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A Novak Clarification and the Bush Administration's Dream
09/29/2003

In case it disappears, here's a significant quotation from Bob Novak that currently appears on Drudge:

Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this. In July I was interviewing a senior administration official on Ambassador Wilson's report when he told me the trip was inspired by his wife, a CIA employee working on weapons of mass destruction. Another senior official told me the same thing. As a professional journalist with 46 years experience in Washington I do not reveal confidential sources. When I called the CIA in July to confirm Mrs. Wilson's involvement in the mission for her husband -- he is a former Clinton administration official -- they asked me not to use her name, but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else. According to a confidential source at the CIA, Mrs. Wilson was an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operator, and not in charge of undercover operatives...

Looking over all of the background material as well as today's WaPo article, I've noticed a few things. First of all, apart from Novak the only sources suggesting that the White House "leaked" the information (however much they leaked) are Wilson and anonymous "officials." Specifically, note this:

Wilson said that in the week after the Novak column appeared, several journalists told him that the White House was trying to call attention to his wife, apparently hoping to undermine his credibility by implying he had received the Niger assignment only because his wife had suggested the mission and recommended him for the job.

"Each of the reporters quoted the White House official as using some variation on, 'The real story isn't the 16 words. The real story is Wilson and his wife,' " Wilson said. "The time frame led me to deduce that the White House was continuing to try to push this story."

Wilson identified one of the reporters as Andrea Mitchell of NBC News. Mitchell did not respond to requests for comment.

So it's starting to look like the reporters about whom Wilson has been talking for months as proof that the administration was intent on breaking is wife's cover (however much she had a cover) called him a week later. But assuming that the calls to these reporters really happened, were they before or after the Novak column? If after, then they weren't "leaking" anything, but pointing out Novak's piece. If before, then the language is such that no leak was necessary: they merely suggested that Wilson's wife was significant, leaving the reporters to dig up the facts, which ranged from readily available to somewhat secretive. Hardball? Maybe, but not criminal. Depending what Plame actually did/does for the CIA, it might not have even risked lives or even intelligence links.

What makes me think that any administration calls to reporters were subsequent to Novak's piece is that Wilson spoke with Andrea Mitchell (who has conveniently declined to comment) on July 21 (here's a Google cache; here's a reprint if the cache disappears). Wouldn't it have merited mention if Mitchell, herself, had been contacted with the same information as Novak had disclosed a week earlier?

So here's what might just be the administration's fantasy hypothesis: Wilson has been lying and spinning the truth to make it sound as if there's a conspiracy to discredit him, and it turns out that nobody in the administration "leaked" anything that they shouldn't have. We already have seen him back off from the statement that he has "sources" who fingered Karl Rove.

But it gets better.

Note this from the Andrea Mitchell article:

Wilson reached his judgment [about the Niger uranium claim] without ever seeing the forged documents that led to the charge. We showed him the documents for the first time Monday: I asked, "This is the first you are seeing the documents?" Wilson answered, "Yes. This was never a legitimate piece of information."

So here we have a central figure of the 16-words controversy admitting that he hadn't seen the documents that he was supposedly debunking as forgeries. Of course, there's more to the controversy than that, most of it in the Bush administration's favor, but this is enough to offer this "what if": What if Wilson also lied and spun the truth about his report to the CIA about the Niger uranium?

Sure, I'm applying the conjecture with a heavy hand here, but the surprising thing is that it is entirely possible that this could prove to have been the case.

ADDENDUM:
Well, Daniel Drezner confirms at least one of my suspicions: that Mitchell was contacted after the Novak column. It's also interesting to note that major media reportage is gradually sinking into increasingly vague descriptions of the "leakers" (e.g., from "senior administration officials" to "administration officials").

Posted by Justin Katz @ 08:31 PM EST