Novak Interview With Brit Hume

A fair use excerpt:

SHOW: FOX SPECIAL REPORT WITH BRIT HUME 6:00 PM EST

July 12, 2006 Wednesday

071203cb.254

NEWS; Domestic

3283  words

Interview with Robert Novak

Jim Angle, Brit Hume

Robert Novak

HUME: In a couple of minutes, I'll have an exclusive interview with the syndicated columnist Robert Novak on how he came to reveal the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame, a revelation that triggered an extensive investigation, an indictment and let also the allegations that the Bush administration deliberately outed Plame to discredit her husband, Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson. Some highlights and background first from chief Washington correspondent Jim Angle. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)JIM ANGLE, FOX NEWS CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Bob Novak flatly disputed the assertion by Joe Wilson and other critics that the Bush administration mounted a concerted campaign to discredit him after he criticized pre-war intelligence. Novak, whose July 2003 column unleashed the whole controversy, says he saw no indication of that.  ROBERT NOVAK, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: I saw no such campaign. Nobody in the administration ever said anything critical about Wilson to me. And my column was not critical of Wilson. ANGLE: And he said no one belittled Wilson. In his first interview about what he calls the firestorm ignited by his original column, Novak says he simply set out to explain how it was that Joe Wilson, a fierce critic of the administration, had been sent to Africa to investigate reports Saddam Hussein was trying to obtain uranium for nuclear weapons.He says he first learned it was Wilson's wife who suggested him for the job from a still unidentified official with whom he was discussing general foreign policy issues and who mentioned it in passing. NOVAK: I don't believe that it was a conscious leak. As I have said a couple of times in the column, I said this is not a political gun slinger.ANGLE: The next official Novak called was White House adviser Karl Rove. Novak says they only talked about it for some 20 seconds and when asked about Wilson's wife, Rove said only that he'd heard that too.Wilson went to the African counter of Niger in early 2002 to investigate reports Saddam's agents were seeking uranium. When he returned, he told the CIA it was highly unlikely that Saddam's agents had succeeded because of safeguards.But according to former CIA director George Tenet, Wilson also found that a former prime minister of Niger was approached by a visiting Iraqi delegated in 1999 and Tenet later issued a statement saying, "The former official interpreted the overture as an effort to discuss uranium sales."President Bush didn't mention that, but did talk about Iraqi nuclear ambitions in his 2003 state of the union address, including similar reports from the British, the famous 16 words. GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.ANGLE: In July 2003, Wilson wrote an op/ed in the "New York Times" sharply critical of the administration. He left out the Iraqi delegation seeking uranium and focused instead on their failure to obtain any. Then concluded, "I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."(END VIDEOTAPE) ANGLE: That argument still rages, but even after Wilson's column, former CIA director Tenet said most of the intelligence community had believed that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. He said a classified report cited six reasons, none of them involving the African issue that became the center of the controversy. Brit? HUME: Jim, thank you. Next on SPECIAL REPORT, Bob Novak describes for the first time the actual conversation in which Valerie Plame's role with the CIA was revealed. Stay tuned. HUME: I'm joined now by the syndicated columnist and Fox News contributor Robert Novak whose original column three years ago sparked the whole Valerie Plame so-called leak investigation.Bob, welcome. NOVAK: Thank you. HUME: Characterize, as best you can, the conversation you had with the person who told you that Valerie Plame was CIA. How did you come to be talking to this person? What were you principally talking about? What was said? NOVAK: it was an interview with a senior administration official who wasn't an easy guy to get to see. He gave me...HUME: In person?NOVAK: In person. He gave me an interview, hours interview. Nobody else present. It was the kind of interview that you know is not to be attributed to him. We didn't sit down and sign a contract, but you knew what it was because he was very candid.We talked about a lot of things, including Joe Wilson's mission to Niger, which he was paying a lot of attention to as a reason why the president misstated the need to intervene in Iraq.In the course of that interview, he told me that it was initiated -- his mission in Niger.I said: Why would they send Joe Wilson to Niger -- he's not CIA? Why would the CIA send him there -- he's not a CIA agent. He is not anybody who knows Niger that well. He served there a long time ago.He said his wife worked in the Office of Nuclear Proliferation in CIA and she suggested he go. HUME: And that was it? NOVAK: That was it. HUME: All right, now... NOVAK: I wrote a column about his mission to Niger, which was not very critical of Joe Wilson. I was more of a free reporting column. And I threw that in the middle of it. HUME: Now, when you first heard that, did you think some real nugget had just dropped in your lap?NOVAK: Yes, it was a nice nugget. It wasn't anything that I would lead the column with, but in the middle of the column... HUME: All right. Now, you subsequently have said that that was confirmed to you by Karl Rove. NOVAK: That's right. HUME: Did you call Rove or did he call you? NOVAK: I called Rove. HUME: Did you call him for the purpose of getting this confirmed, or did this come up in passing? NOVAK: I called him for several reasons. I wanted to talk about the column I was writing about the mission to Niger. This is also, as almost all my conversations with Rove were, was not for attribution.And in the course of that, I asked him about Wilson's wife at the CIA working at the CIA and initiating this visit. And, as I remember the conversation very distinctly, Karl said to me, "Yes, I know that, too." And I took that as confirmation. HUME: "And I know that, too"?NOVAK: Yes. HUME: He didn't say you know that, too? NOVAK: No, no. He said, you know that -- I'm sorry -- he says, "You know that, too?" Well, he said, "Oh, you know that, too?" That's what... HUME: Now what did you take that to mean? Did you take that to mean he talked to other journalists who knew that? Or did you... NOVAK: No, I took that as a confirmation that she worked at the CIA and initiated it.He said, "Oh, you know that, too?"Now as Karl -- the reason I'm using Karl's name is he has talked through his lawyer about the conversation. HUME: Right. NOVAK: As he remembered it, he said to me, "Oh, you heard that, too?" I very distinctly remember him saying, "You know that, too?" And there is a difference there. HUME: Right. But (inaudible) now, you subsequently talked to Bill Harlow at the CIA, public information officer. NOVAK: That's right. HUME: A lot of us have known Bill for a long time around town. What was the nature of -- did you call him expressly to confirm this? NOVAK: I called him. He said, "I'll get back to you." And he talked to somebody, I just guessed that he had talked to the CIA director, George Tenet. I have no idea, though, if that's true.He came back to me and he told me yes, that she worked for the CIA in the Office of Weapons of Mass Destruction. He told me that Mrs. Wilson did not suggest the mission by her husband, but she was asked to get him to do it by other people in the CIA.That subsequently was repudiated by a report by the Senate Intelligence Committee, which... HUME: Which said she suggested it? NOVAK: She suggested it, and there were no Democratic dissenters.Bill Harlow then said to me that, although she would likely never have another assignment abroad, he said it might be embarrassing if her CIA connection was written, and he asked me not to write it. HUME: Did he say her status was classified? NOVAK: No, he did not. HUME: He did not. But he encouraged you not to write it? NOVAK: He asked me not to write it. A lot of people ask me not to write things. I thought it was a pro forma request. He says, now, that he was very strong on it. I believe he was not. HUME: All right. Let's go back just a moment to your original source. Everybody in town wants to know who that is. I know you're not prepared to divulge that. But what can we know about this person -- I assume, from the start of the conversation, that you're talking to this official and the conversation was principally about other things.Is that a fair statement? NOVAK: I think the conversation started about other things. About general foreign policy and the administration policy, and this was just a few days after the Joe Wilson column had appeared. And I started to ask him about the Joe Wilson column, asked some questions about it, which he answered to me, which I assumed was a background basis, and then he volunteered this information about Mrs. Wilson. HUME: And you have said that you don't think that there was a leak involved. Why do you say that? NOVAK: I don't believe it was a conscious effort... HUME: That's what I mean. NOVAK: I don't believe it was a conscious effort to manipulate me.As I said in the column that ran today, subsequent to the announcement of the federal investigation of this, a third party who is close to the source called me up and said that this source believes that he inadvertently gave me information that was classified about Mrs. Wilson.Well, whether it was inadvertent or not, I don't believe that it was a conscious leak. As I have said a couple times in the column, I said, "This is not a political gunslinger." By that, I mean this official was not known as somebody who did a lot of political manipulations. He was more of a substantive person. HUME: More of a policy person? NOVAK: Yes. HUME: More on the interview with Bob Novak in a moment... [A Jeff Goldstein interlude]: An adjunct professor at the University of Arizona has resigned after her threatening comments about a web blogger's two-year-old son created on- line uproar. Self described left-wing psychology instructor, Deborah Frisch, escalated a foreign policy argument with blogger Jeff Goldstein last week writing that if "someone shot you and your tike, it wouldn't slow me down one iota." She also wrote that she hopes "no one JonBenets the child" the reference to the brutal murder of a young Colorado girl 10 years ago. And made disturbing sexual remarks about the boy. Frisch, who stepped down after her department was flooded with e-mails, has apologized to Goldstein, but tells inside higher education that the real issue is how these rabid crazy right-wing nut cases have stalked me, told on me, reacted totally out of proportion to joke in bad taste, end quote... And now more of my interview with columnist and FOX News contributor, Robert Novak as he tells his side of the Valerie Plame leak story.(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) HUME: Why is Mr. X, your source, still unwilling to become known publicly known? Known to the prosecutor, known to, obviously, other key players in the case, why not publicly now? NOVAK: Because he's never come forward. He has never said -- he has not -- I think an important factor in this is that there was nobody indicted for the violation of the intelligence identity act -- intelligence -- U.S. Intelligence Identity Act of undercover -- uncovering a secret agent. Of course, if you want to get into that, she wasn't really a secret agent, that as the main reason. But there was no indictment made on that at all. So the -- the Mr. X, the first source, has decided, apparently in his own mind, that he doesn't want to revel himself as the source. HUME: May we know if this is this still someone in the government? NOVAK: I'm not going to do any further identification on that, whether he's in the government or not. At any time that -- I really do believe that he has to come forward. I feel -- you say well, how could you testify before his name to the special prosecutor and to the grand jury, because they know who he was. They knew exactly who it was.(CROSSTALK) HUME: So until he releases you, you're no going to say? NOVAK: Exactly.HUME: All right, and he has not done so? NOVAK: No. HUME: Have you asked him to do so recently? NOVAK: No, I have not asked him to do so. I. HUME: And I want to ask you about two other things in particular. One is, so now you got Bill Harlow saying please don't do this. Give me again, more clearly, your reasoning for not. Did you not think there was some possibility that some damage could result from the disclosure of the CIA person's name? NOVAK: No. I had no idea that she was a covered person, that she was not just a -- she was working as an analyst at the CIA. HUME: At the time. NOVAK: At that time I had no idea that she was in any way a covered employee. He'd never said -- if he had ever said to me somebody's life was in danger if you do this, if you got George Tenet come on the phone with me, I would not have written that. But as a matter of fact, her life wasn't in danger and he said it is very -- he said it is very unlikely she will ever go to Europe. That meant to me she was not doing any kind of work as an agent in Europe. So, all he was saying, and it might be embarrassing to her if she went on a vacation trip with her husband if she was identified as a CIA person and that wasn't a good enough reason for leaving the name out. HUME: The allegation has grown out of this whole episode with the conversations that Karl Rove had with you and with some other journalists with the Scooter Libby role in the matter, that all of this was part of a campaign by the Bush administration to discredit Joe Wilson after he wrote a column in the "New York Times" critical of the administration on Iraq and suggesting the administration had misled about evidence of the Iraq's mass weapons program. You were now -- you were the principle -- you're the person who's at the point on all of this. What is your view of whether there was a campaign underway to discredit Wilson? NOVAK: I saw no such campaign. Nobody in the administration ever said anything critical about Wilson to me. And my column was not critical of Wilson. As I say, this -- the information came out to me in the course of an -- by -- by -- in the course of an interview by a person who was not, believe me, not in the business of playing political dirty tricks. My call -- I initiated the call to Karl Rove. We talked about Joe Wilson's wife for maybe 20 seconds in the course of the conversation, which I took as a confirmation. HUME: So you didn't call him about that specific thing, you called him about something else? NOVAK: I called him about the mission to Niger and, but not -- but in the course of asking him about the mission in Niger, I said I understand that his wife works at the CIA and she initiate the mission. HUME: And he said "you know that, too?" NOVAK: "Oh, you know that too."HUME: And he recalls it slightly differently. Did he belittle Wilson and his allegations? NOVAK: At no time did he belittle him. The -- we were talking about the entire -- some of the specifics. I feel constrained not to say exactly because it hasn't come out the conversation I had with both Mr. X and Karl Rove about some of the details of the mission in Niger, which I put in the column because I still consider that was given to me on a background basis. HUME: Let me ask you a question others are sure to want to know the answer to. Why did you consider this -- and I think I know the answer to this but I'd rather hear it from you -- why did you consider this newsworthy? What was the story here that made Joe Wilson's wife's job relevant? NOVAK: The column was about the mission, what he found. Some of the things in column indicated, where contrary to what Mr. Wilson said, for example, he never -- that this was a specifically asked for by Vice President Cheney, that there was -- I wrote that there was never a real report written about it, that it was not a conclusive report and in the course of that, I wondered and that's why when I asked my original source, I asked him, why in the world would they send Joe Wilson on this? Why would it be somebody who was not a CIA person, was not familiar with this situation, why would they send him? And I thought it was interesting that his wife suggested it. It was a throwaway line in the middle of the column. HUME: Of course, it turned out to be, as one of the senate intelligence committee investigated, it did, I guess, turned out to be an important reason why he was sent according to the committee... NOVAK: Absolutely they have a document that says they put in the committee report that's gotten very little attention, I wrote about it later, that the chief suggested it at the CIA that her husband was well plugged in and that she suggested that he be sent there. I still think it was an extraordinary decision to be made, but that was the decision that was made. HUME: Bob Novak, great to have you. NOVAK: Thank you sir.(END VIDEOTAPE) FWI - per the State Dept website, Richard Armitage was in Washington (presumably available for interviews) on July 7 and July 8. By July 8, Wilson had heard the Plame tip.

Comments

[Jade sale]

I called him about the mission to Niger and, but not -- but in the course of asking him about the mission in Niger, I said I understand that his wife works at the CIA and she initiate the mission.