Novak's Denial-You blew a CIA employee's cover, Bob. Live with it.

[babylonsister]

http://www.slate.com/id/2162463/

Novak's Denial
You blew a CIA employee's cover, Bob. Live with it.
by Timothy Noah

Robert Novak remains bizarrely in denial about whether he unmasked a covert employee of the Central Intelligence Agency. At a March 16 congressional hearing, Valerie Plame Wilson testified, under oath, "I served the United States loyally and to the best of my ability as a covert operations officer for the Central Intelligence Agency. … In the run-up to the war with Iraq, I worked in the counterproliferation division of the CIA, still as a covert officer whose affiliation with the CIA was classified."

Rep. John Yarmuth, D-Ky., asked Plame whether she had been covert until July 14, 2003, when Novak published his column identifying her as a CIA employee. She answered in the affirmative. If Novak didn't want to take Plame's word for it, there was always Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House committee Plame was testifying before. In his opening statement, he said,

Ms. Wilson was a covert employee of the CIA. We cannot discuss all of the details of her CIA employment in open session. I have met with—personally with General Hayden, the head of the CIA, to discuss what I can and cannot say about Ms. Wilson's service. And I want to thank him for his cooperation and help in guiding us along these lines. … 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, Ms. Wilson's CIA employment status was covert. This was classified information.

Executive Order 12958 says, "If there is significant doubt about the need to classify information, it shall not be classified." To be classified, information must, at a minimum, be something whose disclosure "reasonably could be expected to cause serious damage to the national security that the original classification authority is able to identify or describe."

None of this strikes me as particularly ambiguous. Yet Novak, in his March 22 column, refuses to believe it. To be sure, he concedes, Waxman "was correctly quoting Hayden." But Hayden's willingness to state that Plame was covert does not, in Novak's view, decide the matter. It merely confirms "Republican suspicions that Hayden is too close to Democrats."

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[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. Does Novak realize

that by outing Plame he not only ruined a covert operation, but put several lives in danger? Do we know if anyone was killed because of the outing? How can Novak think what he did helped the country?

[Spazito]

2. Novak knew exactly what he was doing, imo

We are not talking about a "newbie" here, Novak has been around for a very long time. Rove uses him regularly to get the "message" out. Rove got fired by Poppy bush and there was a connection to Novak way back then.

Novak was told to out her AND her cover agency and he did exactly that.

[SoCalDem]

3. He got fired once for "blabbing".. this is not new to him

He's a vindictive old coot.