J$P Instant Transcript! Robert Novak says Richard Armitage and David Corn have it wrong.

From Fox & Friends, September 14 2006:

BRIAN KILMEADE [FOX NEWS]: Joining us right now in Chicago, Fox News contributor, the man himself, Bob Novak. Is Armitage telling the truth, Bob?

ROBERT NOVAK: I have a somewhat different recollection of the meeting, and I trust mine because I had to write a column on my interview with him immediately afterwards, and I don't think Mr Armitage recollected it until several months later. It wasn't right at the end, it was near the end of the interview, and I asked him why in the world they had sent Joe Wilson as somebody without experience in intelligence, without expertise in nuclear policy, and without recent experience in Africa, why they would send him on this. And he said that it was suggested--now this is much stronger than his comments last week--he told me it was suggested by his wife, who worked, he told me, in the counter-proliferation division at the CIA. So he knew where she worked, he said she suggested it, and Mr Armitage is not saying that right now.

E.D. HILL [FOX NEWS]: So why did the special prosecutor spend so much time investigating, if he apparently had this information?

NOVAK: He had this, of course he had this--this interview was on July 8th, the special prosecutor came in on December 30th, and almost immediately he learned that Mr Armitage had turned himself in as the leak sometime previous to that. I suppose you'll have to ask Mr Fitzgerald what he was spending all that money for. I suppose he was trying to find whether there was a conspiracy as the left-wing bloggers claim, and it wasn't just one rather moderate, nonpartisan, nonpolitical person in the State Department making the comment to a reporter.

KILMEADE: Robert, one of the most damning things that you write about today in your column which is syndicated nationwide, is you say that Richard Armitage says he was told not to say anything. Well, it was three months between October and when Fitzgerald got on the case. He could have talked; he could've went up to the President; he could've let everybody know.

NOVAK: That's right. Of course it's my theory that he knew that he was my source immediately when the column ran in July. He claims he didn't realize it until my second column on October 1st. I don't think it was the second column, as I said this morning. I think the reason he set it on October 1st was that right that weekend that the Justice Department was investigating. But let's take him at his word that that was the first he knew he was the source on October 1st. You're quite correct, it was three months before Fitzgerald came on the case and he could have alerted then and I think saved a lot of heartburn for his colleagues in the government, including Mr Rove.

HILL: Well speaking of Mr Rove, there are journalists who suggest that he still was part of this. What's your take on that?

NOVAK: Well, you're talking about David Corn, is that who you're talking about?

HILL: Yes.

NOVAK: Well, David Corn is in a deliciously ironic position. Mr Corn is a left-wing journalist who writes for The Nation, a far left magazine, who really pushed this whole case from the beginning. In Joe Wilson's memoirs, Wilson says that Corn--I think it was very unethical--was advising him on strategy, telling him what the law was. But at any rate, it is Corn's book, written in collaboration with Michael Isikoff of Newsweek, a great investigative reporter who I think is non-ideological, and they are the ones who found out that the source was indeed--something I couldn't say because of confidentiality--it indeed was Armitage. So I think that with all his left-wing blogger friends and left-wing establishment friends, Corn is in a very difficult situation, and he is desperately trying to say yes, yes, it was still Rove who was doing it.

KILMEADE: And by the way, he was also Bob Woodward's source, Bob, so you're not alone with that.

NOVAK: Armitage is, yes.

KILMEADE: Thanks a lot Bob, appreciate it.