Larisa Alexandrovna: Is Someone Leaking Classified Info To Robert Novak Again?

[Hissyspit]

http://www.atlargely.com/2007/07/is-someone-leak.html

Is someone leaking classified information to Robert Novak again?

Robert Novak, the worthless hack for Karl Rove, is out pimping his book The Prince of Darkness (a better title might have been "My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult"). According to a blogger at DailyKos, Novak made an interesting assertion while on the Tucker show. He apparently claimed that Valerie Plame-Wilson was outed by Robert Hanssen, the Russian FBI spy who also, like Karl Rove, happened to leak classified information to Robert Novak.

This was on the tube, so I don't yet have a transcript of the alternate reality in which Novak roams around in. But if Novak did in fact say this, then boy do I have some serious issues with that statement. Before I begin with the logical pickle Novak has now encased himself in, I want to assure you folks that Novak is lying, or worse, being fed bad information - which is worse, because it means that Karl Rove is still hoping to score a direct hit on anyone in a 50 mile radius of Valerie Wilson who might have had a bagle once with Robert Hanssen. I am more inclined to think that Novak wanted to say Aldrich Ames, because that is a popular far right talking point, despite it being equally as laughable. But let us stick to the Hanssen narrative for now.

Problem 1: I interviewed the FBI agent, Eric O'Neill, who brought down Robert Hanssen. If you want to get an idea of how that played out, I suggest you rent the excellent film Breach. O'Neill explained to me that the damage assessment of Hanssen's activities has the highest classification and is fully known to only a few people. Not even he, O'Neill, knew the extent of the damages and who was or was not compromised. In fact, the US government is still trying to assess the damage to our national security. But, let us assume for a moment that what Novak was saying were true, how did he come by that information? This is not information - were it true - that would be provided, even if requested by the President, to any single person in full. So either Robert Novak needs to admit he is lying, or Robert Novak needs to be dragged back in front of Fitzgerald. By the way, the same applies to the Ames case, because as with Hanssen, the damage assessment would be highly classified.

Problem 2: If Valerie Plame's cover was blown ages ago, why was she then tasked to find WMD in Iraq by President Bush? Or for that matter, why was she tasked to monitor WMD movement in and out of Iran? Is Robert Novak claiming that he knows something that even the DCI did not know or the Director of Operations at the CIA did not know? Is Novak saying that despite this breach, something as important as WMD in Iran/Iraq would have been given to an agent who had her cover blown "ages ago?" More importantly, is Robert Novak claiming to know that Mrs. Wilson - despite being a covert officer of the agency - was outed and continued to travel abroad and possibly put other agents and officers into harms way? Is Robert Novak certain he is not the one who has been outed "ages ago" as an Opus Dei loyalist who regularly acts like a spy's proxy, once for Hanssen (at least that we know of, who knows what he and Hanssen did on their Opus Dei prayer sessions together), and once for Rove and Armitage? This would also apply to the Ames scenario, because the same questions still stand despite who the claimed blower of covers was.

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[ShortnFiery]

1. If there were justice in this world Robert Novak would share an jail cell with a guy named "Tiny"

:evilgrin:

[Kagemusha]

2. Note that it's still a crime to willfully leak a cover ID that's been blown.

There are very simple reasons why that is so, but I want to stick to the point: it's still a crime if you do it, KNOWING that is what you are doing. Believing that it's not a crime because someone else blew the cover to the Russians (but not the rest of the civilized world) is totally not a defense.

[CK_John]

3. The connection seems to be through the cult "Opus Dei". Hanssen, Novak and Justice Scalia. n/t

[formercia]

6. They have their own agenda

and it's not upholding and defending the Constitution.

[Alexander]

4. How is he still walking free?

Novak belongs in jail for the rest of his life.

[Virginia Dare]

12. He should probably be hung for treason...n/t

[caligirl]

5. Hanson leaked to the soviets, the rest of the world may not have ever been told.

may still not have been public knowledge in other countries. Novak is taking advantage of Hanson being in a position where he cannot deny it. No one will believe him. Novak found another like himself, a patsy.

[nonny]

7. Outed years earlier by Aldrich Ames

Transcript is up now.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19850919/

CARLSON: I am honored to have you. I have never interviewed you before, though I‘ve often wanted to.

I‘m not sucking up when I say your book is tremendous, better even than I thought it would be.

On page 10, I am stopped in my tracks by this quote, which I didn‘t know this. You‘re talking about Valerie Plame, Valerie Wilson, Joe Wilson‘s wife, and you said this, quote: “I learned much later that Mrs. Wilson had been outed years earlier by the traitor and Soviet agent Aldrich Ames, which had ended her career as a covert agent long before I wrote about her.”

That—I don‘t know if that‘s publicly known. I‘ve just asked the people in the studio if they knew. They didn‘t. Are you the first to report that? How do you know that?

NOVAK: I was told that by CIA people, and had three or four sources on that. I have—I have—it‘s almost common knowledge in the intelligence community.

CARLSON: Huh. So, all the talk, you are saying, about the outing of Valerie Plame hurting American national security is not true, it had already been hurt?

NOVAK: I think it‘s all utter nonsense. And all this stuff coming out of the agency—I have never trusted the people in the CIA, and I trust them even less after this incident. Of course, the fact that she, that Mrs. Wilson worked for the CIA had never appeared in public print until I wrote it in my column. So that‘s—if you want to say that—

Aldrich Ames was not a columnist; he was a traitor, and he passed the word to the Soviets.

snip--

Something else interesting that Novak says:

NOVAK: President Bush is the third Bush I covered. I covered his grandfather, for goodness sakes, who was a very liberal Republican, Senator Prescott Bush of Connecticut. And each generation they have gotten a little more conservative. And George W. is the most conservative, but he‘s not a real conservative. He really does believe in big government. He believes in things like the special entitlement for prescription drugs, No Child Left Behind. He likes that sort of thing, and he was never really into reducing the size of the government.

So I think that it was natural that he succumbed to the Woodrow Wilson doctrine of using American power and might to spread democracy around the world, which is never a good idea.

snip--

I wonder what he wrote about Prescott?

[OzarkDem]

9. Novak changing his story, like his diapers

Gee, his last "version" of the story was that Plame wasn't covert at all. When is he going to get his lies straight or is he just making crap up as he goes along (hence the diaper reference).

Of course he knows no matter how many lies he tells, the right wing corporate news media will still report whatever he has to say with nary a question about the holes in his stories.

[nonny]

10. Tucker

It was sickening how Tucker was kissing up to Novak.

I say -- put 'em both in diapers!

:puke:

[OzarkDem]

8. Her cover wasn't blown ages ago

another right wing myth. Novak is trying to pass the buck, as usual. Her cover was blown when Novak wrote about her in his column, not before.

[ThomWV]

11. The moment he drug "Opus Dei" into the story it lost all credibility

Just another one of the anti Catholic howlers.

[unc70]

13. Why does dragging "Opus Dei" in lose credibility?

The relationships between Hansen and Novack are widely documented, including those with Church affiliations.

The OP raised a question wrt Hansen that is not entirely unreasonable given what I know. On what are you basing your immediate dismissal of this even being asked wrt Hansen? (I know the transcript shows the reference was to Aldrich Ames.)