Novak: Ask Bush About CIA Leak Source

Right-wing columnist Robert Novak, speaking at the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh, NC on Tuesday, said he is pretty sure that President Bush himself knows who in the White House was going around leaking the name of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame and that people should ask the president to admit it.

"I'm confident the president knows who the source is," Novak told the luncheon audience on Tuesday. "I'd be amazed if he doesn't. So I say, 'Don't bug me. Don't bug Bob Woodward. Bug the president as to whether he should reveal who the source is.' "

Novak was the first person to publicly expose Plame’s identity after someone in the Bush administration spilled her name in retaliation against her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who wrote a New York Times column revealing that the White House had lied about pre-war intelligence on Iraq.

So, after saying that he would fire anyone in his employ found to be committing such treason – and then amending it to “...anyone in my administration [who] committed a crime...” -- it’s starting to look more and more like Bush went beyond being disingenuous, to actually covering for the person who did it.

Yeah, this is a real patriotic bunch, all right.