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Novak: Bush knows who leaked CIA agent's name

Journalist who first named CIA agent in a column says he's sure the president knows who leaked her name

BY TOM BRUNE | WASHINGTON BUREAU

December 15, 2005

Syndicated columnist Robert Novak speaks on NBC's "Meet the Press" in Washington on Oct. 5, 2003. (AP Photo)

WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush knows who leaked the identity of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame and could end the two-year probe into the leak by revealing who it is, according to the newspaper columnist who first outed her two years ago.

Columnist Robert Novak on Tuesday also said the unnamed source who first told him about Plame probably also told Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, who recently admitted he learned about her in mid-2003.

"I'm confident the president knows who the source is. I'd be amazed if he doesn't," Novak said at a Tuesday lunch address to the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh, according to a Raleigh News & Observer report confirmed yesterday by a foundation official.

"So I say, 'Don't bug me. Don't bug Bob Woodward. Bug the president as to whether he should reveal who the source is,'" said Novak, whose July 2003 column led to the lengthy investigation by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) yesterday took Novak's suggestion and sent a letter to Bush asking him either to disclose the source or say he does not know who it is.

But Bush does not appear likely to do either. "Our policy has been clear - no comment during an ongoing investigation," said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino yesterday.

That leaves top Bush aide Karl Rove in legal jeopardy and disrupts another journalistic career as Fitzgerald digs into another reporter-source relationship, this one involving Time reporter Viveca Novak and Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin.

It also creates the possibility that if Rove is indicted, his trial could feature one Time reporter, Matt Cooper, as a prosecution witness and another Time reporter, Novak, as a defense witness, a lawyer said. Viveca Novak is not related to Robert Novak.

Rove remains in jeopardy because he initially failed to tell investigators and a grand jury in early 2004 that he talked about Plame with Cooper, who wrote a piece about Plame's outing days after Robert Novak's column ran. Cooper has testified Rove was a source.

Rove at first said he did not recall that conversation. Later he found an e-mail he wrote that mentioned it, and in October 2004 he reappeared before the grand jury.

As Fitzgerald prepared to issue indictments at the end of October, Luskin sought to help Rove by disclosing a conversation he had with Viveca Novak in 2004 to show that Rove had forgotten about talking to Cooper until Novak told Luskin about it.

Fitzgerald last week took testimony from Luskin and Viveca Novak. In an account of her testimony in Time this week, Novak said she might have tipped off Luskin that his client was indeed Cooper's source.

Some time in the first half of 2004, Novak wrote, she met with Luskin for drinks and he told her "Karl doesn't have a Cooper problem. He was not a source for Matt."

She thought Luskin was trying to spin her, and said, "Are you sure about that? That's not what I hear around Time." She added, "He looked surprised and very serious."

Hoping to avoid becoming part of the story, Novak said, she did not tell her editors about Luskin or about hiring an attorney and meeting with Fitzgerald on Nov. 10. She finally told them after Fitzgerald sought formal questioning on Nov. 18. She is now on leave.

Rove's legal and public relations team continues to put an optimistic face on his predicament, and some former prosecutors say they think Rove probably will not be indicted.

Robert Novak declined to comment on his address yesterday. His assistant said, "It was Mr. Novak's understanding that the event was off the record."

But Jon Ham, the foundation's vice president of communications, said the talk was on the record. Ham summarized Novak's remarks on a foundation blog.