Woodward Said Novak's Source "Was Not in the White House"

A bonafide leak with dangerous national security implications has trumped the bogus leak, and rightly so. This is interesting nonetheless.

As reporters barraged the White House last week with renewed questions on the CIA leak case, one of the Washington press corps’ own may have been holding on to a key part of the mystery.

Bob Woodward, the Washington Post’s distinguished reporter and associate managing editor, has already faced scrutiny for his role in the disclosure of Valerie Plame’s undercover status at the CIA. But in a conversation at Harvard earlier this month, Woodward hinted that he knows the identity of yet another key player in the case: Robert D. Novak’s original source for his July 2003 column on Plame, which touched off the scandal in the first place.

“His source was not in the White House, I don’t believe,” Woodward said of Novak over a private dinner at the Institute of Politics on Dec. 5. He did not indicate what information, if any, he had to corroborate the claim.

Speculation as to the identity of Novak’s source, who first told the columnist that Plame worked at the CIA, intensified last week after Novak contributed a new line to the drama.