Novak Urged to Reveal Sources

By: Dave Astor Geneva Overholser believes Robert Novak should reveal the sources he used for a column naming an undercover CIA agent.

Overholser, in an op-ed piece in today's New York Times, said she usually feels journalists shouldn't "burn a source." But the University of Missouri School of Journalism professor wrote that Novak's July 14 Chicago Sun-Times/Creators Syndicate column "raises disturbing ethical questions. He apparently turned a time-honored use of confidentiality -- protecting a whistleblower from government restribution -- on its head, delivering government retribution TO the whistleblower instead. Worse, he enabled his sources to illegally divulge intelligence information."

The operative Novak named is the wife of former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson. The leak was seen as White House retaliation for Joseph Wilson's criticism of the Bush administration's Iraq policies.

Overholser -- former editor of The Des Moines (Iowa) Register, ombud of The Washington Post, and member of The New York Times editorial board -- wrote near the conclusion of her piece: "(J)ournalists should call upon Mr. Novak to acknowledge his abuse of confidentiality and reveal his sources himself -- thereby keeping the control of confidentiality in journalistic hands rather than in those of the legal system. Mr. Novak has in the past shown a willingness to identify sources who turn out to be lawbreakers: three years ago he revealed that he had taken information from Robert Hanssen, the [FBI] agent who spied for the Soviet Union. He needed to divulge his connection to Mr. Hanssen, he wrote, 'in order to be honest to my readers.'"

Meanwhile, a story posted Thursday on the Web site of Insight on the News -- a sister publication to The Washington Times -- shed light on who Novak's sources might have been. Richard Sale wrote in the article: "Federal law-enforcement officials said that they have developed hard evidence of possible criminal misconduct by two employees of Vice President Dick Cheney's office related to the unlawful exposure of a CIA officer's identity last year."