In July of last year Novak deliberately repeated administration lies to discredit and silence administration critic Joe Wilson, and, in the process “outed” Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, then an undercover CIA operative.
He’s at it again.
In a column yesterday, he describes a sit-down briefing he took part in that included “a select group of private citizens.” The speaker, whom Novak identifies as Paul R. Pillar, the CIA’s national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, did not speak “off the cuff,” according to Novak. Instead, he relied on a “muti-paged, single-spaced memorandum.”
Let me clarify, Pillar was delivering a confidential background briefing to a group of reporters, given on condition of anonymity. But Novak gets there.
“Pillar's Tuesday night presentation was conducted under what used to be called the Lindley Rule (devised by Newsweek's Ernest K. Lindley): The identity of the speaker, to whom he spoke, and the fact that he spoke at all are secret, but the substance of what he said can be reported.”
And the substance? Novak doesn’t mention it. But today’s Times reports that Pillar had supervised the preparation of an Intelligence Estimate that was given to Bush two months before the US invaded Iraq. Reflecting the views of 15 intelligence agencies, the report “warned of a possible insurgency against the new Iraqi government or American-led forces, saying that rogue elements from Saddam Hussein's government could work with existing terrorist groups or act independently to wage guerrilla warfare… The assessments also said a war would increase sympathy across the Islamic world for some terrorist objectives, at least in the short run.”
Shocking, right? Potentially damaging to the administration, right? Novak ran with it, right? Wrong. Novak’s lede: “the president of the United States and the Central Intelligence Agency are at war with each other.”
Novak decides that an intelligence official passing on information the government knew before the war, information it’s never acknowledged and has attempted to suppress, is not worthy of being passed on to the public. Rather, the fact that Pillar attempted to get it out is so “unprecedented,” Novak outs him. He accuses him (without substance) of also leaking the recently-reported NIE that was delivered to Bush in July, which offered a bleak outlook for Iraq. And, finally, chastises the CIA: “It is supposed to be a resource -- not a critic -- for the president.”
This is so profoundly wrong. Both the CIA and the press are supposed to serve the public, not act as administration puppets.
But what would Novak know about that? He willingly passes on administration lies at great personal cost, and attempts to stifle, at some professional cost (who won’t think twice before briefing Novak on background?) important, truthful information during an election season.
The man deserves to be framed for an embarrassing crime and tossed in jail.