Howard Kurtz, the Sunday WaPo. Reporters protect their sources - pro and con, yeah, yeah. But this was interesting:
Timothy Phelps, one of two Newsday reporters cited last week in a White House counsel's order not to destroy documents or phone records in the Wilson case, went through such an ordeal in 1991 [relating to Anita Hill]...
Phelps was hit with a subpoena for his home and office phone records, which was blocked when a Senate committee refused to enforce it. And his government sources came under investigative scrutiny.
"It was very difficult to get any reporting done when they're under this kind of order to produce any records relating to any contact with me," Phelps said. "And that is also the case today. I'm not getting my phone calls returned."
(NOTE: We need research for or against Robert Novak, as explained below)
Here is the story from July 22 that put Mr. Phelps under the microscope. He quotes "intelligence officials", and that was a Bad Thing.
The NY Times reprises the media role in "First a Leak, Then a Predictable Pattern", our current entry for the Self-Referential Title Hall of Fame.
The NY Times manages to excerpt the first two of the fateful sentences from the original Novak column, without getting to the confusion caused by Mr. Novak's further citation of CIA sources. Well, this is a confusing tale, perhaps Times readers will be given that tidbit at a later date.
And the Times ponders Mr. Novak's credibility, as do we all:
One unresolved issue is whether someone approached Mr. Novak with the information about Ms. Plame or whether he learned it doing other reporting. Mr. Novak has told it both ways. In his column on Oct. 1, he said he found out about Ms. Plame in "an offhand revelation" by a senior administration official whom he was questioning about why Mr. Wilson was sent to Niger to find out whether uranium was being shipped for nuclear arms.
Mr. Novak wrote, "The published report that somebody in the White House failed to plant this story with six reporters and finally found me as a willing pawn is simply untrue."
On July 22, Newsday reported that Mr. Novak said in an interview: "I didn't dig it out. It was given to me. They thought it was significant. They gave me the name, and I used it."
Mr. Novakhas addressed the seeming discrepancy on CNN. Shorter Novak - he called the White House to discuss the process under which Ambassador Wilson had been tapped for this assignment, and his WH contact was so forthcoming about Ms. Wilson that "I didn't dig it out...".
Proof positive? Hardly. Inconceivable? Hardly, again. His version does not seem hopelessly inconsistent, as presented in the NY Times. However, on CNN he mentions the Newsday story above, which says:
Novak, in an interview, said his sources had come to him with the information. "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me," he said. "They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it."
Novak, on CNN, says that the phrase "his source had come to him" is a misintepretation (Ahh, "they made it up"), but he has no problem with the quote.
Troubling. For other reasons we peer at Mr. Novak here; we would be delighted to entertain thoughtful debunkings of his emerging (evolving?) story.
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