Former CIA Spokesman: Novak Lied

Walter Pincus and Jim VandeHei have produced another very well-researched article at WaPo, Prosecutor In CIA Leak Case Casting A Wide Net. They have obviously interviewed several top figures in the case, including Joe Wilson and former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow.

The article makes it look extremely likely that Novak knew Plame was undercover and yet - despite repeated warnings - he went ahead and published her name anyway. In other words, Novak should be locked up in the same cell as Rove. Here is the key passage:

In a strange twist in the investigation, the grand jury -- acting on a tip from Wilson -- has questioned a person who approached Novak on Pennsylvania Avenue on July 8, 2003, six days before his column appeared in The Post and other publications, Wilson said in an interview. The person, whom Wilson declined to identify to The Post, asked Novak about the "yellow cake" uranium matter and then about Wilson, Wilson said. He first revealed that conversation in a book he wrote last year. In the book, he said that he tried to reach Novak on July 8, and that they finally connected on July 10. In that conversation, Wilson said that he did not confirm his wife worked for the CIA but that Novak told him he had obtained the information from a "CIA source."

Novak told the person that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA as a specialist in weapons of mass destruction and had arranged her husband's trip to Niger, Wilson said. Unknown to Novak, the person was a friend of Wilson and reported the conversation to him, Wilson said.

Novak and his attorney, James Hamilton, have declined to discuss the investigation, as has Fitzgerald.

Harlow, the former CIA spokesman, said in an interview yesterday that he testified last year before a grand jury about conversations he had with Novak at least three days before the column was published. He said he warned Novak, in the strongest terms he was permitted to use without revealing classified information, that Wilson's wife had not authorized the mission and that if he did write about it, her name should not be revealed.

Harlow said that after Novak's call, he checked Plame's status and confirmed that she was an undercover operative. He said he called Novak back to repeat that the story Novak had related to him was wrong and that Plame's name should not be used. But he did not tell Novak directly that she was undercover because that was classified.

In a column published Oct. 1, 2003, Novak wrote that the CIA official he spoke to "asked me not to use her name, saying she probably never again will be given a foreign assignment but that exposure of her name might cause 'difficulties' if she travels abroad. He never suggested to me that Wilson's wife or anybody else would be endangered. If he had, I would not have used her name."

Hmmn. A CIA official contacts you about a story and repeatedly tells you not to publish an agent's name. And you don't imagine you might be about to blow her cover? Really? Tell that one to the jury, Novak.

The article also highlights the fact that this Fitzgerald case is no longer just about Plame and Wilson. After all, the 16-word Niger scam was just one of many instances where "facts were being fixed around the intelligence". Fitzgerald is looking at the big picture, asking CIA officials about the inside politics when Bush officials (including CIA head Tenet) started pressuring the Agency to take the blame for the Niger fabrication.

We already know that Tenet told Bush the discovery of WMDs in Iraq was a "slam dunk" certainty. We also know he pressured his officials to take the blame for the neocon's mistakes, then fell on his sword and retired when a scapegoat was needed (although everyone was too polite to report his resignation that way). Now we also know he is being questioned by Fitzgerald. Another cell for this stooge, I think.

And then there is Judith Miller. Pincus and VandeHei make it clear that she remains a key part of the probe:

Fitzgerald has said in court that he had completed most of his investigation at a time when he was pressing for New York Times reporter Judith Miller to testify about any conversations she had with a specific administration official about Plame during the week before Plame's identity was revealed.

Miller, who never wrote a story about the matter, is in jail for refusing to comply with a court order to testify. Court records show Fitzgerald is seeking information about communications she had with the Bush official between July 6 and July 13, 2003, when the White House was attempting to discredit Wilson and his allegations.

Fitzgerald appears to believe that Miller's conversations may help him get to the bottom of the leak and the damage-control campaign undertaken by senior Bush officials that week...

Miller's role remains one of many mysteries in the leak probe. It is unclear whom, if anyone, she spoke to about Plame, and why she emerged as a central figure in the probe despite never having written a story about the case.

Given the importance of this case, Miller's refusal to testify is criminal, and she deserves her jail cell.

As Josh Marshall says, we are looking at a cobweb of lies, "the falsity of which has remained somehow unspeakable in high political debate despite all their transparency." The Rove-Cheney machine launched twin attacks on Wilson and the CIA, despite the fact that both Wilson and the CIA were RIGHT about the Niger nukes fiasco!

And all of this, of course, meant to cover up the big lie -- the administration's knowing use of bogus WMD reports to convince the country to go to war.

Let's hope this Fitzgerald fellow has big cojones. If he is going to come out with the whole sordid tale of Bush & Co's WMD lies, he is going to need them.