Did Novak have any authorized access to such classified info? If not, this particular statute seems not to apply.
I copied the wrong part.
Look at the paragraph C. This could cover a journalist, but appears to refer more to people who make a practice of leaking the identities of agents. Mr. Novak says that when he asked the CIA if he could publish this they said NO but didn't say it strongly enough. Of course, as they say, NO means NO!
http://foi.missouri.edu/bushinfopolicies/protection.html
(c) Disclosure of information by persons in course of pattern of
activities intended to identify and expose covert agents
Whoever, in the course of a pattern of activities intended to
identify and expose covert agents and with reason to believe that such
activities would impair or impede the foreign intelligence activities of
the United States, discloses any information that identifies an
individual as a covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive
classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so
identifies such individual and that the United States is taking
affirmative measures to conceal such individual's classified
intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined not more
than $15,000 or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
(July 26, 1947, ch. 343, title VI, Sec. 601, as added June 23, 1982,
Pub. L. 97-200, Sec. 2(a), 96 Stat. 122.)