Novak to Plame to Cheney

One of the last appearances I remember of Robert Novak was him coming under fire on “The McLaughlin Group” right after his column on Wilson and Plame appeared in print. McLaughlin took Novak to task for writing the piece. McLaughlin argued that because Novak was a senior newsman he should know better than to print sensitive information about intelligence people, facts like their names and names of their family. Novak was unrepentant and argued that he had the information from some very high white house contacts. For years the press was quiet on this story. I remember bringing it up at every chance I got because I knew there were chapters of this that would have to go all the way to the top of the administration. This is the secret presidency, the closed mouth, disciplined administration the White House that is in total control in short, no free agents who take matters into their own hands. So it had to be Bush or Cheney who initiated this scam. What is ironic is GWB’s father, former President George HW Bush when he was director of the CIA had gone ballistic over the outing of CIA agents by some double agents who were discovered after the fact. The incident lead to Congress writing a tough new law making it a felony to reveal the identity of a CIA agent. One could certainly make the case that outing Valerie Plame rises to high crimes and misdemeanors and should in and of itself be enough to impeach a vice president and a president. Perhaps Robert Novak can do some investigative reporting uncover the details of how the President and Vice President authored this disgraceful chapter and serve the public once again rather than his friends in high places.