Below The Beltway

One of the last of a dying generation of political reports passed away today:

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Conservative columnist and former CNN “Crossfire” co-host Robert Novak has died after a year-long battle with cancer, his family announced Tuesday. He was 78.

Novak retired in August 2008 after being diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. He was a longtime columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and a regular commentator for CNN for 25 years, beginning when the network launched in 1980. For most of that time, he was a co-host of the political debate program “Crossfire.

For many alive today, though, Novak will be most remembered for his role in the Valerie Plame case where he wrote a column that led to the biggest scandal of the Bush Presidency:

The CIA’s decision to send retired diplomat Joseph C. Wilson to Africa in February 2002 to investigate possible Iraqi purchases of uranium was made routinely at a low level without Director George Tenet’s knowledge. Remarkably, this produced a political firestorm that has not yet subsided.

(…)

Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me that Wilson’s wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counterproliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him. “I will not answer any question about my wife,” Wilson told me.

We now know that Richard Armitage and Karl Rove were the two “senior Administration officials” who leaked that information.

Timothy Carney at Human Events has posted an appreciation of Novak’s long career.