Robert Novak

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Robert David Sanders "Bob" Novak, (February 26, 1931 – August 18, 2009) was an American syndicated columnist, television presenter, and conservative political commentator.

He spent time in two newspapers before serving in the United States Army during the Korean War, and then for The Wall Street Journal.

He joined Rowland Evans in 1963 to launch Inside Report, the country's longest running newspaper column. He also appeared in hundreds of newspapers.

In 1967, the Evans-Novak Political Report, a popular biweekly newsletter, was launched. Since the network's inception, Novak and Evans played a key role in CNN.

He appeared on television shows including Capital Gang, Crossfire, and Evans, Novak, Hunt, & Shields.

He has worked for various other publications, including Reader's Digest.

Novak revealed on August 4, 2008 that he had been diagnosed with a brain tumor and that his prognosis was "poor" and that he was retiring.

After returning home to spend his remaining days with his family, he succumbbed to the disease on August 18, 2009. Novak's coworkers referred to him as the "Prince of Darkness," a term he adopted and later used as a catchword for his autobiography.

He began with moderate or liberal views, but these shifted rightward as time went.

Although taking differing views on topics such as Israel-United States relations and the invasion of Iraq, he later became a prominent spokesperson for American conservatism in his writings and television appearances.

He has written several major newspapers in his career, as well as being involved in events such as the Plame affair.

After his wife, Geraldine, died in May 1998, Novak converted to Catholicism in May 1998.

He had two children, a daughter, and a boy.

Early life

Novak was born in Joliet, Illinois, on February 26, 1931, the son of Jane Sanders and Maurice Novak, a chemical engineer. His paternal grandparents immigrated from Ukraine, and his mother's family was from Lithuania. Novak's parents were non-observing Jews with no contact with their local Jewish synagogue and rarely attended religious services. Novak suffered from chronic bronchitis from an early childhood, which led to his mother's decision to push him to and from school rather than encouraging him to walk. His cousins snarkily referred to him as "Baby Jesus" in the midst of constant family interest. Novak used to tease, accuse, and shock his family from an early age, and he later compared himself to French rebel Bertran de Born.

Novak's journalism career began while he was in high school as a student reporter for the Joliet Herald-News, his hometown newspaper, and earned him ten percent per inch. He attended the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign (UI) from 1948 to 1952, from high school. His father had attended the university but later declared himself that he was "an Illini from birth." While attending the University of Illinois, he became a brother of the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity, which was at the time a majority Jewish college fraternity. When Novak met fellow adamant Wolf Blitzer, he'd later use the group's'secret handshake'.

He continued to gain journalism experience as a sports writer for the Daily Illini (DI), the college's student newspaper. Novak narrated how his disappointment at not being named the paper's top sports editor for the 1951-52 school year led him to cancel his senior classes and work full time for the Champaign-Urbana Courier. Novak left the University to become a full-time journalist without a degree, despite the fact that he was just one course short of the requirements. Novak's four mandatory physical education classes that had no credit, according to a college Dean in 1993, were awarded enough credit hours, and Novak's bachelor's degree was granted. Novak later referred to his academic accomplishments as "very uneven." In his address, he credited the college with bringing him up from working class immigrant status to the American middle class.

Novak served in the United States Army during the Korean War, earning the rank of lieutenant. He later revealed that he had been set to die in the service.

Personal life

Rosanna Hall, Novak's first wife, divorced; they had a divorce. Geraldine Williams, who had been a secretary for President Lyndon B. Johnson, married Geraldine Williams in 1962. Zelda and their daughter, Zelda, worked for Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign and for Vice President Dan Quayle. They have a son, Alex, who works as an editor at Regnery Publishing. Robert Novak was not related to friends of social commentator Michael Novak, although he was not related.

After his wife, Geraldine, died in May 1998, Novak converted to Catholicism. He had two children, a daughter, and a son.

Novak owned a 2002 black Corvette in his later years, and he had his license suspended several times for speeding. He also won a charity car race in Sebring, Florida, which he also attended. He was dubbed a "speed freak" by a Washingtonian newspaper. Novak was also a huge fan of basketball, particularly of the Washington Bullets (now Wizards) and the Maryland Terrapins men's basketball team. He was a member of the Terrapins Club booster group. "I used to see him, always used to see him," Wolf Blitzer said in August 2009. "I never used to see him"... Redskins games, Wizards games, and Wizards games were always there."

Novak died on August 18, 2009, at the age of 78, as a result of brain tumor complications. Since being hospitalized from July 10 to 24, he had returned home to spend his remaining days with his family. He was laid to rest at the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Silver Spring, Maryland.

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Career

Novak resurgented his fledgling journalism career by joining the Associated Press (AP) as a political reporter in Omaha, Nebraska, from 1952 to 1954. He was moved to Lincoln, Nebraska, and then to Indianapolis, Indiana, to cover the two state legislatures in his reporting. Novak was born in 1957 and moved to Washington, D.C., where he served on Congress. In 1958, he left the Associated Press to join the Washington, D.C. bureau of The Wall Street Journal, covering the Senate. In 1961, he rose to the rank of chief congressional correspondent. He did not do his work without the use of tape recordings or paper notes, relying solely on his detailed memory. Novak's coworkers at The Wall Street Journal later said that he became so involved in his jobs that he forgot to shave, left his shoes untied, and even started mistakenly inserting burning cigarettes into his wallets.

Novak joined Rowland Evans, a former New York Herald Tribune reporter, to produce the Inside Report, a newspaper column that is published six times a week. Inside Washington was also known as Inside Washington. When they first started, Evans knew Novak little as a fellow Capitol Hill reporter. They had disparaging public images, with Novak dressing sloppily and Evans' appearance as a diplomat with a refined demeanor. Their column mixed standard reporting with their own editorial views. It began with muted, mainly centrist views, but their terms morphed rightward as time progressed. Novak's coverage of the Six-Day War in the field influenced his views in favour of Evans' pro-Palestinian sentiments.

The column's factual accuracy has been questioned. "We were so eager for exclusive reports that we were vulnerable to manipulation by leaks, jeopardizing our credibility," Novak wrote in his autobiography. From 1966 to 1989, the Chicago Sun-Times became Inside Report's "home" newspaper. Novak continued the column after Evans' departure on May 15, 1993. Evans died in 2001, and Inside Report became one of more than 150 newspapers at that time, thanks to the Creators Syndicate. After Novak's cancer diagnosis in July 2008, the publication of his illness has come to an end. Bloomberg L.P. and The Washingtonian both said that the column was a must-read among political insiders. It was the longest running syndicated political column in the United States.

The Evans–Novak Political Newsletter, published biweekly by Evans and Novak in 1967. (ENPR). They took a more general approach in this series than to their column, focusing on forecasting elections and predicting socio-economic trends rather than on breaking news. Regnery Publishing eventually purchased ENPR from Novak, but Novak's decision on editorial control and staff selection remained in Novak's hands. In 2006, Timothy P. Carney of Regnery became Novak's partner in the newsletter. Novak declared on February 4, 2009, that he would no longer be published in ENPR. This last issue explored Barack Obama's reelection as President, which the authors characterized as a political 'paradigm shift.' The ENPR's conservative writers, such as John Fund, who later worked for The Wall Street Journal, Tim Carney (author of "The Big Ripoff"), and David Freddoso, who later worked on National Review Online, all began as contributors to the ENPR.

Novak joined the syndicated show The McLaughlin Group in 1982, starring McLaughlin as well as Novak's friend Jack Germond. Despite the fact that they both had common political convictions, Novak sparred with McLaughlin on a daily basis.

Novak's debut on CNN in 1980 appeared on CNN in the first week. His reputation as a well-known print journalist gave the fledgling network a sense of legitimacy, and Novak soon hosted a weekly interview show that Evans co-hosted. He earned a reputation as a ferocious debater on the subject. Novak later became the executive producer of Capital Gang, which also included his co-panelists Al Hunt and Mark Shields. Pat Buchanan took over as the host of Crossfire.

During a live broadcast of Inside Politics on August 4, 2005, Novak walked off the set, along with Democratic strategist and analyst James Carville. Novak said, "I think that's bullshit" during a tense debate over Florida Republican Rep. Katherine Harris's just-announced 2006 bid for the US Senate. Novak had to "assure these right-wingers that he had a backbone," Carville said. Novak threw out his microphone and stormed off the set as anchor Ed Henry was asking Carville a question. Critics later alleged that Novak had done so in order to avoid discussing recent developments in the Valerie Plame affair on-air. CNN suspended Novak for one day and apologized to its viewers for the outburst, which CNN termed "inexcusable and intolerable."

On December 23, 2005, Novak retired from CNN after 25 years, saying that his time with the network was "longer than most marriages." Novak also said he had "no complaints" about CNN. Novak had signed a deal to do unspecified tasks for the network, according to Fox News one week earlier. Even if he hadn't been suspended in the August incident, Novak said he would have left CNN, but did not go to Fox News because the network was more sympathetic to his viewpoint.

Novak said:

Prince of Darkness: Fifty Years Reporting in Washington was published in July 2007 by Crown Forum, a Random House affiliate. Novak's friend, photographer John Lindsay, gave him the nickname "prince of Darkness" because Lindsay "had a skeptical view of our civilization," Novak said in an interview. Novak adored the name. Darth Vader once starred at a dinner with the Gridiron Club, and then performed a song about Dick Cheney as the character. Nonetheless, he could be sensitive about his persona; he once asked Democratic Party leader Robert Schwarz Strauss, "Why does everyone have such a skepticism against me?" "Saves time," Strauss replied.

Novak was one of the five most read columnists in the United States at his time. Novak wrote for a number of other journals throughout his career, most notable as a contributing editor for Reader's Digest. Over 200 times on NBC's program Meet the Press, he appeared on NBC's Meet the Press. After his departure from CNN in August 2005, he appeared on Fox News on a regular basis. Novak was also one of many other journalists in Timothy Crouse's seminal nonfiction book The Boys on the Bus, which described reporters covering the 1972 presidential election. Novak would "wince unto this day" at his appearance in the novel, according to The Washington Post in August 2004.

In 1997, Novak received an Alumni Achievement Award from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Novak often visited his alma mater and chatted with students, establishing a scholarship to fund English and rhetoric majors in 1992. He spoke at the college's commencement in May 1998, advising students to use their education as a "bulwark against tyranny." Novak began as a Radford Visiting Professor of Journalism at Baylor University in 1987. He was the 2001 recipient of the National Press Club's 'Fourth Estate Award' for lifetime achievement in journalism. Novak appears in Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story, an award-winning documentary about political strategist Lee Atwater. Novak claims in the film that "He tried to convince me to write about Governor Dukakis' psychiatric problems, but that was really a slander." If I could get an exclusive tale, I would leap at it, bite it, and not be as cautious as I should have been, my weakness was that if I could. Well, that may be true, but I was careful not to get involved in that one."

In 1999, Robert Novak was inducted as a Laureate of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois and was named the Order of Lincoln (the state's highest award) by the governor of Illinois.

Novak continued a strike on Richard Nixon's key aide, H. R. Haldeman. "Bob Haldeman was treated more harshly because he had no personal acquaintance with me," he later wrote in his autobiography. By refusing to be a source, he made himself more of a target than he had to be. Rowland Evans of Novak ended up on Richard Nixon's "master list" of enemies, although Novak himself was not named. Novak paid Nixon a 'courtesy call' when they first began the column, allowing them to admonition Republicans that they should not give Republicans a break.

Novak and collaborator Rowland Evans discovered in 1976 that a top-ranking Ford administration official had secretly said that the current Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe was preferable to the radical nationalism that may not have existed. Novak wrote the story in his column, which culminated in a government fiasco. Gerald Ford's chances in the 1976 presidential election had been harmed by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

The contents of Orlando Letelier's assassination by the FBI were copied and leaked to Novak and his partner Rowland Evans, as well as Jack Anderson of The New York Times by the FBI, who were then returned to Letelier's widow. According to Novak and Evans, Letelier was in constant communication with the Unidad Popular exiled in East Berlin and subsidized by the East German government. The FBI suspected that these leaders had been recruited by the Stasi. According to Novak, Evans and Anderson, Letelier's daughter Beatriz Allende, the wife of Cuban DGI station chief Luis Fernandez Ona, had been in touch with Salvador Allende.

Letelier was able to receive $6,000 a month from the Cuban government under Beatriz Allende's leadership to launch a campaign outside the United Nations and the US Congress to separate Augusto Pinochet's draconian rule. Novak and Evans said this was part of a coordinated movement to put pressure on Pinochet's government closely coordinated by the Cuban and Soviet governments, relying on individuals like Letelier to carry out the movement. The briefcase of Letelier also disclosed the names of scores of identified and suspected Eastern Bloc intelligence agents. Apparently handled by Letelier and some Cubans, who used his diplomatic position to mask his identities.

Evans and Novak were described by a fellow IPS member and friend as part of a "organized right wing assault." Isabel Letelier's widow, 1980, told The New York Times that the money sent to her late husband from Cuba was from western sources, not that Cuba had simply acted as an intermediary. According to reporter John Nichols, observers will "have a rough time forgiving" Novak for his role in the incident.

Novak also filed lawsuits against administration officials, including Attorney General Janet Reno, who used unidentified FBI agents to investigate. Thensen, a 2001 FBI agent who was arrested and found to have been serving first the Soviets and then the Russians for 22 years, betraying American agents to their deaths, was a primary source for some of these allegations.

In his column of July 14, he named Valerie Plame as a CIA "operative" in 2003. He indirectly revealed the company she used as cover, Brewster Jennings & Associates, the other Brewster Jennings & Associates, and the informants who met with them in this manner. Despite the fact that it is unlawful for anyone, government servant or otherwise to freely disclose classified information (under US Code Section 793, Novak was never charged with this offense because there was no proof that Novak knew that Ms. Plame was a clandestine agent. Novak said that the information was sent by two "senior administration officials" to him. Richard Armitage, who e-mailed him under the pseudonym "Wildford," was eventually revealed, with Novak taking Karl Rove's words as confirmation. During 2005, there were questions in the media about Novak's apparent absence of attention by the special prosecutor Fitzgerald and the grand jury, including questions indicating that he may have already testified about his sources despite publicly stating that he did not do so.

Novak wrote a column on Human Events on July 12, 2006.

Novak wrote an op-ed column in which Armitage's self-disclosure was "deceptive."

Despite this, an unrepentant Novak said in an interview with Barbara Matusow of the Nation Ledger in 2008:

Valerie Plame said in a New York Times article in 2010 that the revelation "ruined (her husband's) global consulting market, stifled her espionage career, and nearly ended their marriage."

Novak also said in the same interview, "It is also true that she said "in the same interview."

David Frum expressed surprise after Novak's death, noting that Richard Armitage, Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame, and Novak all had the same views against a potential war in Iraq.

Novak took on a pro-Palestinian role in the conflict, often chastising Israel. Novak criticized Israel for Palestinian Christians' plight and mass exodus in his syndicated column. Nasser al-Shaer, the former Education Minister and Hamas leader, has also met with several Palestinian Authority officials, including former Education Minister and Hamas leader Nasser al-Shaer. Former President Jimmy Carter praised Israeli policy versus the Palestinians to "apartheid" in Israel, according to Novak. Novak once said that his views on Israel generated the most hate mail. "Israel is so important to Jewish people and its archiving is so vital," he said.

Novak said after the 9/11 attacks that he believed the perpetrators had been largely motivated by revenge for Israel's support for Israel. The event brought the countries closer together "in a way that could not achieve long-term US policy goals," he said. "I am always amazed how American conservatives can be involved in this absolutely mindless support of the transigent [sic] Israeli policy," Novak said in a November 2001 episode of Capital Gang. He predicted that Yasser Arafat would be able to recognize Israel's right to exist, but Ariel Sharon will never recognize a Palestinian state. He also referred to Hamas as "liberation fighters," causing Margaret Carlson to say he is "the only one who will call Hamas freedom fighters" and that "people from around the world do."

Novak's columns on Israel, according to executive Ira Forman of the National Jewish Democratic Council, are "awful." After the 9/11 attacks, David Frum branded his column "absurdity." Novak "fought a losing war with pro-Israel groups who were unduly influential in Washington" and "excoriated Jews in a public service who were not concerned with their faith," the Jewish Telegraphic Agency announced. Novak's views on Israel, as well as general foreign policy, have been praised by writer John Nichols, who wrote for The Nation. "Novak maintained a fit, and particularly American, disdain for military adventurism," Nichols said. Novak's position has also been lauded by an advocacy group for Middle East Peace.

George McGovern of Massachusetts won the Massachusetts primary and Novak phoned Democratic lawmakers around the country on April 25, 1972, who agreed with his assertion that traditional blue collar Democrat voters were unaware of McGovern's truth. Novak said in a column on April 27, 1972, that an unidentified Democratic senator had spoken to him about McGovern. "The people are unaware that McGovern is for amnesty, abortion, and nationalization of pot," the senator said. "Once middle America—Catholic middle America, in particular—finds this out; he's dead." McGovern was branded as the enemy of "amnesty, abortion, and acid," leading to his demise in November, which culminated in his defeat in a 49-state landslide loss.

Novak was accused of fabricating the quote. Novak also said that he took the senator to lunch after the campaign and asked if he should recognize him as the source, but that he would not allow his identity to be revealed. Novak said, "He had to run for re-election." "If they knew he had said that," Novak said, "the McGovernies would have killed him if they knew it."

On July 15, 2007, Novak announced on Meet the Press that the unidentified senator was Thomas Eagleton. Eagleton went on to serve as the Democratic vice presidential nominee and McGovern's running mate for a brief period in 1972, resulting in several hospitalizations that later embarrassed the McGovern campaign and resulted in Eagleton's departure from the campaign. Eagleton may not have been chosen as McGovernor's running mate if it had been known at the time that Eagleton was the source of the quote, according to political analyst Bob Shrum.

Shrum said:

"Reminding me of the need to conceal his identity," Novak wrote on March 4, 2007. According to reports, several of Eagleton's former aides were outraged that Eagleton's name was attached to a quote that made him appear duplicitous. Novak said denying the identity of Eagleton was "a decision on my part." If there is any doubt, Eagleton could have a chat with him in heaven "or wherever we land up," Novak said.

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