Robert Novak

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Robert David Sanders "Bob" Novak (born February 26, 1931) is a syndicated columnist, journalist and conservative politicial commentator who writes the longest-running current U.S. syndicated political column (45 years, as of February 2008).^[1] Over his career, Novak became well-known as a columnist (writing Inside Report since 1963) and as a television personality (appearing on many shows for CNN, most notably on three former programs, The Capital Gang, Crossfire, and Evans, Novak, Hunt, & Shields). Novak announced that he had been diagnosed with a brain tumor and that his prognosis was "dire" on August 4, 2008, and that he was retiring.^[2] However, on August 27, 2008, he resumed writing opinion columns distributed by Creators Syndicate.^[3]

Contents 1 Early years and personal life 2 Political and religious views 3 Career 3.1 Orlando Letelier assassination 3.2 CIA leak scandal 3.3 Israeli-Palestinian conflict 3.4 Amnesty, Abortion and Acid 3.5 CNN 3.6 Departure from CNN and recent work 4 Brain tumor diagnosis and resignation 5 See also 6 Citations 7 References 8 Notes 9 External links

[edit] Early years and personal life

Novak was born in Joliet, Illinois in 1931. His journalism career began when he was in high school as a student-writer for the Joliet Herald-News, his hometown newspaper. After high school, he attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (U of I) from 1948–1952. While attending University of Illinois, he became a brother of Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity. He continued gaining journalism experience as a sports writer for the Daily Illini (DI), the student newspaper at University of Illinois. However, his disappointment at not being named Sports Editor his senior year caused him to quit the DI and go to work for the local community newspaper, The Champaign-Urbana Courier, where he was also a sportswriter. After four years at University of Illinois, Novak was one course short of graduating, and when he left the university to become a full-time journalist, he did so without a degree (Some forty years later, the University of Illinois saw fit to award Novak sufficient credits from his career in journalism to qualify him for a degree, and he became an Illinois graduate).

During the Korean War, Novak served in the U.S. Army, attaining the rank of lieutenant. After the war, he joined the Associated Press (AP) and became a political correspondent in Indianapolis, Indiana. In 1957, Novak was transferred to Washington, D.C. where he reported on Congress; he left the AP to join the D.C. bureau of The Wall Street Journal in 1958, covering the Senate, and in 1961 becoming their chief congressional correspondent.

In 1963, he teamed up with Rowland Evans to create the Evans-Novak Political Report, a six-times a week newspaper column. Novak continued the column after Evans' death in 2001, though the traditional Evans-Novak name continued. In the early 21st century, Regnery Publishing bought the newsletter from Novak, but left editorial control and hiring decisions in Novak's hands. In 2006, Timothy P. Carney of Regnery became Novak's partner in the column. On February 4, 2009, Novak announced he was ending publication of the newsletter.^[4]

Novak's column was syndicated by the Chicago Sun-Times. His columns often contained original reporting in addition to analysis and opinion. Novak is one of many reporters mentioned in Timothy Crouse's seminal non-fiction book about reporters covering the 1972 U.S. presidential campaign, The Boys on the Bus.

Mr. Novak was a Radford Visiting Professor of Journalism at Baylor University in 1987. His column has been distributed to newspapers nationally by Creators Syndicate since 1989. He is the 2001 winner of the National Press Club's Fourth Estate Award for lifetime achievement in journalism^[5]

Novak's wife Geraldine was a secretary for President Lyndon Johnson. Their daughter, Zelda, worked for Ronald Reagan's Presidential campaign. They have a son Alex, who works as an editor at Regnery Publishing^[6].

Robert Novak is not related to social commentator Michael Novak. ^[7]

[edit] Political and religious views

Novak was a registered Democrat despite his extremely conservative political views. He held more centrist views in his early career, and he supported the Democratic presidential candidacies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, of whom he was a friend.^[8]

Today, Novak tends toward low-tax, small-government libertarian views, but his disagreements with mainstream Republicans and neoconservatives—specifically his opposition to the Iraq War^[9]—have earned him the label of being a "paleoconservative". In July 2007 Novak expressed support for Ron Paul's bid for the presidency.^[10]

Raised Jewish, Novak converted to Roman Catholicism in 1998,^[11] after meeting Peter Vaghi, whom he had known before Vaghi switched from politics to the priesthood.

[edit] Career

[edit] Orlando Letelier assassination

During the FBI investigation into Orlando Letelier's assassination, the contents of the briefcase he had with him were copied and leaked to Novak and his partner Rowland Evans as well as Jack Anderson of the New York Times by the FBI before being returned to Letelier's widow.^[12] According to Novak and Evans, the documents showed that Letelier was in constant contact with the leadership of the Unidad Popular exiled in East Berlin and supported by the East German Government.^[13] The FBI suspected that these leaders had been recruited by the Stasi.^[14] According to Novak, Evans and Anderson documents in the briefcase showed that Letelier had maintained contact with Salvador Allende’s daughter, Beatriz Allende wife of Cuban DGI station chief Luis Fernandez Ona. ^[15][16]

According to the Novak and Evans, Letelier was able to receive funding of $5,000 a month from the Cuban government and under the supervision of Beatriz Allende, he used his contacts within the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and western human rights groups to organize a campaign within the United Nations as well as the US Congress to isolate the new Chilean government.^[17] Noavak and Evans claimed this was part of an organized campaign to put pressure on Pinochet’s government closely coordinated by the Cuban and Soviet governments, using individuals like Letelier to implement these efforts. Letelier's briefcase also allegedly contained his address book which contained the names of dozens of known and suspected Eastern Bloc intelligence agents. All correspondence between Letelier and individuals in Cuba was supposedly handled via Julian Rizo, who used his diplomatic status to hide his activities.^[18][19]

Fellow IPS member and friend Saul Landau described Evans and Novak as part of an “organized right wing attack”. In 1980, Letelier's widow, Isabel, wrote in the New York Times that the money sent to her late husband from Cuba was from western sources, and that Cuba had simply acted as an intermediary.^[20]

[edit] CIA leak scandal

In 2003, he identified Valerie Plame as a CIA "operative" in his column. Novak reported the information was provided to him by two "senior administration officials." These were eventually revealed to be Richard Armitage, with Novak assuming Karl Rove's comments as confirmation.^[21] During 2005, there were questions in the press regarding the apparent absence of focus on Novak by the special prosecutor Fitzgerald and the grand jury, specifically questions suggesting he may have already testified about his sources despite insisting publicly that he would not do so. On July 12, 2006, Novak published a column at Human Events stating:

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has informed my attorneys that, after two and one-half years, his investigation of the CIA leak case concerning matters directly relating to me has been concluded. That frees me to reveal my role in the federal inquiry that, at the request of Fitzgerald, I have kept secret. I have cooperated in the investigation while trying to protect journalistic privileges under the First Amendment and shield sources who have not revealed themselves. I have been subpoenaed by and testified to a federal grand jury. Published reports that I took the Fifth Amendment, made a plea bargain with the prosecutors or was a prosecutorial target were all untrue.^[22]

When Richard Armitage admitted to being a source, Novak wrote an op-ed column describing Armitage's self-disclosure as "deceptive."^[23]

In 2008, however, an unrepentant Novak said in an interview with Barbara Matusow from the Nation Ledger:

From a personal point of view, I said in the book I probably should have ignored what I'd been told about Mrs. Wilson.

Now I'm much less ambivalent. I'd go full speed ahead because of the hateful and beastly way in which my left-wing critics in the press and Congress tried to make a political affair out of it and tried to ruin me. My response now is this: The hell with you. They didn't ruin me. I have my faith, my family, and a good life. A lot of people love me -- or like me. So they failed. I would do the same thing over again because I don't think I hurt Valerie Plame whatsoever. ^[24]

In this interview, Novak justified his original leak by stating:

Journalistically, I thought it was an important story because it explained why the CIA would send Joe Wilson -- a former Clinton White House aide with no track record in intelligence and no experience in Niger -- on a fact-finding mission to Africa.^[24]

In fact, Joseph Wilson is a former United States Foreign Service diplomat who had been posted to African nations and Iraq during several administrations, including the George H. W. Bush administration.

[edit] Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Despite the fact that he himself is of Jewish ancestry, Novak has taken on a Pro-Palestinian stance.^[25] In his syndicated column, Novak has blamed Israel for the plight and mass exodus of Palestinian Christians. He has also met with several Palestinian Authority officials, including former Education Minister and one of the leaders of HAMAS Naser al-Shaer. Novak praised former president Jimmy Carter for likening Israeli policy toward the Palestinians to "apartheid" in Israel.^[26]

[edit] Amnesty, Abortion and Acid

On April 25, 1972, George McGovern won the Massachusetts primary and Novak phoned Democratic politicians around the country, who agreed with his assessment that blue-collar workers voting for McGovern did not understand what he really stood for.^[27] On April 27, 1972 Novak reported in a column that an unnamed Democratic senator had talked to him about McGovern.^[28] "The people don’t know McGovern is for amnesty, abortion and legalization of pot," the Senator said.^[28] "Once middle America - Catholic middle America, in particular - finds this out, he’s dead."^[28] The label stuck and McGovern became known as the candidate of "amnesty, abortion and acid."^[27][29]

Novak was accused of manufacturing the quote.^[28] To rebut the criticism, Novak took the senator to lunch after the campaign and asked whether he could identify him as the source.^[28] The senator said he would not allow his identity to be revealed.^[28] "Oh, he had to run for re-election", said Novak.^[27] "The McGovernites would kill him if they knew he had said that," Novak added.^[27]

On July 15, 2007, Novak disclosed on Meet the Press that the unnamed senator was Thomas Eagleton.^[27] Political analyst Bob Shrum says that Eagleton would never have been selected as McGovern's running mate if it had been known at the time that Eagleton was the source of the quote.^[27] "Boy, do I wish he would have let you publish his name. Then he never would have been picked as vice president," said Shrum.^[27] "Because the two things, the two things that happened to George McGovern—two of the things that happened to him—were the label you put on him, number one, and number two, the Eagleton disaster. We had a messy convention, but he could have, I think in the end, carried eight or 10 states, remained politically viable. And Eagleton was one of the great train wrecks of all time."^[27]

Eagleton died March 4, 2007, "relieving me of the need to conceal his identity," Novak wrote.^[28] Some of Eagleton’s former aides were reportedly angry that Eagleton's name was attached to a quote that made him appear duplicitous.^[28] Asked about the story, Novak acknowledged that disclosing Eagleton’s identity was "a judgment on my part."^[28] If there’s any disagreement, Eagleton could settle it with him in heaven "or wherever we end up," Novak added.^[28]

[edit] CNN

Novak and Evans both joined CNN as political analysts in 1980. Eventually they were given their own weekend interview program Evans and Novak where they interviewed prominent figures in the news, usually politicians but also other figures such as bishops. Novak also founded a political panel discussion and debate program called Capitol Gang where he was a panelist and executive producer. He was the co-host from the right-wing of CNN's Crossfire, a political debate show featuring a host from the left-wing and a host from the right-wing debating each other and interviewing a figure in political news. He also appeared regularly on CNN's Inside Politics as a commentator.

[edit] Departure from CNN and recent work

On August 4, 2005, Novak walked off the set during a live broadcast of the CNN show Inside Politics, on which he appeared along with Democratic strategist and analyst James Carville (with whom Novak had debated for years on Crossfire). During a heated discussion about Florida Republican Representative Katherine Harris' just-announced 2006 bid for U.S. Senate, Novak uttered an expletive; and as anchor Ed Henry was asking Carville a question, Novak threw off his microphone and stormed off the set. Critics later charged that Novak had done so to avoid discussing recent developments in the Valerie Plame affair on-air. In response to the incident, CNN suspended Novak for one day and apologized to its viewers, calling the outburst "inexcusable and unacceptable."

Novak retired from CNN after 25 years on December 23, 2005, stating that his relationship with the network lasted "longer than most marriages". Novak also said he had "no complaints" about CNN. Fox News had confirmed one week earlier that Novak had signed a contract to do unspecified work for the network. Novak stated that he still would have left CNN even if he had not been kicked off in the August incident and did not go to Fox News because the network was more friendly to his point of view. "In 25 years I was never censored by CNN and I said some fairly outrageous things and some very conservative things. I don't want to give the impression that they were muzzling me and I had to go to a place that wouldn't muzzle me," Novak said.

Although Novak joined Fox News Channel after leaving CNN his only role there was to occasionally appear as a political analyst, he had a fairly minor role at the network.

Novak is third in most appearances on NBC's Meet the Press, behind David Broder of the Washington Post and May Craig of the Portland Press Herald. He has been a Fox News contributor since 2006 and continues to write his opinion column for the Chicago Sun-Times.^[30]

His memoirs, entitled Prince of Darkness: Fifty Years Reporting in Washington, were published in July 2007 by Crown Forum, a division of Random House. "Prince of Darkness" was a nickname given to Novak by his friend, reporter John Lindsay, "because [Lindsay] thought for a young man I took a very dim view of the prospects for our civilization," Novak said in an interview.^[31]

On May 15, 2008, Novak wrote a column celebrating and reviewing his 45 year career as a reporter and columnist. Novak noted that, presently, his column is the "nation's longest-running current syndicated political column."^[1] Novak also stated it was his intention to continue to report and write his column and to "die in the saddle without retiring."

[edit] Brain tumor diagnosis and resignation

On July 23, 2008, Novak received a citation from police for "failing to yield a right of way" to an 86-year-old pedestrian, Don Clifford Liljenquist, who was hit by Novak's Corvette in slow-moving traffic. Novak drove approximately one block from the scene before being flagged down by a cyclist who had witnessed the accident and subsequently called the police. Novak said that he was unaware that a collision had occurred until being informed by eyewitnesses. The pedestrian was taken to George Washington University Hospital and treated for a dislocated shoulder.^{[32][33][34][35]} Shortly after the accident, on July 27, 2008, Novak was admitted to Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston where he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. In a written statement given to his publisher, Novak said: “Doctors will soon begin appropriate treatment. I will be suspending my journalistic work for an indefinite but, God willing, not too lengthy period.” ^[36] Hospital residents check for brain tumors in patients who didn't realize they struck something in a car accident, as this can be a focal neurologic sign.^[37] Novak tendered his resignation from his column on August 4, 2008 after revealing that the prognosis on his tumor was considered "dire".^[38] Later that month, he began writing new opinion columns for Creators Syndicate. ^[39]

On February 4, 2009, Novak announced in his newsletter, the Evans-Novak Political Report, that the bi-weekly newsletter would be coming to an end due to his illness. The newsletter, started four years after the column, Evans and Novak Inside Report, had been published continuously since 1967.

[edit] See also

• CIA leak grand jury investigation
• CIA leak scandal timeline
• Daily Show recurring segment on Bob Novak
• Joseph C. Wilson
• Plame affair
• Rowland Evans (his partner in journalism for 30 years)
• Valerie Plame

[edit] Citations

Novak, Robert (2008-09-05). "My Brain Tumor". creators.com. Creators Syndicate. http://www.creators.com/opinion/robert-novak.html. Retrieved on 2008-09-05. 

[edit] References

• Joe Conason, New York Observer, August 6 2001, "Was Hanssen a Spy for the Right Wing, Too?"
• Robert D. Novak (2007). The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Reporting in Washington. New York: Crown Forum. ISBN 978-1-4000-5199-1. 
• Rowland Evans; Robert D. Novak (1966). Lyndon B. Johnson: The Exercise of Power ((library binding) ed.). New York: New American Library. ISBN 0-313-26395-7. 
• Rowland Evans, Jr.; Robert D. Novak (1971). Nixon in the White House: The Frustration of Power (1st edn ed.). New York: Random House. ISBN 9780394462738. 
• Robert D. Novak. The Agony of the G.O.P., 1964. New York: The Macmillan Company. ISBN B0007DNN72. 
• Robert D. Novak (2000). Completing the Revolution: A Vision for Victory in 2000. New York: The Free Press. ISBN 0-7432-4271-8. 
• Rowland Evans; Robert D. Novak (September 1981). The Reagan Revolution. New York: E. P. Dutton. ISBN 978-0525189701. 

[edit] Notes

• A full transcript of the broadcast can be viewed here
• A video of the incident can be seen here.
• ^  Bauder, David, "CNN suspends Novak after he walks off set." Associated Press. August 5, 2005.
• "Robert Novak apologizes for outburst." CNN. August 6, 2005.
• The Democratic National Committee issued a press release, viewable here.
• Steinberg, Jacques. "Novak walks off live CNN program." New York Times. August 5, 2005.