WASHINGTON — Robert D. Novak, 78, an influential columnist and panelist on TV news-discussion shows who called himself a “stirrer up of strife” on behalf of conservative causes, died today at his home in Washington, D.C., of a brain tumor first diagnosed in July 2008.
Novak’s “Inside Report” syndicated column, shared for 30 years with the late Rowland Evans, was important reading for anyone who wanted to know what was happening in Washington. Novak and Evans broke stories about presidential politics, fiscal policy and inter-party feuds. Their journalism, which reported leaks from the highest sources of government, often had embarrassing consequences for politicians.
In recent years, Novak was best known for publicly identifying CIA operative Valerie Plame. His July 14, 2003, column was printed days after Plame’s husband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, publicly claimed the Bush White House had knowingly distorted intelligence that Iraq tried to obtain uranium from Africa.
The column triggered a lengthy federal investigation into the Plame leak and resulted in the 2007 conviction of a top vice presidential aide, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, for perjury and obstruction of justice. George W. Bush later commuted Libby’s prison term.
Novak was accused by prominent journalists of being a pawn in a government retribution campaign against Wilson. Novak, who had called the U.S. invasion of Iraq “unjustified,” denied the allegation.
He wrote that his initial column was meant to ask why Wilson had been sent on a CIA fact-finding mission involving the uranium. Then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage mentioned Plame’s CIA position to Novak, and Bush aide Karl Rove confirmed it.
In a 2006 column, Novak wrote Armitage “did not slip me this information as idle chitchat. … He made clear he considered it especially suited for my column.” Armitage told The Washington Post that his disclosure to Novak was made in an offhand manner and that he did not know why Plame’s husband was sent to Africa.
Novak lamented the Plame story would “forever be part of my public identity” despite having written columns he said were more important.
Until the Plame controversy, Novak had largely been known as a strong anti-Communist in his foreign policy views. He also was a leading advocate of supply-side economics, a belief that tax cuts would lead to widespread financial prosperity.
David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union lobbying organization, said that Novak helped transform supply-side economics from a fringe idea into a tenet of President Ronald Reagan’s economic policy. Keene called Novak “a giant of the profession” who “gave respectability and visibility to conservative ideas and positions in the 1970s, when they were mostly dismissed.”
Novak was a congressional reporter for the Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal before he teamed with Evans in 1963 to write a Washington-based political column for the old New York Herald-Tribune. “Inside Report” ran in almost 300 papers nationally, including The Post. Novak continued the column after Evans’ retirement in 1993. Evans died in 2001.
Focusing on political intrigue rather than starchy analysis, they had an immediate effect with news about Sen. Barry Goldwater’s, R-Ariz., likely nomination as the Republican presidential candidate in 1964.
The Goldwater story led a Newsweek profile about the duo that helped shape their formidable reputation. But as Novak wryly noted, the Newsweek account was written by his close friend Michael Janeway.
“Little in Washington is on the level,” Novak wrote in his 2007 memoir, “The Prince of Darkness,” which had long been his nickname.
He earned that sobriquet in the early 1960s for what he called his swarthy looks, poor skills as a raconteur and “grim-visaged demeanor.” He said that his unsmiling pessimism was a stark contrast with the upbeat spirit of the Kennedy administration and its many admirers in elite journalism circles and that he was a strikingly different type of Washington insider than his business partner Evans, a debonair Georgetowner at ease on the city’s dinner circuit.
Novak was considered by many Washington colleagues to be far more generous than the scowling character he assumed on television debate programs such as CNN’s “Crossfire,” but he said the more-combative aspect of his personality was heightened on television.
He wrote in his memoir, “I found myself engaged on issues I seldom wrote about: capital punishment, gay rights, abortion and gun control. I was never asked to take any position I opposed, but the process had the effect of hardening my positions.”
The format of such shows as “The McLaughlin Group” and “Crossfire” pitted liberals such as Bill Press and James Carville against conservatives such as Novak and Pat Buchanan and left them to spar on divisive social issues.
The TV programs helped define Novak’s reputation as a self-professed “right-wing ideologue.” He wrote in his autobiography that he rarely disliked those with whom he appeared combative — one significant exception was then-presidential candidate Jimmy Carter, whom the columnist called a populist demagogue and “habitual liar.”
On one episode of “Face the Nation,” Novak insisted the candidate reveal which members of the diplomatic corps Carter objected to as “fat, bloated, ignorant” and unqualified except for being Nixon financiers. Carter declined to answer, and Novak persisted: “Can you name one, though? You make the accusation all over. There are only four ambassadors, governor, who have contributions to Mr. Nixon. Are any of them that fit that category?”
Nicholas Lemann, dean of Columbia University’s journalism school, said Novak “took great pleasure in playing the bad guy, the heavy, like guys in pro wrestling who come out all dressed in black. He’d sort of sneer and say the mean thing, so he developed that as part of a character he played on TV. It works with the medium to have a bad guy, and most journalists don’t want to do that.”
Robert David Sanders Novak was born Feb. 26, 1931, in Joliet, Ill., into a family that voted Republican. He said he became attracted to politics after his father, superintendent of a gas production plant, let him stay up late to listen over the radio to the 1940 Republican Party convention.
His family’s heritage was Lithuanian Jewish, but Novak said he grew disenchanted with liberal sermons at synagogue and fell away from religion until undergoing a conversion to Catholicism in the late 1990s because of “spiritual hunger.”
After attending the University of Illinois, where he began his journalism career, he reported for the Associated Press in the Midwest before the wire service sent him to Washington in 1957. He said his devotion to work helped end his first marriage, to an Indianapolis socialite named Rosanna Hall. In 1962, he married Geraldine Williams, then-secretary to a top aide of then-Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson.
She survives, along with their two children, Zelda Caldwell of Washington and Alexander Novak of Bethesda; and eight grandchildren.
In Washington, Novak’s early mentor was Willard Edwards, a Chicago Tribune reporter of such anti-Communist sympathies that he often sat on the dais with members of a Senate internal security subcommittee.
Edwards introduced the young reporter to politicians whom many in the press corps considered radioactive for their far-right ideology. Important tips from those congressmen helped Novak land scoops and win a reputation for aggressive coverage of Capitol Hill.
Bruised feelings, Novak wrote in his memoir, were often soothed over many cocktails. He added that his healthy ego was useful in handling inevitable complaints from powerful people.
When he printed an accurate tip that Alexander M. Haig Jr., President Gerald R. Ford’s chief of staff, was out of favor with the president and would soon lose his job, Novak said he received an irate call from Haig, who threatened to sue for $5 million.
“Al,” he replied, “you’re out of luck. I don’t have $5 million.”
Novak wrote several books about Republican politics, but he said it was his skill at wooing members of both major parties that led to newsmaking exclusives.
A few months before he became presidential candidate George McGovern’s running mate in 1972, Sen. Thomas Eagleton, D-Mo., had confided to Novak, “McGovern is for amnesty, abortion and legalization of pot. Once middle America — Catholic middle America, in particular — finds this out, he’s dead.”
Eagleton insisted his name not be linked to the quote, and Novak reported at the time that the quotation came from “one liberal senator.” The column caused a political furor because of widespread public ignorance of McGovern’s views on polarizing issues.
Novak said he faced enormous pressure by Democrats to reveal his source, and some accused him of making up the quotation. Novak kept his promise to Eagleton and did not name him as the source until after Eagleton died in 2007.
A similar high-profile debate arose over Novak’s refusal to name his source for the Plame column. After the column appeared, Novak endured threats to his family and attributed the loss of his work at CNN to the ordeal. He also amassed legal fees of $160,000.
In his memoir, Novak said he would not have used Plame’s name if the CIA director or the agency’s spokesman told him it would have endangered national security or Plame’s life. A CIA spokesman had twice warned Novak not to print Plame’s name but could not reveal why to Novak because her status was classified.
Novak told Washingtonian magazine in November that he would not hesitate to run the column again. “I’d go full speed ahead because of the hateful and beastly way in which my left-wing critics in the press and Congress tried to make a political affair out of it and tried to ruin me,” he said.
“My response now is this: The hell with you. They didn’t ruin me. I have my faith, my family and a good life. A lot of people love me — or like me. So they failed. I would do the same thing over again because I don’t think I hurt Valerie Plame whatsoever.”
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