Ronald Kessler
Monday, July 23, 2007

Reprint Information

Book on Katie Couric Makes Waves White House: We're Not Subject to FOIA FBI Seeks 2 Mysterious Men on Ferry Publisher: Conservatives Do Read As Much As Liberals Romney Shrugs Off Mormon History Film

Robert D. Novak, an icon of the conservative movement, drives a black corvette and sometimes sports a cavalier attitude toward the rules of journalism.

In his book, "The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Reporting in Washington," Novak blows dozens of sources without having asked their permission.

But Novak, who writes the longest-running column after William F. Buckley's, is brutally frank about his own shortcomings. He says, for example, that in the 1960s, he rarely received dinner party invitations because he was not a "dinner table raconteur." [Editor's Note: Get Robert Novak's new blockbuster "The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Reporting in Washington" at a cheap price - go here!].

In fact, his "grim-visaged demeanor" led a friend, John J. Lindsay of the Washington Post and later Newsweek, to label him "The Prince of Darkness." His memoirs, however, show him to be an unpretentious, modest man whose greatest pleasure is finding the next scoop.

The description was "not because I was then a hard conservative but because of my unsmiling pessimism about the prospects for America and Western Civilization," Novak writes.

His bad-boy image didn't improve when, in 1964, an angry young man confronted him at San Francisco's St. Francis Hotel when Novak was covering the Republican National Convention. Railing about a column, the man called Novak a "slimy bastard."

"Hungover from carousing with press pals, I took a swing and hit him in the face," Novak says.

Story Continues Below

Novak explains that his father and grandfather were short-tempered and quick with their fists, and he inherited both qualities.

"The difference was that they could handle themselves in a brawl, and I could not," Novak writes. Novak says the young man did not sustain any damage. Because bystanders intervened, he didn't get hurt, either.

Novak had a drinking problem until spinal meningitis made it impossible for him to drink. He also discloses that he has had four bouts with cancer.

Novak readily admits that politicians who give him access or become sources will get a much better ride in his column than those who cut him off. Examples of those in the latter category were Richard Nixon and George H.W. Bush.

Because he says journalists rarely reveal much in their memoirs, Novak makes a point of disclosing as much about himself as he can. He lists his income annual income back to the beginning of his career and says it topped out at $1.2 million in 2004, about half of that from his CNN shows.

Novak first came on the Washington scene in 1957 as an Associated Press reporter. He went on to The Wall Street Journal and began writing a syndicated column with Rowland Evans in 1963. Novak, a Jew who converted to Catholicism, describes the preppy Evans as having all the social graces and entree to the Georgetown set that he did not.

After Evans died in 2001, Novak became the sole author of "Inside Report."

Novak remains at heart a hard news, print reporter, but he no longer wants for dinner invitations. His 662-page book is filled with tantalizing insider tidbits about everyone from Lyndon B. Johnson and Katharine Graham to Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich, whom Novak describes as having a "mindless tactical incompetence that invites defeat."

Novak begins and ends the book with an account of his fateful decision to reveal in his July 14, 2003 column that Ambassador Joe Wilson's wife is Valerie Plame. Before running the story, Novak called Bill Harlow, the CIA's public affairs director, and said he would be referring in his column to Wilson's wife. Harlow told Novak that using her name in connection with the CIA might create "difficulties" if she traveled abroad. He asked him not to name her. Novak did so anyway.

"Those three little sentences resulted in a series of negative consequences for me," Novak writes. "They eventually undermined my 25-year relationship with CNN and kept me off ‘Meet the Press' for over two years."

Novak's legal fees were $160,000.

"I came under constant abuse from journalistic ethics critics, from some colleagues, and especially from bloggers," he says.

Today Novak writes from a tiny, windowless study in his D.C. office suite, just down the hall from Newsweek's Washington bureau and a block from the White House. At 76, he vows he will never retire.

I recently asked Novak whether he has had any overriding goal, besides his interest in conservative issues and getting scoops.

"Not really," he said. "I like to break stories and disclose new information."

That commitment to truth, rather than to spin, is rare in journalism today.

Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of NewsMax.com. View his previous reports and get his dispatches sent to you free via e-mail. Go here now.

[Editor's Note: Order Robert Novak's new blockbuster "The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Reporting in Washington" at a cheap price - go here now!].