Below The Beltway

Columnist Robert Novak has published a column revealing in detail his role in the Valerie Plame case:

Syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak acknowledged for the first time yesterday that he identified three confidential administration sources during testimony in the CIA leak investigation, saying he did so because they had granted him legal waivers to testify and because Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald already knew of their role.

In a column to be published today, Novak said he told Fitzgerald in early 2004 that White House senior adviser Karl Rove and then-CIA spokesman Bill Harlow had confirmed for him, at his request, information about CIA operative Valerie Plame. Novak said he also told Fitzgerald about another senior administration official who originally provided him with the information about Plame, and whose identity he says he cannot reveal even now. (link to column added by me)

And…..

Critics say that Novak helped the administration retaliate against Wilson, who had become a prominent critic of Bush’s conduct in the run-up to the Iraq war, by revealing that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA. Novak said yesterday he does not feel that he was used.

“The primary source was not a political operative,” he said, and he mentioned Plame’s role in the middle of a conversation about other subjects. “I don’t believe it was part of a plan to discredit anybody.”

A spokesman for Rove, Mark Corallo, said Novak’s account of phoning Rove confirms what the White House strategist has said. “Karl never reached out to any reporters,” Corallo said. “They called him.”

Left out of the Washington Post story quoted above is this crucial part of Novak’s column:

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

Following my interview with the primary source, I sought out the second administration official and the CIA spokesman for confirmation. I learned Valerie Plame’s name from Joe Wilson’s entry in “Who’s Who in America.”

I considered his wife’s role in initiating Wilson’s mission, later confirmed by the Senate Intelligence Committee, to be a previously undisclosed part of an important news story. I reported it on that basis.

In other words, the prevailing theory, that an administration source or sources revealed to Novak or others that Valerie Plame was an undercover CIA agent is simply untrue. Obviously, there was nothing in what Novak testified to that Patrick Fitzgerald considered worthy of indictment. And there is nothing left of this story worthy of consideration.

More coverage at Wizbang Outside The Beltway Don Surber

Update: Paul at Wizbang argues quite convincingly that Howard Kurtz missed the point in the article he wrote that I quote above.