Armitage The Novak Source?

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According to Newsweek then-deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was the source for Novak’s column that started the whole Plame non-scandal:

In the early morning of Oct. 1, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell received an urgent phone call from his No. 2 at the State Department. Richard Armitage was clearly agitated. As recounted in a new book, “Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War,” Armitage had been at home reading the newspaper and had come across a column by journalist Robert Novak. Months earlier, Novak had caused a huge stir when he revealed that Valerie Plame, wife of Iraq-war critic Joseph Wilson, was a CIA officer. Ever since, Washington had been trying to find out who leaked the information to Novak. The columnist himself had kept quiet. But now, in a second column, Novak provided a tantalizing clue: his primary source, he wrote, was a “senior administration official” who was “not a partisan gunslinger.” Armitage was shaken. After reading the column, he knew immediately who the leaker was. On the phone with Powell that morning, Armitage was “in deep distress,” says a source directly familiar with the conversation who asked not to be identified because of legal sensitivities. “I’m sure he’s talking about me.”

Armitage’s admission led to a flurry of anxious phone calls and meetings that day at the State Department. (Days earlier, the Justice Department had launched a criminal investigation into the Plame leak after the CIA informed officials there that she was an undercover officer.) Within hours, William Howard Taft IV, the State Department’s legal adviser, notified a senior Justice official that Armitage had information relevant to the case. The next day, a team of FBI agents and Justice prosecutors investigating the leak questioned the deputy secretary. Armitage acknowledged that he had passed along to Novak information contained in a classified State Department memo: that Wilson’s wife worked on weapons-of-mass-destruction issues at the CIA. (The memo made no reference to her undercover status.) Armitage had met with Novak in his State Department office on July 8, 2003–just days before Novak published his first piece identifying Plame. Powell, Armitage and Taft, the only three officials at the State Department who knew the story, never breathed a word of it publicly and Armitage’s role remained secret.

Armitage, a well-known gossip who loves to dish and receive juicy tidbits about Washington characters, apparently hadn’t thought through the possible implications of telling Novak about Plame’s identity. “I’m afraid I may be the guy that caused this whole thing,” he later told Carl Ford Jr., State’s intelligence chief. Ford says Armitage admitted to him that he had “slipped up” and told Novak more than he should have. “He was basically beside himself that he was the guy that f—ed up. My sense from Rich is that it was just chitchat,” Ford recalls in “Hubris,” to be published next week by Crown and co-written by the author of this article and David Corn, Washington editor of The Nation magazine.

As it turned out, Novak wasn’t the only person Armitage talked to about Plame. Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward has also said he was told of Plame’s identity in June 2003. Woodward did not respond to requests for comment for this article, but, as late as last week, he referred reporters to his comments in November 2005 that he learned of her identity in a “casual and offhand” conversation with an administration official he declined to identify. According to three government officials, a lawyer familiar with the case and an Armitage confidant, all of whom would not be named discussing these details, Armitage told Woodward about Plame three weeks before talking to Novak. Armitage has consistently refused to discuss the case; through an assistant last week he declined to comment for this story. Novak would say only: “I don’t discuss my sources until they reveal themselves.”

According to Tom Maguire the timeline doesn’t make sense:

First, let’s note that the outline of Armitage’s story (he had no idea he was Novak’s source until he read an Oct 1 Novak column, after which he huddled with Colin Powell and the State Department counsel and then called the FBI to apprise them of his role) merits a bit of skepticism.

Keep in mind – Armitage “forgot” to tell Special Counsel Fitzgerald about his leak to Bob Woodward until after the Libby indictment in Oct 2005, even though Woodward asked him for permission to move with a story during 2004.

Can anyone think of a motive for that? Well, by waiting until after the indictment, Armitage got a pretty good idea of what other evidence Fitzgerald had gathered, and what other reporters had told Fitzgerald. And why might he care? *MAYBE* there were other reporters also protecting Armitage.

So what we may have here is a coward. A coward hiding to save his own ass. If he had come out with the news that he was the source then the Fitz witch hunt would never had happened. Judith Miller would never had been jailed. Libby would never had been called to testify at a grand jury. Millions of dollars and countless hours of work would not have been wasted.

Instead we have Colin Powell’s lackey saving his own ass, which gave us the embarrassing Fitz’ vaudeville act.

Plame was not a covert agent. Wilson was spreading lies and disinformation. Armitage and Powell would have come out of this just fine if only he had shown some balls.

Ed Morrissey is as pissed as I am:

The more I think about this, the angrier I get — and not just at Patrick Fitzgerald. Richard Armitage confessed to the DoJ in October 2003, and then sat on his ass for the next three years as the media and the Left play this into a paranoid fantasy of conspiracies and revenge. I know Armitage dislikes Rove, Libby, Cheney, and Bush, but what kind of man sits around while the world accuses people of a “crime” that he himself committed? Armitage did nothing while the nation spent years and millions of dollars chasing a series of red herrings, never speaking out to remove the mystery and end the witch hunt. Even three years later, Armitage hasn’t mustered the testicular fortitude to publicly admit that he leaked Plame’s identity and status; he has Isikoff and Corn do it for him.

What a sack of dog crap this guy is.

Ed also notes that if the book is accurate Fitz knew who the source was but instead went on his witch hunt:

Fitzgerald took the case on September 26. If this book is accurate about its dates, the DoJ and Fitzgerald would have known about Armitage’s role as the source of the leak five days later. Instead of either charging Armitage or closing down the investigation, Fitzgerald went on a witch hunt. He didn’t even talk to Scooter Libby until two weeks after Armitage’s confession. A year later, Fitzgerald had reporters Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper imprisoned for contempt of court for refusing to divulge a source about a leaker from whom Fitzgerald had already received a confession.

And look who now has Mr. Armitage on his side, John McCain:

But as he has tried to claim the mantle of Mr. Bush’s natural successor, Mr. McCain has expanded his orbit to encompass supporters who have been part of Mr. Bush’s circle, and others who have not previously backed the senator.

His still-informal network includes Richard L. Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state; John A. Thain, chief executive of the New York Stock Exchange; and Sig Rogich, who directed the advertising for the 1988 and 1992 presidential campaigns of Mr. Bush’s father.

Other’s Blogging:


So what we may have here is a coward. A coward hiding to save his own ass. If he had come out with the news that he was the source then the Fitz witch hunt would never had happened. Judith Miller would never had been jailed. Libby would never had been called to testify at a grand jury. Millions of dollars and countless hours of work would not have been wasted.

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Ok, so let’s see if Armitage has the cajones and resign.

Sorry, I’m not holding my breath.