Novak's Limited Plame-gate Hang-Out

By Robert Parry
July 10, 2007

Right-wing columnist Robert Novak has played a complex game in advancing the Bush administration’s “Plame-gate” cover-up. Novak was the one who first published the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame; he then answered a few questions before going silent; now, he is making a series of misleading arguments via his columns.

Novak’s deceptions and the complicity of major news organization that publish his column without demanding clarifications may be unprecedented in the history of U.S. journalism. Theoretically at least, news organizations are expected to ferret out government wrongdoing, not act as accomplices in the crime and then abettors of the cover-up.

Yet pieced together, Novak’s hedged disclosures and other evidence, including facts from the trial of former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, shed light on the dark underbelly of this extraordinary scandal, albeit sometimes unintentionally.