Plame Wilson's secret CIA identity if he could go back and do it all over again. Novak noted that he has previously said he "should have ignored" what he had been told about Plame, but he now claims he is "much less ambivalent":

NOVAK: I'd go full speed ahead because of the hateful and beastly way in which my left-wing critics in the press and Congress tried to make a political affair out of it and tried to ruin me. My response now is this: The hell with you. They didn't ruin me. I have my faith, my family, and a good life. A lot of people love me -- or like me. So they failed. I would do the same thing over again because I don't think I hurt Valerie Plame whatsoever.

Bob Novak On Valerie Plame Affair: "The Hell With You"

2008-11-10T13:02:18Z

Bob Novak has been covering politics--and making people mad--for half a century. Now battling a brain tumor, he talks about his illness, the best and worst presidents, and what he'd do differently.

Whether you like him or hate him, Robert Novak's combination of insider dope, political pronouncements, and glowering TV presence have made him a Washington institution. So the announcement in July that he was suspending his newspaper column because of a brain tumor came as a jolt. What other journalist has been tearing up the town with so much relish for the past 51 years?

I spent some time with Novak five years ago for The Washingtonian, chronicling his journey from secular Jew to devout Catholic. Somewhat to my surprise, the scowling, sardonic columnist turned out to be a peach of a subject. He gave me plenty of time in spite of his killer schedule and seemed utterly candid. No subject was off limits.

Brian Normoyle: Bob Novak Just Doesn't Get It

2008-11-06T13:05:06Z

In the Wednesday edition of the Chicago Sun-Times, conservative columnist Robert Novak claimed Barack Obama's historical election last night was not "a broad mandate from the public" and the ensuing Democratic wave did little to change the political alignment in congress. Given recent history and the evidence of a shifting tide in American politics, I'm hard pressed to find a more inaccurate assessment of the outcome.

George W. Bush and Co. declared a "mandate" from the people shortly after his reelection in 2004 by a mere 35 electoral vote-margin. He did so despite barely eking out a majority with 50.7% of the popular vote over John Kerry's 48.3%. Incidentally, this 2.4% margin of victory was the narrowest win for any elected incumbent seeking reelection in all of American history--and he was a war-time Commander in Chief.

Obama sailed over John McCain last night with a clear majority of over 53% of the popular vote and a 6%, 7.4-million vote margin of victory that is over twice that of his predecessor. And with an electoral-vote margin of nearly 200 (over five times that of Bush), Obama's win constitutes not just more than double the "mandate" claimed by Bush, it is an historic landslide by contemporary standards.

The President-Elect flipped eight Bush states to the blue column and managed to get two states -- Indiana and Virginia -- to elect a Democrat for President for the first time in nearly half a century. Solidly red North Carolina hasn't sent a Democrat to the White House in 22 years but they seem likely poised to do so this year. And the changing maps in this election weren't limited to just the Presidency.

In the Senate, Democrats were successful in unseating the incumbent Republicans in New Hampshire, Oregon and North Carolina and won seats formerly held by Republicans in Virginia, Colorado and New Mexico. They failed to upset Republican leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky but, much like the races in blood-red Alaska and Georgia, the outcome should never have been in doubt or so razor-close. This is indeed a year of changing political landscapes.

At the time of this writing, it's still unclear whether a liberal former television writer from New York City will replace the conservative incumbent in Minnesota. And while it is true Democrats will likely fall short of a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, they gained at least six seats and--not counting the unknown outcomes in Alaska, Minnesota, and Georgia--will hold the largest effective majority of either party since 1978. Democratic gains in the House were not of the scale of the Republicans in the last big change election (1980), but they won a majority margin Republicans haven't enjoyed in nearly 80 years.

Some say this election was a referendum on Bush and his failed economic policies. In order to push Bush as far into the background as possible, McCain tried to make it a referendum on Obama, his policies, and his vision for the country. Well, voters answered with the highest turnout ever for a presidential election.

No matter how empty the narrative conservatives choose to salve their wounds of defeat, the unmistakable reality of the 2008 election is that America -- red and blue, young and old, rich and poor -- indeed gave Obama and Democrats an overwhelming and, yes, history-making nod of approval. If Bob Novak doesn't think these vote totals, reshaped electoral map and switching of traditionally red states constitute a "mandate," then I'd be interested to learn what he thinks does.

Read more reaction from HuffPost bloggers to Barack Obama's victory in the 2008 presidential election

Sandy Goodman: After Brain Surgery, He's Still The Same Old Robert Novak

2008-09-08T11:27:23Z

I wouldn't wish a brain tumor on my worst enemy, and the conservative columnist Robert Novak, whom I've never met, is certainly no enemy of mine, even though I disagree with most of what he writes. But, having said that, I must point out that his latest column, written while he's recuperating from brain cancer surgery, shows that while Novak can be exceedingly gracious to people who helped him through his ordeal, especially those on the other side of the political divide, he can still be spiteful and deceptive when it comes to those he doesn't like.

As ill as he is, the 77-year-old Novak still has it in for Valerie Plame, whose career as a covert CIA officer he destroyed by publishing her name and employer, and Plame's husband, Joe Wilson. Wilson charged that a Novak column in July 2003 was part of a White House attempt to retaliate against him for disputing Bush's claim--later retracted-- that Iraq had sought uranium from the African country of Niger, one reason the president gave for invading Iraq.

In a syndicated column published last weekend, Novak tells how he learned he had the cancerous tumor, what he's done about it, and who helped him. The headline over his column in the Tampa Tribune sums it up nicely: "Finding A Brain Tumor, Discovering Friends."

Some background: on July 23, driving his Corvette in downtown Washington, Novak hit an 86-year-old pedestrian at a crosswalk and kept going. He was flagged down a block away by a bicyclist who chased him, told him what he'd done, and called police. Novak said he didn't realize he'd hit anyone. "I never saw him," he says in his column.

The cyclist, David Bono, a partner in a law firm, said he didn't believe Novak. "There was a pedestrian splayed on his windshield--I don't think there is any way you can miss that." Another eyewitness, Gary Cohen, didn't either. "I did not believe Novak did not see or feel the impact. I don't know how anyone could."

But apparently the cop did believe the columnist. He gave Novak just a $50 fine for failing to give the pedestrian the right-of-way, instead of charging him with leaving the scene of an accident, a felony. Novak says in his column that police who took his victim to the hospital noted that the man had "no visible injuries." Perhaps not, but the victim, who lives in a homeless shelter, suffered a dislocated shoulder that had to be reset, and spent a few days in the hospital, something Novak fails to tell us.

Over the next few days, Novak tells us, he and his family got more indications that something was seriously wrong with him. He lost his way to the dentist's office, and had trouble finding his own. After he had difficulty following his wife at an airport, his daughter insisted he go to a hospital, where a CT scan revealed a brain mass. The next day, while visiting the daughter and her family in Massachusetts, he had three seizures and was hospitalized, diagnosed, and told he had six months to a year to live.

Bolstered by his Catholic faith (he converted from Judaism 10 years ago), Novak says he consulted the California oncologist who had successfully treated him for lung cancer in 1994. That doctor recommended the surgeon who had operated on Senator Edward Kennedy for a cancerous brain tumor earlier this summer, Dr. Alan H. Friedman at Duke University Medical Center. It is interesting to read the names of the people the conservative columnist names as most supportive in his time of trouble.

My dear friend, the Democratic political operative Bob Shrum, asked Sen. Kennedy's wife, Vickie to call me about Dr. Friedman, I barely knew Mrs. Kennedy, but I have found her to be a warm and gracious person. I have had few good things to say about Teddy Kennedy since I first met him at the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, but he and his wife have treated me as a close friend. She was enthusiastic about Dr. Friedman and urged me to opt for the surgery at Duke, which I did.

"The Kennedys were not concerned by political and ideological differences when someone's life was at stake," Novak continues. He also says that liberal journalist Al Hunt "has become a close friend, though we disagree about almost everything," and that Hunt and his wife, PBS correspondent Judy Woodruff, "have been staunch pillars of support during this ordeal."

Novak says his tumor was removed and he's back home but "of course, cancer cells remain, requiring a rigorous regimen of radiation and chemotherapy," at a Washington hospital. The surgeon urged him to try to restore part of his normal life. That, he says, is why he wrote the column.

Novak talks of "an outpouring of good will for me...from all sides, including political figures who had not been happy with my columns." One was President Bush who phoned him a few minutes before surgery. This, despite the fact that Bush "has not liked my criticism, particularly of his Iraq war policy."

Among his enemies are "mad bloggers who profess to take delight in my distress." And he names two other people: "Joe and Valerie Wilson, attempting to breathe life into the Valerie Plame 'scandal' issued this statement: 'We have long argued that responsible adults should take Novak's typewriter away. The time has arrived for them to also take away the keys to his Corvette.' Thanks to my tumor, the Wilsons have achieved half of their desires. I probably never will be able to drive again, and I have sold the Corvette, which I dearly loved. Taking away my typewriter, however, may require modification of the First Amendment."

Those awful, cold-hearted Wilsons. Sounds like while everyone else, including all those liberals, were supporting Novak through his ordeal, the terrible Wilsons were ruthlessly attacking him, doesn't it? "Despicable duo," wrote one commenter on a right-wing blog. "Of excrement, the Plame-Wilsons surely are the smelliest," cried another. "An ugly attack by two liberals," wrote a third.

The trouble is, Novak is distorting the truth. The Wilsons made their statement on July 23, the day Novak hit the pedestrian and would have kept going if he hadn't been stopped. His denial sounded ridiculous in the face of the eyewitness accounts. Then he got off with a $50 fine, instead of being charged with a felony. Those were the facts when the Wilsons made their statement. It sounded like a classic case of Washington at work. A famous, powerful person does something bad, hurts someone, breaks the law, and gets off easy.

According to his own account, Novak wasn't diagnosed with a brain tumor until four days later. And he didn't make that fact public until a fifth day, July 28. So there's no way the Wilsons could possibly have known that his illness, which has left him partially blind, was the reason for the accident. But Novak never points that out and blames them anyway.

In any case, the last people in the world who could be expected to cut Novak some slack were Joe and Valerie Wilson. Novak published Plame's name, forcing her resignation, even after CIA information officer Bill Harlow pleaded with him not to do so, warning it could cause problems for her. The CIA asked for the Justice Department investigation of the leaking of her name. And documents, including a statement cleared by then-CIA director Michael Hayden, made it clear beyond question that Plame was a secret CIA officer. That statement said in part:

During her employment at the CIA, Ms. Wilson was undercover. Her employment status with the CIA was classified information, prohibited from disclosure under Executive Order 12958. At the time of the publication of Robert Novak's column on July 14, 2003 [which revealed Plame's identity], Ms Wilson's CIA employment status was covert. This was classified information. Ms. Wilson served in senior management.

In his successful prosecution of vice presidential chief of staff Lewis (Scooter) Libby in the ensuing scandal, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald supported Wilson's claim that public disclosure of Plame's identity was White House retaliation against him. Fitzgerald told the jury: "a critic points fingers at the White House and as a result his wife gets dragged into the newspapers."

Maybe now it's just his illness talking. But Robert Novak still seems to be trying to take revenge on the Wilsons.

Novak Column Describes Cancer Treatment

2008-09-06T22:44:04Z

CHICAGO — Since being diagnosed with brain cancer, Robert Novak has lost partial vision and undergone surgery to remove a tumor, the conservative political commentator wrote in a column published Saturday.

In a piece entitled "My brain tumor brings out the best in people" posted on the Chicago Sun-Times' Web site, Novak details his life since his diagnosis, including losing his way to his longtime office and having seizures.

Bob Novak Writes In To Advocate Against "Lieberman Disaster"

2008-08-27T08:59:16Z

Creators Syndicate is pleased to announce that Robert D. Novak will be writing occasional columns. All his groundbreaking election analysis will be available on creators.com. Read it here first.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Reports of strong support within John McCain's presidential campaign for Independent Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman as the Republican candidate for vice president are not a fairy tale. Influential McCain backers, plus McCain himself, would pick the pro-choice liberal from Connecticut if they thought they could get away with it.

But they can't get away with it -- and this has been made clear to McCain by none other than Joe Lieberman himself.

Lieberman surely doesn't know that much about Republican politics, but he has close Republican friends. One of them prevailed on Lieberman to tell McCain that a McCain-Lieberman ticket would be a disaster for all concerned, and especially for the GOP.

Bob Novak: I Don't Expect To Beat This Cancer

2008-08-12T16:09:13Z

I spoke to Bob Novak this morning for about 10 minutes. He's leaving Thursday for Duke University Hospital where he will have tumor reduction surgery performed by the same surgeon who operated on Ted Kennedy. After a two week stay in Durham, he will return to his home in Washington to receive chemo and radiation treatment.

Bob said he hoped that the treatment would improve his quality of life as well as extend it. When I asked him whether he thought he could beat the cancer, he said he didn't think so. He also said that some of his doctors have counseled against the surgery, but he thinks they were being too conservative.

Bob received an unexpected but welcomed phone call from Ted Kennedy's wife, wishing him well. When I asked him whether I could visit when he returns to Washington he said, "When you're 77 years old, and you have brain surgery, anything can happen." I told him that if something did happen there would, of course, be grief, but I believed that in the "blink of an eye" we would be seeing each other in Heaven. He replied that he thought that that was a good way to think about it.