This from the DRUDGE REPORT®. Robert Novak says:

“Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this. In July I was interviewing a senior administration official on Ambassador Wilson’s report when he told me the trip was inspired by his wife, a CIA employee working on weapons of mass destruction.

“Another senior official told me the same thing. As a professional journalist with 46 years experience in Washington I do not reveal confidential sources. When I called the CIA in July to confirm Mrs. Wilson’s involvement in the mission for her husband — he is a former Clinton administration official — they asked me not to use her name, but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else.

“According to a confidential source at the CIA, Mrs. Wilson was an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operator, and not in charge of undercover operatives.”

What to make of this?

The argument being stirred by Wilson and the Dems is that someone in the White House — Karl Rove, on which they are counting — purposely disclosed (leaked) the name of an undercover CIA operative (Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame) in order to enact revenge on Wilson for his anti-Bush column in the New York Times and/or to keep others from contradicting the administration.

It wasn’t a leak. The White House person who mentioned it to Novak in a different context seemed not to know that she was undercover.

Novak contacted the CIA for confirmation, and they didn’t warn him not to publish the name. The CIA told Novak that Ms. Plane was an analyst, not an undercover op.

It seems, then, that this story of Karl Rove calling six reporters in order to savage Wilson is pure fantasy. Democrats and the press were eager to believe it, smelling blood. Remember, this was Karl Rove’s blood, so it could quite probably be some blood from Bush/Cheney ‘04.

“Move along. There’s nothing here to see.”