Robert Novak on Armitage:

    An accurate depiction of what Armitage actually said deepens the irony of his being my source. He was a foremost internal skeptic of the administration's war policy, and I had long opposed military intervention in Iraq. Zealous foes of George W. Bush ...cannot fit Armitage into the left-wing fantasy of a well-crafted White House conspiracy to destroy Joe and Valerie Wilson. The news that he, and not Karl Rove, was the leaker was devastating for the left.

    Late in my hour-long interview with Armitage, I asked why the CIA had sent Wilson -- who lacked intelligence experience, nuclear policy expertise or recent contact with Niger -- on the African mission.

    He had told me unequivocally that Mrs. Wilson worked in the CIA's Counterproliferation Division and that she had suggested her husband's mission. As for his current implication that he never expected this to be published, he noted that the story of Mrs. Wilson's role fit the style of the old Evans-Novak column -- implying to me that it continued reporting Washington inside information.

    Armitage's silence for the next 2 1/2 years caused intense pain for his colleagues in government and enabled partisan Democrats in Congress to falsely accuse Rove of being my primary source. When Armitage now says he was mute because of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's request, that does not explain his silent three months between his claimed first realization that he was the source and Fitzgerald's appointment on Dec. 30, 2003. Armitage's tardy self-disclosure is tainted because it is deceptive.


It seems to me that both Plame and Rove ought to be after Armitage.