Novak, then and now (slightly updated)

Old newsclips have few fans, but sometimes you can find interesting nuggets in them thar archives. Today, I ran across an old piece loitering around my hard drive -- a column dated October 15, 2001, little more than a month after the tragedy.

The author: Robert Novak.

I can't quote it verbatim (I'm not writing from home) but the gist is this: On that date, Novak claimed that he heard whispers that the Bush White House planned to use the WTC attacks as a reason to begin a new war with Iraq. Even then, the writing on the wall was unmistakable.

Novak made clear to his readers that his "intelligence sources" had made clear to him that such an attack would be unjustified.

Saddam had no Weapons of Mass Destruction, said Novak. Saddam also had no ties to Al Qaida.

ALl in all, not a bad column. Sounds like Novak's "intelligence sources" were sensible folk of the Valerie Wilson sort.

One thinks fondly of those precious few months back in 2001 when the newspapers printed real news, not neocon propaganda.

Just a few years later, Novak became part of a White House scheme to punish an "intelligence source. Why? Because said intelligence professional had committed the crime of not going along with a neocon-approved forgery -- a fraud designed to prove the very Saddam/WMD link Novak had once described as non-existent.

Wonder how much he was paid to change his stance?

UPDATE: A reader has asked me to reprint the full piece from 2001. If fate is with me, I'll do so tomorrow. As you'll see, the distinction is striking: The Novak of 2001 was very different from the wildly self-contradictory Novak of today:

In the August 1 column, Novak stated that the "unanimous Senate Intelligence Committee report ... said that Wilson's wife 'suggested him for the trip.'" But in a July 15, 2004, column, Novak clearly recognized that the committee did not reach an official conclusion about how the CIA made the decision to hire Wilson...

This case proves, once again, that certain "journalists" have no scruples, and no deeply-held personal opinions -- just a selling price.