"There was and Plame did in fact recommend her husband to go to Niger."
Yep. Joe's obsessional denial that his wife played any role always stood out. Some say he wants to avoid the appearance of nepotism. could be. Maybe a macho thing that he doesn't want it to appear that a woman got him the job?
Then there's that thing about his vanishing second wife.
Or maybe he was trying to distract attention from the implication that his attack on the Bush administration's foreign policy was related to his wife's work at CIA? Back when Wilson stared his denial on this, the conflict between the CIA and the Bush administration was more covert that overt, at least in the public eye. Now that it's become more overt, in retrospect it seems like Novak's article was a turning point in drawing public attention to the CIA's undermining of Bush's foreign policy. I wonder if the sources being protected here are CIA/intelligence community opponents of Bush's foreign policy.