Novak on Wilson
"It's not often that a political book hyped as a 'tell-all' actually delivers the dirt, but that's certainly not the story in Robert Novak's fast-paced bio 'The Prince of Darkness, 50 Years Reporting in Washington,' " U.S. News & World Report's Paul Bedard writes in the Washington Whispers column at www.usnews.com.
"Let's get right to the point: Did the administration leak former CIA officer Valerie Plame's name to him to punish her hubby, Joe Wilson, who had blasted the president's claim that Iraq was shopping for uranium in Niger? Nope. He says that it was just an afterthought from his source, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. In fact, it wasn't even a leak. Armitage was just asking a question about Wilson, whom Novak met two days before, July 6, 2003, in the 'Meet the Press' green room.
"According to an advance copy of 'Prince' provided to Whispers, Novak entered the normally quiet green room only to see Joe Wilson (whom he didn't know) boasting about his fact-finding mission to Niger, where he found no evidence that Saddam Hussein was hunting for uranium like the president claimed about in his State of the Union address."
Mr. Bedard quotes from the book: "[Mr. Wilson] kept saying, 'We did this' and 'We did that.' The 'we,' I soon surmised, consisted of the National Security Council staff in the departed Clinton administration. He was making clear that 'we' handled affairs better than 'they' — the Bush NSC — did now. In view of what followed, I hope I can be excused for the vulgarism that crossed my mind: 'What [a jerk]!' |
