To all the partisan Democrats who are screaming “Why didn’t they prosecute Bob Novak while poor little Judy Miller sleeps on a mattress in jail?” — well, here’s your answer:
“Columnist Robert Novak provided detailed accounts to federal prosecutors of his conversations with Bush administration officials who were sources for his controversial July 11, 2003 column identifying Valerie Plame as a clandestine CIA officer, according to attorneys familiar with the matter.”
Hat tip: Laura Rozen
Are you happy now? I didn’t think so …
For my own take on the Novak-Plame imbroglio, go here. A snippet:
“Let’s get one thing clear: Novak committed no crime. He merely reported one. The criminals are the “senior administration officials” who whispered secrets in his ear with the knowledge that they would almost certainly see print. To all those supposedly “antiwar” Republican-haters, who write Novak off as a shill for the Bush administration: without Novak’s reporting, the machinations of the neocons would still be taking place in the dark. His column shone the spotlight on their intrigues, and in no way did he denigrate or dismiss Joe Wilson. As Jack Shafer put it in Slate:
“‘Whatever the leakers’ objective, Novak did not serve them very well. I defy anyone to read Novak’s now-famous column and summarize it coherently. The brief discussion of Plame and her shadowy occupation seems gratuitous in the larger frame of the article, which, if anything, sympathizes with Wilson’s view that the case for war wasn’t properly made.”
Robert Kuttner gets it right.