Transcript for July 16

MR. NOVAK: What, what the source told me, I—we had talked about several things, and I, I got to the question, what I was really interested in was that Joe Wilson had been on MEET THE PRESS the previous Sunday, and I was—I thought he was quite hostile to the—to the administration. And I was curious, why would the CIA send this person, who was hostile, and who was—that didn’t have any background with the CIA, hadn’t been in Africa for a long time, why would they send him on this mission? And he said, “Well, you know, his wife suggested it. She works in the counterproliferation division of the, of, of, of the CIA.” And so that, that, I thought, was interesting. I put it in the middle of the column, didn’t leave the column with it, you read that paragraph—it was just about in the middle of the column. And, and then—I then called the CIA, and the spokesman told me that she didn’t initiate it, she facilitated it. That, that happened to be wrong, because the Senate Intelligence Committee has said that she did initiate the trip and they have a document to prove it.

MR. RUSSERT: Well, the Senate Intelligence Committee indicated that, but they did not conclude it.

MR. NOVAK: The—I believe that the, that the Republican majority concluded it.

MR. RUSSERT: The Republican majority did, but the Democrats did not.

MR. NOVAK: They didn’t, they didn’t take it up and they didn’t dissent from it, either.

MR. RUSSERT: It’s not an official conclusion, but it is in the report as an indication.

MR. NOVAK: And the, and, and there’s a, a document that, that confirms it.

MR. RUSSERT: Did he give you the—her name?

MR. NOVAK: No, he did not.

MR. RUSSERT: Now, Newsday interviewed you a few weeks after your column ran, back in 2003, and quotes you as saying this, “I didn’t dig it out, it was given to me. They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it.”

MR. NOVAK: That was a misstatement on my part. I—I’m—I’ve found I’m much better—I hope I’m not screwing up on this interview because I’m much better interviewing than I am giving interviews. They didn’t give me the name. And of course it was not a “they,” it was one person, which I later checked out with Mr. Rove. They, they—the Newsday article also paraphrased me as saying they came to me, I never said they came to me, because obviously I initiated the interview.

MR. RUSSERT: Newsday stands by that story. And you know if a politician said that, which you said, and contrasted it with what you’re saying now, people would say, “Wait a minute. Something’s wrong here.”

MR. NOVAK: Well, I was wrong when I said they came to me.

MR. RUSSERT: You...

MR. NOVAK: I mean, when I said that they gave me the name, because I got the name from, from “Who’s Who in America.”

MR. RUSSERT: You did say that the column—the story—the disclosure was inadvertent on the part of your primary source. A third party told you that.

MR. NOVAK: A third party close to the primary source called me after the investigation was launched and said, and said that he believed that it was—he believed he had given me inadvertent—inadvertently given me information—this information.

MR. RUSSERT: Have you spoken to your primary source?

MR. NOVAK: No.

MR. RUSSERT: Not since that interview?

MR. NOVAK: No.

MR. RUSSERT: When you were on MEET THE PRESS October of ‘03, I asked you about the Newsday piece, and you did repeat, you said, quote, “What I meant was that the senior official had given me her name.”

MR. NOVAK: Well, that, that was just—that’s just a misstatement on my part. He, he—what he said exactly was his wife, his wife had done it. I got the name—because I, I, I realized I didn’t have the name, and I figured out, how am I going to get this name to put in, in the column? So I said, “Maybe it’s in ‘Who’s Who.’” And I looked it up and there it was.

MR. RUSSERT: In fact, you wrote, “I learned Valerie Plame’s name from Joe Wilson’s entry in “Who’s Who” in America. And here is the “Who’s Who” from 2003, Wilson, Joseph Charles IV, ambassador, married to Valerie Elise Plame August 3, 1998.” Was that the very first time you had seen or head the name Valerie Plame?

MR. NOVAK: Yes.

MR. RUSSERT: No one told you?

MR. NOVAK: No.

MR. RUSSERT: But they did tell you “his wife.”

MR. NOVAK: He told me his wife worked in the counterproliferation division of the—they did not say she was a covert operative, didn’t say she was a covered operative. A lot of people say, “Well, why’d you call her an operative in the column?” I call all kinds of politicians operatives. It’s maybe a bad habit, I—but I still do it. I see somebody’s running a congressional campaign in Wyoming, I’d call them an operative.

MR. RUSSERT: But having said twice before that you got the name of a senior official...

MR. NOVAK: Oh, a mistake.

MR. RUSSERT: ...you can understand why people are...

MR. NOVAK: I understand, I understand, but it was—it’s just nota—it’s just not factually correct and I have, I have testified under oath about this.

MR. RUSSERT: You have?

MR. NOVAK: Yes.

MR. RUSSERT: That they did not give you the name?

MR. NOVAK: Yes.

MR. RUSSERT: Bill Harlow, the CIA spokesman that you called when you were working on this story, this is how The Washington Post characterized his testimony about this situation. “[Bill] Harlow, the former CIA spokesman ... said he warned Novak ... that Wilson’s wife had not authorized the mission and that if he did write about it, her name should not be revealed. Harlow said that after Novak’s call, he checked Plame’s status and confirmed that she was an undercover operative. He said he called Novak back to repeat that story Novak had related to him was wrong and that Plame’s name should not be used. But he did not tell Novak directly that she was undercover because that was classified.” Is that accurate?

MR. NOVAK: No. That was, that was not testimony, that was an interview with reporters from The Washington Post. What, what Mr. Harlow told me was—he asked me not to use her name, did not say she was, she was a covered employee, and I still don’t believe she was engaged in any covert activities, and I do that from talking to other people at the, at the CIA. He said that it was, it was highly unlikely...

MR. RUSSERT: But she was undercover, you, you grant her that?

MR. NOVAK: She—I don’t think she—there’s a difference between undercover and being a covert agent. She was, she was doing analytical work at the CIA. She was not involved in any covert activities.

MR. RUSSERT: But her friends and neighbors did not know that she worked for the CIA.

MR. NOVAK: Well, it was—other people contend to me that it was very widely known in circles in town that she did work for the CIA. Not that that...

MR. RUSSERT: But her official status was not to be publicly identified.

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