National Journal: Novak Assured Rove He Would Protect Him

[ProSense]

National Journal: Novak Assured Rove He Would Protect Him

Robert Novak

By E&P Staff

Published: May 25, 2006 1:20 PM ET

NEW YORK Murray Waas, who has broken so many key stories in the Plame/CA leak case for the National Journal, has been rather quiet this month, but emerged today with another bombshel.

On September 29, 2003, three days after it became known that the CIA had asked the Justice Department to investigate who leaked the name of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, "columnist Robert Novak telephoned White House senior adviser Karl Rove to assure Rove that he would protect him from being harmed by the investigation, according to people with firsthand knowledge of the federal grand jury testimony of both men," Waas writes.

"Suspicious that Rove and Novak might have devised a cover story during that conversation to protect Rove, federal investigators briefed then-Attorney General John Ashcroft on the matter in the early stages of the investigation in fall 2003, according to officials with direct knowledge of those briefings....

Snip...

According to Waas, Rove testified to the grand jury that during the phone call, Novak said words to the effect: "You are not going to get burned" and "I don't give up my sources." Rove was one of the "two senior administration" officials who were sources for the July 14, 2003, column in which Novak outed Plame as an "agency operative." Rove and Novak had talked about her on July 9.

Rove also told the grand jury, according Waas' sources, "that in the September 29 conversation, Novak referred to a 1992 incident in which Rove had been fired from the Texas arm of President George H.W. Bush's re-election effort; Rove lost his job because the Bush campaign believed that he had been the source for a Novak column that criticized the campaign's internal workings.

more...

http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002575957

National Journal article:
http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/0525nj1.htm

[fooj]

1. Robert Novak is a traitor to his country.

[Peace Patriot]

2. "You are not going to get burned." Remember that Star Trek: Next...

Generation episode, called "Casino Royale," where an innocent NASA astronaut gets trapped in a well-meaning super-aliens', well-intended human environment, but they don't really understand humans very well, and they build the environment on the basis of a cheap paperback novel that the astronaut just happens to have in his cockpit, called "Casino Royale," a gambling casino/hotel, where cheap crime bosses say things to each other like, "You are not going to get burned."

The aliens are remorseful for having inadvertently zapped an early American space capsule, and save the astronaut's life, but, for reasons unexplained (or I can't recall them), can't return him to earth. They bring the novel to life, in a sort of holodeck, to comfort the astronaut. But it turns out to be a living hell. The novel keeps repeating over and over again, same story, same cheap criminal talk, same characters, same conclusion (some punk gets offed by "Johnny D") and the astronaut dies in the hotel, of boredom and old age, the victim of the super-aliens' good intentions. Commanders Riker and Data find his skeleton in his hotel room bed, next to a copy of "Casino Royale" and his sad journal of his despairing entrapment inside of it.

That's what this reminds me of. Are we in a bad novel, or what?

[Julius Civitatus]

3. Basically Rove threw Novak under the bus

That's the actual conclusion of this article. Novak promised Rove he would protect him. When it came time to testify, Rove squalled and threw Novak under the bus. That's the bigger story underneath.

It's good to see such display of Republican loyalty...

[GOTV]

4. But is Novak under a bus?

As far as I know, he's not in any jeopardy

[Fovea]

6. How can he work as a journalist after this?

Surely his career is over... or is it?

[Kurovski]

8. He's still writing his column and polishing his Corvette.

[GOTV]

9. What's your theory?

That Novak will not be able to work because secret sources no longer trust him? How much of his work really relies on secret sources? Doesn't he mostly comment on news that's known?

[Fovea]

10. My theory is that as a partisan hack

he has urinated in the well of professional journalism, joining the ranks of folks like Jeff Gannon and Judy Miller.

[Supersedeas]

5. that's what it looks like to me--that Rove is so trustworthy

[ProSense]

7. Both of them should be indicted. n/t