Posted on 11/20/2008 6:03:56 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Not true. Novak kept on harassing Libby in the press, even when he knew the facts. Screw Novak, screw Powell and screw Armitage - the whole damn lot them.
Thank you. Agreed.
“Looking back, I tried to find out what the politicians were up to, which is a difficult job. I find that politicians as a class are up to no good. Sometimes they accidentally do the right thing.”
Gotta love Novak. He’s nobody’s fool.
BTW he found JFK exciting like Obama, but overrated. I believe he acknowledges Kennedy was overrated, Eisenhower underrated.
Bob, you don’t need my sympathy. For better or worse you have left your mark on this planet.
That’s an accomplishment regardless of what happens next.
Wrong. I worked for Novak (as all his staff calls him) back in '95 as a paid intern for 3 months. Although brilliant and incredibly insightful, and someone I still read, and agree with most of the time.... he really was about the most uptight misanthropic boss I've ever known. There's a reason why his nickname is "the prince of darkness" due to his pessimism--which in DC often turns out right.
We literally all had to communicate with him by written memos, as he got too impatient and upset when underlings tried to talk with him. His life was total rush, rush, rush--and I'm surprised that health issues took this long to catch up to him.
I recall I had a project to find out contact information for an obscure political operative named "Dick Morris" who had just successfully gotten Bill Clinton re-elected. At that time (pre-Internet) there was little to find about him--as he was a politico in the shadows.
I'm very glad he's been converted to Christianity, as at that time, he was a man with little or no internal peace. His office manager too, was way over her head, and the office was an absolute wreck...one literally waded through wadded paper, and Novak had a foot of unsorted papers all over his desk. Later I heard he hired an experienced manager who whipped his office into shape.
Interestingly, Novaks time and heart, was spent in his columns. I found out that the Chicago Sun Times paid him something like 30,000 a year for the column....while his a couple times a week, for only a couple hours at a time, TV appearances paid over 20 times that amount..... Still, the man must of spent 60 hours a week on those columns. I did meet Rolly Evans--already retired and ill at that time and he seemed a kind, patrician of a man, quite the opposite of Bob Novak.
Anyway, quite the experience, working for the ultimate Washington insider (or is he the ultimate Outsider?). Novak always took pride in that he was one of the very few DC media heavy weights who never once worked for a politician--he was, and is, always a journalist.
Novak is in my prayers, and should be in all prayer's prayers.
Thanks for posting. My uncle and my father went to school with him back in IL.
Prayers for ole Bob.
Nice post.
Novak’s article was very insightful, and so was your post about him.
Wasn’t Mrs. Novak a staffer for LBJ?
I don't know. But Novak never had his wife write his columns...and she never showed her face in the office either.
BTW, I rode with him ONCE in the corvette. That was enough, as he drove like a maniac! An accident had to happen sooner or later.
Of course he immediately switched on Rush Limbaugh--and said he had the greatest respect for him (one of the few normal conversations we had). This to me showed his admirable trait--a common man--as I've known other DC conservatives who were extremely condescending to Rush, since Limbaugh is not an academic.
...I ended up writing a lot of political trivia, which really made my reputation. I think when people stop me now and say they miss my column, what they're talking about is the behind-the-scenes trivia -- the kind of thing that made me acceptable to people who disagreed with me. But I think I would have been better off to write about tax cuts and abortion and less about inside politics.
How many of us focus our work on trivia and miss the life or death issues?
You do know Libby was not charged with being Novak’s source, right? Or with violating the law with regard to identifying CIA operatives?
Armitage was outed in the press before Libby’s trial, and was identified to investigators as Novak’s source, by Armitage himself, before Fitzgerald was even appointed as special prosecutor. Novak testified to this, as well.
I’ll take your word for it that Novak wrote some unfair columns about Libby - I don’t read him every week - but Fitzgerald’s unfair prosecution of Libby would not have been stopped by a Bob Novak column repeating things that Fitzgerald - and everybody else - already knew.
Novak did not reveal Armitage as his source to the public until after the perjury case was concluded. While Fitzgerald was fishing for a crime, Novak did nothing. He could have written about how Fitzgerald already knew the leaker, but instead he stayed silent as a good man was convicted of a "he said/he said" crime.
On a related note, part of me wonders whether or not Tim Russert had some feelings of personal guilt in the role he played in this fiasco. Russert was an honest man, one of the few in so-called journalism, and being the person who by proxy destroyed a man's life could not have been easy for him.
I hate to keep beating a dead horse here, but that just isn't true. Armitage outed himself to the press, after which Novak told the story in a column published in September, 2006. Both of these events happened before Libby's trial, which took place between January and March, 2007. Again, though, since Libby was not charged with being Novak's source, that was completely irrelevant.
But aside from that, I just don't see how any column by Bob Novak would have deterred Fitzgerald when sworn testimony and the facts of the case did not.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not trying to be some sort of Bob Novak apologist here, but I just don't get your beef with him. From all I have read, Novak was as much a victim of the witch hunt as anybody else (except Libby, of course.) According to the article above, Novak shelled out $160,000 for lawyers who advised him, among other things, not to write about the case.
On a related note, part of me wonders whether or not Tim Russert had some feelings of personal guilt in the role he played in this fiasco.
Me, too. So much of the case was based simple differences in recollections between Libby and Russert (and others.) The whole case was so utterly outrageous I hate to even think about it.
**I spent some time with Novak five years ago for The Washingtonian, chronicling his journey from secular Jew to devout Catholic. **
Were either of you aware of this?
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