That's what I've been thinking! This has irritated me. We'll have to keep an eye on his column, that's for sure.
All I can say is $%^#! It's Lent, you know.
...Robert Novak: I’m going to tell you the same thing that I wrote in my column and that I said in a previous interview on CNN, and that was that I thought it was very strange that the missions in Niger should be done by a diplomat with no experience in counterproliferation, who was regarded as a critic of the war and, really, had no experience at the agency. So in interviewing a senior administration official on a number of other subjects, I asked him if he could explain why, and he said, “Well, his wife works in the counterproliferation section at the CIA and that she suggested his mission.” And it was given to me as an offhand manner and by a person who is, as I wrote in the column, not a partisan gunslinger by any means. The one thing I regret I wrote, I used the word “operative,” and I think Mr. Broder will agree that I use the word too much. I use it about hat politicians. I use it about people on the Hill. And if somebody did a Nexus search of my columns, they’d find an overuse of “operative.” I did not mean it. I don’t know what she did. But the indication given to me by this senior official and another senior official I checked with was not that she was deep undercover.Novak stuck to his story. I doubt if it was false he would keep making a record of it. So, who would be "a senior administration official" whom Novak would talk "on a number of other subjects". I'm thinking "recently retired" is no bar to the definition and it might be Clarke. Powell? Tenet? Some less known fellow?