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Novak: I named leak sources to jury

BY TOM BRUNE | Newsday Washington Bureau

July 12, 2006

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

WASHINGTON - In a column to be published today, Washington journalist Robert Novak said he named his three confidential administration sources - including White House adviser Karl Rove - in testimony before the federal grand jury in the CIA leak probe.

But Novak defends the Bush administration, saying his primary source - whose identity he continues to protect - inadvertently told him about the role of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame in sending her former-ambassador husband Joseph Wilson on a CIA mission to Niger to determine if Iraq sought to buy uranium.

"In my sworn testimony, I said what I have contended in my columns and on television: Joe Wilson's wife's role in instituting her husband's mission was revealed to me in the middle of a long interview with an official who I have previously said was not a political gunslinger," Novak wrote in the column, CNN reported.

"After the federal investigation was announced, he told me through a third party that his disclosure was inadvertent on his part," Novak wrote.

In July 2003, Novak attributed the disclosure about Plame and Wilson to "two senior administration officials."

A week after his column ran, however, Novak told Newsday's Timothy M. Phelps that he did not dig out the leak, but that the officials gave it to him.

Novak identifies two of his sources who confirmed his initial tip: key presidential adviser Rove and former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow. Their role in the leak has been reported before.

Novak wrote that none of his sources have been indicted, ruling out former vice presidential aide I. Lewis Libby.