reality-based educator

TIME reporter Viveca Novak's first person account of her involvement in the CIA leak case went up on the TIME website today.

After reading through it and the accompanying story by Richard Lacayo in TIME, I have to say that I am appalled by Viveca Novak's behavior in this case and believe she should be fired from her job at TIME and hounded out of the news business.

Just like Judy Miller and Bob Woodward.

Novak not only told Karl Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, that people at TIME knew that Rove was Cooper's source in 2003 yet failed to tell her editors at TIME that she had let the cat out of the bag, but she spoke to Patrick Fitzgerald BEFORE telling her editors at TIME about her involvement, she wrote an article about Bob Woodward's testimony before the CIA leak grand jury WHILE she herself was about to give testimony to Fitzgerald and never alerted anybody to this possible conflict of interest and only divulged her problem to her editors when Fiztgerald came back to say he wanted her to officially be deposed in the case.

Viveca Novak has, shall we say, a credibility problem.

Here's what Greg Mitchell at Editor & Publisher has to say about her:

(December 11, 2005) -- Where will it end, and when will reporters pay with their jobs? First we learn that Bob Woodward failed to tell his editor for years about his role in the Plame/CIA leak case. Today, we find out that Time reporter Viveca Novak not only kept her editors in the dark about her own involvement, but even had a two-hour chat with the special prosecutor about it well before telling her superiors.

...

The most amazing revelation is that in late-October, long after she blundered in telling Luskin that the word around Time (obviously a reference to Cooper) was that Rove had a Plame problem, the lawyer informed her that the special prosecutor might want to speak to her. Does she tell her editor? No.

Later Luskin tells her that Fitzgerald does indeed want to grill her, although perhaps not under oath just yet. She hires a high-level lawyer. Surely she tells her editor now? Au contraire.

Then, on Nov. 10, she meets with Fitzgerald for two hours to discuss the conversations with Luskin. Of course she tells her editor after that? Sadly, no.

Finally, on Nov. 18, her lawyer calls to inform her that Fitzgerald does indeed want her to testify under oath. “I realized that I now needed to share this information with Jay Carney, our Washington bureau chief,” she writes online today. “On Sunday, Nov. 20, I drove over to his house to tell him. He then called Jim Kelly, the managing editor. Nobody was happy about it, least of all me.”

Oh gosh, imagine that.

Then, as she describes the substance of what she revealed (or, mainly, her struggles to recall any specifics), one has to wonder about her journalistic capabilities.

The first red flag, to repeat, is telling Luskin anything about what anyone knew at Time about her client and this incredibly sensitive case.

Then there’s the question of how many times she talked to Luskin about it. Well, she has some calendar entries but they “weren’t entirely reliable.” She didn’t take any notes, during or even after the meetings. No wonder she cannot pinpoint the meeting when she made the all-important disclosure that supposedly jogged poor Karl’s memory about his Cooper chat. When she talks to Fitzgerald she can only venture a wild guess, as she admits.

Then Fitzgerald asks her about specific dates. Lo and behold, she turns to her calendar again and one of Fitz's ideas, March 1, 2004, checks out. Here’s her explanation: “I hadn't found that one in my first search because I had erroneously entered it as occurring at 5 a.m., not 5 p.m.”

Reminder: This is a Time magazine reporter and book author.

Now, she admits, this made her feel physically ill in contemplating her upcoming testimony under oath, and no wonder: “The problem with the new March date was that now I was even more confused--previously I had to try to remember if the key conversation had occurred in January or May, and I thought it was more likely May. But March was close enough to May that I really didn't know. ‘I don't remember’ is an answer that prosecutors are used to hearing, but I was mortified about how little I could recall of what occurred when.”

At one point in the piece, Novak says she wishes she could have a “do over,” and that she had told her bureau chief about all this earlier. Time magazine: Your move.

According to the TIME website, TIME and Viveca Novak have mutually agreed to send Novak on a "leave of absence."

What they should do is send her to journalism Siberia along with Judy "Everybody got it wrong" Miller and Bob "Can't lose my access to Cheney, Rummy et al." Woodward.

Jesus, what a bunch of lying, weasly screwheads.