Novak Changes His Story--a Fourth Time

by emptywheel

Bob Novak, faced with the evidence that his story is BS, has now changed his story ... a fourth time. And even while he changes his story, he suggests Armitage is the unreliable one.

Novak's Changing Story, Part One

Novak wrote this column, clearly, to insist that Armitage told him that Plame worked in Counter-Proliferation, probably because if Armitage didn't say that, then either someone else did, or Novak was high when he used the word "operative." Novak makes this claim twice:

First, Armitage did not, as he now indicates, merely pass on something he had heard and that he "thought" might be so. Rather, he identified to me the CIA division where Mrs. Wilson worked, and said flatly that she recommended the mission to Niger by her husband, former Amb. Joseph Wilson.

[snip]

He had told me unequivocally that Mrs. Wilson worked in the CIA's Counter-Proliferation Division and that she had suggested her husband's mission.

But Novak has been utterly inconsistent in his story about what Armitage said. Here's what he said in his original column:

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 Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him.

Note, the only attribution he gives to the CPD identification is to the CIA [update--and as pollyusa notes below, they don't clearly say Plame is a CPD employee]. He changed his story the first time when he switched his attribution that Fall, when he blamed Armitage:

During a long conversation with a senior administration official, I asked why Wilson was assigned the mission to Niger. He said Wilson had been sent by the CIA's counterproliferation section at the suggestion of one of its employees, his wife.

He didn't make any claims as to how Armitage described Plame when he first started speaking this summer.

Joe Wilson's wife's role in instituting her husband's mission

But then he changed that story when Bret Hume interviewed him, now describing what Armitage said as something which would be either WINPAC or CPD.

His wife worked in the office of nuclear nonproliferation in the CIA, and she suggested he go.

In short, Novak's version of what Armitage said to him has taken 5 different forms since he first published this leak in July 2003.

• CIA labels Plame as Counter-Proliferation (CPD)
• Armitage labels Plame as CPD
• Armitage doesn't say anything about CPD
• Armitage labels Plame as Nuclear Non-Proliferation (not CPD)
• Armitage labels Plame as CPD

Novak's Changing Story, Part Two

Well, if you're not dizzy yet, you may soon be. Novak changed his story with his second major point in this column, where he describes Armitage's leak as deliberate.

Second, Armitage did not slip me this information as idle chitchat, as he now suggests. He made clear he considered it especially suited for my column.

In his first column, Novak didn't describe whether the leak was intentional or not. But in his interview with Phelps and Royce, he made it clear that both SAOs came to him to give him this leak, not just Armitage. And he said that they gave him Plame's name (a claim that is, as they say, "no longer operative.")

"I didn't dig it out, it was given to me," he said. "They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it."

But by October, when he was thinking primarily of saving Novak's ass, he revised that story totally, now claiming,

First, I did not receive a planned leak.

[snip]

It was an offhand revelation from this official, who is no partisan gunslinger.

But now he claims Armitage deliberately leaked this detail.

He made clear he considered it especially suited for my column.

Hey Novak!?!?!? I thought you said the interview was a general one, not specifically about the Wilson column. Are you changing your story on that, too?

Well, he seems to be. But as to the more central question of whether Armitage intended to leak this information, Novak seems to have adjusted his story again so it doesn't contradict what Phelps and Royce said:

• No indication of whether the leak was intentional
• The leak was intentional
• It was not a planned leak, it was an offhand comment
• It was something Armitage thought should be in his column

Of course, Novak's story still has changed from the quote he gave Phelps and Royce, where he said both SAOs gave him the leak intentionally.

Novak Makes Me Laugh

So, after revising his central claims about Armitage for a fifth and a fourth time, respectively, Novak tries to claim he is more reliable on these issues than Armitage:

Neither of us took notes, and nobody else was present. But I recalled our conversation that week in writing a column, while Armitage reconstructed it months later for federal prosecutors.

Damn, I had managed to avoid getting dizzy with Novak's changing story. But now I'm laughing so hard I'm faint!!!

Comments

[Frank Probst]

Let him flip-flop. Every time he opens his mouth, he risks going back to the grand jury.

[emptywheel]

Frank

I've wondered whether that was Fitz' strategy. Give these guys some rope. Rove has been good and silent (refusing to look a gift non-indictment in the mouth, I suppose). But Novak is changing his story so often that he can only serve to ruin his credibility.

[Jim E.]

I've been wondering, too, if by letting Armitage and Novak yap about their roles Fitz is hoping it will shake the tree a bit more and provide new leads. However, I truly doubt that to be the case. It be over.

And I wonder if Novak even has any obligation to be truthful in his columns now that he thinks he's already in the clear. For all we know, his recent column knowlingly contradicts his own testimony. But I doubt that as well. (For starters, why would Novak go out of his way to keep this strange story alive in the media? Then again, this new story doesn't hold up well to his past accounts, so who knows.)

Now that Novak and Armitage are talking publicly, it's long past time that they are subject to a genuine grilling by a journalist who actually knows the ins-and-outs of this case. No more general, vague soundbites. For starters, I'd like to hear Novak reconcile the obvious flip-flops (documented nicely in this EW post) in his own account.

[QuickSilver]

Yep, it's a Novak fake-out, no question about that.

FYI, Though maybe it's not appropriate for the introduction to your book, I believe your identification of the July 8th Armitage story as an early alibi, discredited before Fitz entered the scene, counts as one of the significant blogger "discoveries."

OT I've lent my Hubris to a friend. Do we know when Valerie Wilson travelled abroad to inspect the aluminum tubes? It would seem to me her "energy analyst" cover would be a very good one to get into a customs clearing area, for example, in another country. Some other cover might have even enabled her, or another operative, to take a sample of the tubes, or at the very least to examine them carefully. We're talking covert nuclear non-proliferation operations here....why is it so hard for Novak to see how publishing her name could damage other assets?

[Frank Probst]

Frank

I've wondered whether that was Fitz' strategy. Give these guys some rope. Rove has been good and silent (refusing to look a gift non-indictment in the mouth, I suppose). But Novak is changing his story so often that he can only serve to ruin his credibility.
---------------------------------------
Whoa! I've been following this case pretty closely, and I don't remember anyone EVER accusing Novak of having credibility. What's your source?

[Frank Probst]

I've been wondering, too, if by letting Armitage and Novak yap about their roles Fitz is hoping it will shake the tree a bit more and provide new leads. However, I truly doubt that to be the case. It be over.
----------------------------------
I've heard people declare this scandal "over" more times than I can count. FYI: The Vice-President's right-hand man is scheduled for trial on a five-count felony indictment. That's about as far from "over" as you can get.

[wilver]

Hey EW-
What do you think about using somthing from Libby stupid letter to Judy for you title. "The Aspens Will Be Turning". Or "They Turn in Clusters". "Connected By Roots"
Just trying to help. I love your work. Thanks.

[Jeff]

It is truly amazing and worth underlining that Novak can claim that his recollection is more reliable because he wrote the column in July, and yet the July column does not attribute the CPD affiliation to Armitage.

Also, to this

It was an offhand revelation from this official, who is no partisan gunslinger.

But now he claims Armitage deliberately leaked this detail.

He made clear he considered it especially suited for my column

I just want to add that when Novak comes in his column to actually describe how it was that Armitage made it clear he considered it especially suited for my column, it is considerably more ambiguous than that:

he noted that the story of Mrs. Wilson’s role fit the style of the old Evans-Novak column — implying to me it continued reporting Washington inside information.

Huh? The fact that the sentence doesn't even make clear grammatical sense - what is the "it" supposed to be referring back to, the story of Mrs. Wilson's role? - is one tip-off that Novak is doing his usual thing of wishfully interpreting things to his own benefit. Maybe Armitage was implying that Novak should publish, but this hardly counts as making that clear. And given Novak's penchant for interpreting what he hears the way he wants to, let's just say I don't trust it that much.

I left a long comment on Novak's column in the last thread. But I will just add that this is likely to get really fun. Novak is not only accusing of Armitage of misleading the public about what happened between the two of them in July 2003, he is positively accusing Team Powell - not just Armitage, but also Powell himself - of trying to coach Novak's testimony and/or engage Novak in a cover-up in October 2003. I doubt Team Powell will take that lying down. I will further note something I put in my previous comment: Hubris contradicts Novak's account of what happened between him and Duberstein on October 1 2003 when Armitage, reportedly at Powell's suggestion, had Duberstein tell Novak that Armitage's revelation was inadvertent and ask Novak if Armitage was indeed his source. Novak says

Duberstein told me Armitage wanted to know whether he was my source. I did not reply because I was sure that Armitage knew he was the source.

But Hubris p. 326 says Novak brushed off Duberstein not by not replying exactly, but by saying something deeply at odds with the idea that Novak was sure Armitage knew he was the source:

"Why would he think that he's the person? Novak replied, declining to confirm his source to Duberstein.

Note too that 326n tells us

This flurry of phone calls would later draw intense scrutiny from FBI agents and prosecutors who were at first suspicious that the four men might have been coordinating their stories. But Powell and Duberstein maintained they had only been trying to ascertain facts.

Uh huh. Whatever. Well, now Novak is on the record accusing Powell, Duberstein and Armitage of trying to do a cover up. Let the games restart!

[bushworstpresidentever]

This latest column isn't really about Armitage or Novak, its about clouding the waters about everything "Plame" and helping Libby get off when he goes to trial in January.

[DCgaffer]

Fitz is not shaking the tree. IMO, he's letting the principals shake the tree themselves.

Every time Novak opens his mouth, or puts pen to paper, his credibility, and simultaneously Rove's alibi, is lessened.

[margaret]

I think that Novak is doing the Administration's work by making defensive ack ack to throw the public into confusion about an already confusing drama. It helps with the elections and it helps spin the Libby pardon-to-be.

[mainsailset]

EW: wilver may be on to something to suggest using the Aspen adventure. Aspen groves are the largest living organism, the roots are all interconnected, sometimes they grow dual trunks simultaneously, they protect one another...they have very shallow root systems, they change their colors to follow the seasons. Could be just what you were looking for. As for Novak, I just keep waiting for him to show up on one of NBC's Chris Hanson reports on online predators, hopefully with his clothes still on.

[zAmboni]

...and said flatly that she recommended the mission to Niger by her husband, former Amb. Joseph Wilson...

...she had suggested her husband's mission

It also appears that Novakula is backing off on Armitage saying that Plame suggested SENDING WILSON on the mission. Note that in the two passages above that Novak is saying that Armitage said Plame only suggested THE MISSION, and not suggesting sending WILSON ON THE MISSION.

That is how I read those two passages.

[p.lukasiak]

One good possible reason why Rove wasn't frog-marched out of the White House is Novak's complete lack of credibility.

What is most unusual, however, is Novak's claim that he didn't take notes, and "recalled" what Armitage had told him a week later. (clearly implying that he didn't write up the interview immediately after it occurred either.)

This raises a number of questions and possibilities -- including one that up until this time I'd considered unsubstantiate speculation, namely that Novak knew the whole story before he talked to Armitage...and Armitage confirmed the story.

[pow wow]

My first impressions after reading Bob Novak's new 9/13/06 column:

1. Gentle reader warning: Do not buy Novak's fourth paragraph disinformation about Richard Armitage being "a foremost internal skeptic of the administration's war policy" and someone who "long had opposed military intervention in Iraq." Instead, go here:

http://www.state.gov/s/d/former/armitage/remarks/

to read the speeches and interviews Armitage gave in 2002 and 2003 regarding Iraq, starting with his January 30, 2003 testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (less than a week before Powell's UN presentation). [I excerpted some of these on ew's recent Armitage as Patsy post here.] No honest "internal skeptic" would be this strident, this consistent, and this public with views that are absolutely in line with, and loyal to, those of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Libby, et al, about removing Hussein and the inevitability and certainty of an urgent WMD threat in Iraq. [And if Novak hadn't met or spoken to Armitage throughout the run-up to and invasion of Iraq what is Novak's basis for claiming this insider knowledge about Armitage as "internal skeptic"?]

Novak seems to be trying in that paragraph to remove the possibility of Armitage learning about Plame from someone like Dick Cheney. Don't let Novak distract our attention.

2. What floor was Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage's office on at the state department? Remember we have an (anonymous) eyewitness account of Novak getting off the elevator that day on the sixth ("intelligence") floor. Novak's new column says they met in Armitage's state department office.

3. This column reinforces my belief that Richard Armitage was knowingly involved in this outing much more deeply than he has admitted. Even Novak isn't buying Armitage's 10/1/03 'innocent realization' story about the "non-partisan gunslinger" language. And the sudden late June, 2003 scheduling of their first interview - apparently at the initiative of Armitage - is very, very telling.

[orionATL]

it's not that big a deal to me, since scoundrels and ethics are inherently contradictory but

i thought journalists did not "burn" their sources, ever.

i thought you could put them in the dungeon on the rack and start turning the wheel and there would be nary a peep of i.d. from an upstanding journalist, say, one like robert novak.

didn't he take this line earlier in his testimony to fitzgerald?

so now, unprovoked by armitage so far as i have read,

novak not only acknowledges armitage as his source (since that source has already himself acknowledged that he was the source) - got that?.

but novak is going further by impugning his source in a way that seems rather unique in journalism - or is it?

in fact, novak is, at the very least, saying more than the source has acknowledged he said to novak,

or, at worst, novak is lying about what his source said to him.

hmmm.

que pasa, roberto?

[William Ockham]

The real question we ought to ask ourselves is this: Which story did Novak tell the FBI in the Fall of 2003 and what did he tell Fitzgerald and the grand jury?

Looking back at Fitzgerald's attempts to keep Armitage's name from the defense, I suspect that Novak's current story is pretty close to the one he told Fitzgerald and that Fitzgerald didn't buy it at all. If Armitage went to the FBI before Novak did (and that appears to be the case), the FBI would be faced with trying to figure out how to resolve the discrepancies between the two accounts. The Libby indictment puts all the facts that Novak alleges that Armitage gave him on July 8 in Libby and Cheney's hands long before that. It is interesting that Armitage's version of his Novak conversation tracks closely with his and Woodward's versions of their own conversation.

More on this later....

[emptywheel]

zAmboni

Yes, I agree. Interesting parsing going on there.

p luk

Ah, welcome to the slowly expanding "Two Source Agnostic" club.

orion

Well, maybe the old fart is still miffed that Armitage disdained him?

Few of these journalists are really about protecting their source. They're about protecting their power.

[Jim E.]

Jeff: although horribly worded, I believe the "it" Novak refers to is the current incarnation of Novak's column, which, according to Armitage, continues in the tradition of the old Evans-Novak column. The Evans-Novak column used to brag that every single column contained at least one piece of original, inside DC reporting. Thus Novak interpreted Armitage's words as saying he could use it in a column (being that he's the Novak of Evans-Novak).

I agree that Novak is a slippery fish, and that his current column is a deliberate and dishonest attempt to distract attention away from Rove. If one were to only read today's column, one would think that Rove was completely uninvolved in the Novak column or any other piece of Plame reporting. In addition, Novak has that little problem of flip-flipping about whether this was idle chatter or whether "they" gave him the info, which strikes me as a big deal. (He's still mum on the name "Plame.")

With that said, I have to say, however reluctantly, that I think Novak, however slippery, is being honest about Armitage's lack of candor about all of this. I believe Novak when he says Armitage was more specific and forceful than what Armitage now claims.

Some of the parsing about whether Wilson's wife "suggested" the trip, or whether she "sent Wilson" aren't terribly mind-blowing to me. (I'd be happy to be persuaded otherwise to how central those words are.) That is, if Novak uses those interchangibly, he might be a tad sloppy, but it might not mean anything of terrible importance. It's pretty clear that reporters are sloppy about such particulars, or change their emphasis of certain facts--perhaps unintentionally--with repeated retellings. (Isn't COoper alleged to have changed certain things across different drafts?) I'd suggest that the same might be true with respect to Plame and CPD and NNP. But again, I'd willing to be persuaded otherwise, particularly if I'm missing the earth-shattering difference between CPD and NNP.

Lastly, I pretty much totally agree with Novak's take on how it is BS that Armitage claims Novak's Oct 1 was the first time he thought he might be a source. Does anyone here believe Armitage's explanation? Anyone? If not, then you'd have to say on this one point Novak is more credible than Armitage.

[windje]

All these different versions.

Smoke mirrors and obfuscation. Probably works to someone's advantage to change and or muddle the story yet again. He's got to know there are inconsistencies and that they will be noticed. But I've got to kinda wonder if Novak isn't trying to remove himself from the witness stand by making himself an incredible witness in the literal sense of the word.

[pow wow]

Self-correction: the actual phrase is "no partisan gunslinger."

Here's one excerpt from the only on-the-record interview Richard Armitage did the week following his conversation with Bob Novak. It was with Radio Sawa the next day, July 9th:

"QUESTION: Has the acknowledgement by the White House that the President and Secretary Powell used -- inadvertently used inaccurate information in their speeches, does that hurt American credibility in the region?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE: Well, I continue to believe that at the end of the day, we'll have a much more full understanding of the weapons of mass destruction program that Saddam Hussein was involved in. Clearly, there is no doubt in the President's mind that Saddam Hussein was involved in a program. I don't think there is doubt in the minds of most of the leaders of the coalition.

The fact of the matter is that we even recently have uncovered some information which leads to, I think, bolstering the comments made by our friends and others about a nuclear program, the engineer -- scientist -- excuse me -- recently came forward to show where he had buried the centrifuged parts in his backyard, in a rosebush, I believe, is witness to that.

So I think as the documents are exploited and people continue to come forward free of fear of a reemergence of Saddam Hussein, then the full dimensions of the program will be made known.

QUESTION: There is almost silence in the Arab world concerning discovery of mass graves in Iraq. What's your reaction to that?

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE: I am as horrified by these discoveries. I am very angry about it. I thank God that the coalition forces moved when they did because that will at least eliminate any other mass graves being prepared for future victims of Saddam Hussein.

And I'm also a little embarrassed that many people who kept silent or actually supported the regime, the Iraqi regime, now have to face the full dimensions of their inaction when faced with the sorrow of families who are now reclaiming their loved ones, whose face were unknown until the discovery of these mass graves."

A month earlier, at a June 9 press roundtable for Japanese journalists in Tokyo during a conference, here is part of one answer Richard Armitage gave to a couple of good questions:

"QUESTION: I would like to focus on the unilateralness of the Bush administration. Since the war ended, I've watched the unilateralism of the Bush administration. Many people criticize it right now. For example, today's article in the New York Times, some analysts of Iraq traitors reject germ arms, and American/British intelligence analysts with direct access to the evidence are disputing claims of the mysterious traitor found in Iraq for making deadly germs, so this is my....

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE: Are you talking about the vans...DIA analysts?

QUESTION: Yes. Dr. Rice tried to explain that the U.S. and British armies are going to find evidence of weapons of mass destruction sooner or later, but so far I'm not convinced hearing what Dr. Rice has said. On the contrary, your friend, Joseph Nye, the Dean of the JFK School of Harvard, emphasized that the U.S. needs to use soft power, especially in diplomacy. Can you evaluate the situation of the Bush Administration, whether or not the Bush Administration is taking the unilateral way or not? If you can explain well, maybe I'll be convinced.

[snip]

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE: ...Now on the question of where we find, and whether I can convince you. Sir, I'm not sure I can convince you, but I'll tell you several things. Before the war, did Saddam Hussein exist? Yes. He did. And we haven't found him, but we know he existed. Before the war, did weapons of mass destruction exist? Well, of course. He used them. He used them against Iran, he used them on his own people. We haven't found them yet, so keep that in mind. We'll find it. On the question of the vans, the bio-vans which I think the DIA folks may have been referring to or maybe it was something else, Secretary Powell was very interesting when he was asked this yesterday. He was asked if the vans were really biological and used for biological weapons. He said yes, of course. First of all, they match perfectly the intelligence that we had, and that he presented on 5 February. Second, he said, and I thought quite interestingly, that if these vans were not used for biological weapons, but rather were used for making hydrogen gas or fermenting beer, the Iraqis would have come forward on 6th February and showed that the United States was being silly. But they didn't, because these were biological weapons vans. I would submit to you that, just like the building of coral, that's what our forces in the British and coalition forces are doing now, getting information. The vans were part of it, and over time we're going to build that coral, and some day we'll see that there's a whole structure of BW and CW weapons in Iraq."

[I think the jet lag was getting to Armitage on that last answer. It's a more absurd sounding answer than most of his statements in interviews with the press that I've read, which are generally very practiced and smooth.]

[ME]

There's one more you forgot.

"they gave me the name and I used it."

vs.

"I looked it up the Who's who directory"

Well Novak? Which one was it?

[pow wow]

Another self-correction: The state department's 2003 interview chronology site omits a key on-the-record interview that Richard Armitage did in the week after his July 8th interview with Novak: Armitage's Fox interview with Greta Van Susteren, which angered Andrea Mitchell (and which I excerpted on the Armitage as Patsy post thread). That interview took place on July 14, 2003, but it is not included on the state department web page. I wonder how many other interviews are skipped in that chronology (other Greta interviews with Armitage are listed).

Attempt at logic: Does this new Novak column prove that either Bob Novak definitely had another key source for his 7/14/03 column's information re 'operative' (undercover status) and 'Plame' (career name at CIA) [and that Joe Wilson never worked at CIA] or that Richard Armitage was in on the plot, contrary to his public comments, or both? Is there another possibility that I'm overlooking?

[emptywheel]

Jim E

I largely agree with you about Armitage's timing. I've got my own beliefs about Armitage's timing (which I'm reserving for now). But his excuse is lame, and it appears clear Armitage said something more than he claimed.

But he still had to have said less than Novak is now claiming (or he wouldn't be wandering around). The CPD claim, in short, is a lie, because Fitz has apparently determined Armitage didn't know that information. (I don't know if he has determined if Rove did--though at this point, the Ari testimony would become important to Rove, too. It is all but accepted that Libby told Rove. And if he told Ari Plame was covert, he may well have told Rove.

I do think the NP v. CPD designation is important--though we may not know how, yet. NP, in the CIA, is the department where Fleitz worked before they made WINPAC in 2001. I'm not sure, but I think it was analytical. But there's also a NP department in State. And in June 2003, it was managed by John Bolton.

In short, the NP designation, if accurate, lends to the analytical versus operations interpretation. And it also may be a reference to some other department that may have significance. But it's definitely not the same as CPD.

[emptywheel]

pow wow

I think both are possibilities (and there's a third--that Rove is the other source, but that he spoke with Novak earlier on the day on July 8).

I really don't think Armitage is the fall-guy. If he were the willing fall-guy, this case would have been settled in November 2003. There is no way that there is a credible case that Armitage really was behind the leak, or he'd be in jail and this wouldn't have proceeded so long. (And to pre-empt Maguire's hoards if they show up, there's some reason Fitz couldn't convict Armitage on the Novak leak, so the Woodward one is irrelevant.)

Which suggests there's another source.