Washington’s punditocracy is in mourning over the death of right-wing columnist Robert Novak, with many warm remembrances about his outsized personality and his supposed love of reporting. But Novak often served as a dishonest propagandist and would have been condemned in a healthy journalistic world. Share this article ShareThis emailEmail printPrinter friendly For instance, not only did Novak disclose the identity of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame in 2003 – in line with a White House campaign to discredit her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for criticizing the deceptions behind the Iraq invasion – but Novak continued a jihad of lies against Wilson and Plame for the next several years. In one such attack on March 22, 2007, Novak reprised right-wing myths that had been disseminated about the Plame-gate case to protect the political flanks of President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other participants in the anti-Wilson campaign. Despite containing a litany of lies, Novak’s column was uncritically published in the Washington Post’s editorial section, which even cribbed from Novak’s disinformation for use in the Post’s own ugly attacks on Wilson, whose principal sin appears to have been that he was the first Washington insider to accuse Bush of having “twisted” the WMD intelligence on Iraq. The March 22 column stands out as a particularly notable measure of Novak’s dishonesty because it came almost four years after Wilson began challenging Bush’s false claims about Iraq allegedly seeking yellow-cake uranium from Niger. Novak’s article was not some early rendition of a story that wasn’t fully understood; it was a premeditated act of lying in defense of a cover-up. For one, Novak couldn’t seem to let go of a favorite right-wing myth – that Plame wasn’t a “covert” CIA officer overseeing a sensitive network of spies informing the United States about weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East. That right-wing lie – insisting that she wasn’t “covert” – was exploded at a March 16, 2007, hearing of the House Oversight Committee when Chairman Henry Waxman, D-California, read a statement approved by CIA Director Michael Hayden referring to Plame’s former status as “covert,” “undercover” and “classified.” In the March 22 column, Novak also resurrected other silly arguments that had circulated widely on the Right, such as the assumption that if CIA employees work at headquarters in Langley, Virginia, they must be public, not covert. As Post editors and Novak certainly knew, many CIA employees who work at Langley and at other CIA facilities around Washington are still covert. It was ludicrous – if not highly offensive – for the Post to run Novak’s rhetorical question: “How could she be covert if, in public view, she drove to work each day at Langley?” Novak added other questions that he felt should have been addressed at Waxman’s hearing, such as “What about testimony to the FBI that her CIA employment was common knowledge in Washington?” But Novak didn’t bother to identify who gave that testimony or whether it was part of the self-interested defense from Bush administration officials like Cheney’s aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby who was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice regarding the Plame leak. Libby, for instance, claimed that he had learned of Plame’s CIA identity from NBC bureau chief Tim Russert, an assertion that Russert testified was false.