Thursday, July 07, 2005

Shun Novak

Jay Rosen says shun Novak. Of course that should have happened 2 years ago. But why would they start now?

Not only did CNN allow Novak to stay on, they let him continue to "report" on the story until his lawyer told him to shut up about it. And, remember, after "outing" Plame he compounded the sin by outing the CIA front company she officially worked for.

From the October 3, 2003 "Inside Buzz with Robert Novak":

WOODRUFF: Again, these are internal tracking polls in the Schwarzenegger campaign.

All right, moving on to the story you've been very aware of this week, and that is that the administration officials leaked the name a CIA operative to you and perhaps to other journalists.

First of all, you've got some information now about Joe Wilson the former ambassador. The money that he's...

NOVAK: I don't -- I think it's interesting, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) important. But I deal in interesting things a lot. Joe Wilson, the -- everybody knows he has given campaign contributions in 2000 to both Ford -- I mean to both Gore and to Bush. He gave twice as much to Gore, $2,000, $1,000 over the limit. The government -- the campaign had to give him back $1,000. That very day, according to his records, his wife, the CIA employee gave $1,000 to Gore, and she listed herself as an employee of Bruster, Jennings and Associates (ph).

There is there no such firm, I'm convinced. CIA people are not supposed to list themselves with fictitious firms if they're a deep cover. They're supposed to be real firms, or so I'm told. So it adds to the little mystery.



He was "convinced." The administration subsequently admitted that, yes, Brewster-Jennings was a CIA front firm...