Read for yourself:

Novak's July 14 column.

Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him. "I will not answer any question about my wife," Wilson told me.

Novak's October 1 article.

During a long conversation with a senior administration official, I asked why Wilson was assigned the mission to Niger. He said Wilson had been sent by the CIA's counterproliferation section at the suggestion of one of its employees, his wife. It was an offhand revelation from this official, who is no partisan gunslinger. When I called another official for confirmation, he said: "Oh, you know about it." The published report that somebody in the White House failed to plant this story with six reporters and finally found me as a willing pawn is simply untrue.

Now, those are just what I regard key grafs- It's important to go through the entire articles, and get a feel for the tones and strategies Novak uses. Of note, in the second column, Novak puts down alot of verbiage to dismiss the whole thing. He dismisses the significance of the investigation ("current Justice investigation stems from a routine, mandated probe of all CIA leaks"), he dismisses Wilson("I was curious why a high-ranking official in President Bill Clinton's National Security Council (NSC) was given this assignment"), he dismisses the importance of Wilson's wife's being undercover("she probably never again will be given a foreign assignment"), and quite predictibly, this is all party politics according to Novak("These efforts cannot be separated from the massive political assault on President Bush").

Novak is covering his hide- which is a reasonable thing to expect as the wondering gaze turns to him asking "why in all hell did you out this agent?" But his attempt is misguided- and lots of folks are nailing just why this is so. I commend you to the TNR online debate between Spencer Ackerman and Clifford May. Ackerman writes:

The implication here is that no cover was blown, and the release of her name is a non-issue. For my part, I don't know if Plame was hunting enriched uranium on the trail from Islamabad to Pyongyang or designing the "Harry and Aeriel Pigeon" graphics on the CIA's webpage for kids. (The Post reports today that she's in the clandestine service but is now out of the field.) The fact is, as NBC reported yesterday, in July CIA lawyers affirmed to the Justice Department that Plame's identity was classified. Everything else is just noise.

And talking about that online debate- go read it. I should hope one goal of we democrats is to oppose Bush policy and politicing, where opposition is genuine, in a manner that counters the vitriolic opposition to Clinton in the 90's. In this, we need rational, thoughtful discussion- exactly what TNR is doing online with this debate.