Novak Still Toting Water for Bush

Robert Novak, favorite troll of neo-cons everywhere, is still toting water for George W. Bush, defending the president at every turn. Novak has now turned on the CIA and is accusing the spy agency of subversion of The Decider Guy. Our only question about Novak is why isn't he in jail?

The CIA's contempt for the president was demonstrated during his 2004 reelection campaign when a senior intelligence officer, Paul R. Pillar, made off-the-record speeches around the country criticizing the invasion of Iraq. On Sept. 24, 2004, three days before my column exposed Pillar's activity, former representative Porter Goss arrived at Langley as Bush's handpicked director of central intelligence. Goss had resigned from Congress to accept Bush's mandate to clean up the CIA. But the president eventually buckled under fire from the old boys at Langley and their Democratic supporters in Congress, and Goss was sacked in May 2006.

Goss's successor, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, restored the status quo at the CIA and nurtured relations with congressional Democrats in preparation for their coming majority status. Hayden, an active-duty four-star Air Force general, first antagonized Hoekstra by telling Reyes what the Democrats wanted to hear about the Valerie Plame-CIA leak case.

There is no partisan divide on congressional outrage over the CIA's destruction of tapes showing interrogation of detainees suspected of terrorism. Hoekstra agrees with Reyes that the Bush administration has made a big mistake refusing to let officials testify in the impending investigation.