Robert Novak Claims He’s Pure as Driven Snow

Exactly one month ago, on June 12, 2006, Karl Rove’s attorney, Robert Luskin, read a short letter he had received from Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald. The letter said that Fitzgerald “does not anticipate seeking charges” against Rove. To date, we have not heard directly from Patrick J. Fitzgerald. But those are very specific and carefully chosen words. Did Rove make a deal that Fitzgerald was giving notice that Rove had better honor or he would be charged? No matter how you disect the sentence, it does not say Karl Rove is innocent and will not be charged. However, every newspaper in the land pronounced that Rove would not be charged. In fact, in reporting about Robert Novak’s latest column which circulated on the Internet last night, the New York Times said this morning, “Last month, Mr. Fitzgerald informed Mr. Rove, who had testified before the grand jury five times, that he would not be charged.” It was three years ago, July 14, 2003, that Novak’s weasely column started the whole mess by leaking information that Joseph Wilson’s wife was a CIA undercover agent who used her maiden name, Valerie Plame. Joseph Wilson is the man who put the lie to the White House claim that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy uranium in Africa. Novak’s latest column says, “I have been subpoenaed by and testified to a federal grand jury. Published reports that I took the Fifth Amendment, made a plea bargain with the prosecutors or was a prosecutorial target were all untrue." Novak named Karl Rove, Bill Harlow of the CIA and a third source whose name he would not divulge because the official has not come forward publicly. The NYT reported “Mr. Novak said his decision to discuss his sources with Mr. Fitzgerald had been made reluctantly, after he realized that the prosecutor had learned independently of those sources and his lawyers had advised him that he faced a costly and probably unsuccessful legal fight if he refused to cooperate.” If Novak says he did not make any deals with Fitzgerald, then we know he made a deal. Just as we know Rove made a deal. But the real question is: In order to save their worthless asses, who did Novak and Rove rat out that would be more than worth a Novak and a Rove? Sounds like Cheney or Bush to me.