Mum no more

I'm still scratching my head over writer Robert Novak's column Thursday, in which he breaks his silence -- sort of -- about the sources for his July 2003 column that identified CIA officer Valerie Plame.

Up until now, Novak, whose syndicated columns run in the Tracy Press, would never say whether he'd appeared before a grand jury or ever revealed his sources. I assumed he had and debated canceling our contract for running his column. While other reporters were either jailed or threatened with jail time for refusing to give up the sources who had leaked classified information to them, Novak, who had been the first to write about Plame, appeared to sit comfortably.

This week, Novak wrote that he'd testified before a grand jury in February 2004, that the special prosecutor by that time already knew the names of his sources, and that his sources (including White House adviser Karl Rove) had granted him legal waivers to testify. He names only two of those sources; his super-secret source remains shielded out of journalistic obligation, he wrote.

One last tidbit is that Novak said he'd figured out the identity of Ambassador Wilson's wife all on his own. He'd gotten Plame's name from an entry in "Who's Who in America."

Of course, the "leak" wasn't her name at all; it was the fact that Joe Wilson's wife was a CIA operative.

Meanwhile, Plame has sued Rove along with Vice President Dick Cheney, accusing them and other White House officials of conspiring to destroy her career.