In 2003 Robert Novak, a famed and sometimes even feared DC political journalist of five decades, found himself at the center of a now mostly forgotten, but then must see TV, Bush Administration-related scandal.
In his memoir, the title “Prince of Darkness” coming from his ruthless approach to journalism, Novak retold the story that commenced when President George W. Bush levied an accusation afterwards generally referred to as “the sixteen words.” Those words accused Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein of seeking to purchase uranium from Niger to produce nuclear weapons.
This accusation served as one of the stronger and more convincing pieces of evidence in the case to force the removal of Hussein.
The problem lay in the fact that a previously barely known Ambassador named Joseph Wilson had produced a report stating that likely was not the case.
By May, however, operations against Hussein had commenced. Two reports, one in May from a New York Times writer, then in July from Wilson himself, directly contradicted President Bush’s assertion in January.
Two days later, on the eighth, Novak attended an interview meeting with top level State Department official Richard Armitage. Armitage spent much of the time off the record discussing the Niger allegation.
Novak later wrote “I then asked Armitage a question that had been puzzling me, but for the sake of my future peace of mind, would better have been left unasked. Why would the CIA send Joseph Wilson, not an expert in nuclear proliferation and with no intelligence experience on a mission to Niger.”
“You know his wife works at CIA, and she suggested that he be sent to Niger,” replied Armitage.
Wilson’s wife Valerie had previously served in the field in intelligence operations until “burned” by the Soviet spy Aldrich Ames. She used her maiden name “Plame” in the field with her Christian name, but also later used “Valerie Plame” as her name in her Who’s Who in America biography.
Wilson himself described his pursual of the mission as spending eight days “drinking green tea and meeting with dozens of people “ in government, formerly in government, and in the uranium industry. He concluded on that basis that “it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had taken place.”
Though that itself sounds like it falls a country mile short of confirmation, no evidence produced has ever refuted that conclusion.
Novak built his career on an empire of friends and sources cultivated for decades, but also on honest reporting. Not a “my Republican Party right or wrong” conservative journalist, Novak felt that he did his cause the best service by reporting on what he perceived as missteps or problems in politics or policy. His own questioning of the Iraq War launched that year made him no friends in the Bush Administration either.
In his July 8 column, Novak reported on Wilson and Niger. Part of this was based on conversations with Wilson and focused on the hows and whys of the failure of intelligence that led to the accusation. Mainly in passing, and likely because Novak understood that his readers expected a bit of “insider baseball,” he felt the need to explain the fact that Wilson’s wife had suggested him for the mission.
The timing of his column seemed to indicate that he was used as a cipher by the White House, using the identification of Mrs. Wilson’s role to punish the Ambassador and undermine his report.
Strangely enough, reports afterward even until very recently have tried to distance Valerie Wilson from that decision, only admitting that she mentioned him without endorsing him for the mission. Novak’s memoirs confirm that Armitage was joined by CIA and White House officials in saying that she suggested her husband.
Years later, he was given a CIA memo stating directly that she had, in fact, done that.
These details are all vital because Novak spent years afterward defending himself from criminal investigations, facing a near-blackballing of his presence from television programs that he frequented as a guest, and other petty actions that left him blindsided.
In his memoir, Novak explained that the story presented a puzzle in the question of why WIlson was selected. “The answer that Wilson was suggested by his wife,” Novak wrote “shows how peculiar events at a high governmental level in Washington can be.”
Which seems to indicate that this and other questionable choices at the top of the government food chain were fairly routine, regardless of who served in the Oval Office.
The word “aristocracy” comes from classical Greek. Aristotle, an expert on any important subject studied at the time, included it in his list of three forms of good government along with monarchy and polity. Aristocracy meant rule by “the best,” however one defined that.Monarchy referred to rule by one and polity, rule of the people.
Each “good” form, he wrote, would inevitably devolve over time as the desire for power precludes serving the people. Monarchies devolve into tyrannies, aristocracies into oligarchies, and polities into democracies, a word that until the 1800s Anno Domini meant “mob rule.”
Ever practical, the British forged a philosophy that stated if a system had all three that balanced each other off, two could always restrain the other, should it get out of hand. In 1689, for example, this ideal saw the aristocracy and people expel the King and “hire” a more favorable option.
With no American aristocracy outside of a handful of families in Virginia, New York, and Boston, the original Constitution recreated the rule of three with the people, state governments, and the federal government.
Americans have seemingly subconsciously sought to somehow mimic the old European networks of influence based on family. No family, however, has been able to maintain influence more than a few generations whether in politics or business.
As the twentieth century closed and the subsequent one commenced, an American aristocracy of power, permanence, and stability had emerged. Pathways to power led children from elite neighborhoods to elite schools to elite opportunities. They then repeated the process with their own children.
Some found their way into the halls of power, others into the halls of philanthropy, still others went into the burgeoning halls of non profits and non governmental organizations of ever expanding wealth and influence.
Most of these people are no smarter than anyone else and likely, outside of travel, have less real life experience than those without expensive degrees hanging on their walls. What they do have is bigger words and better friends. Family and social networks that elevate from their own intentionally are less well described by the Greek word for “rule by the best” and more by philiaocracy, or rule by those in well-connected social groups.
Thus the emergence of Versailles on the Potomac.
In 2003, Novak was shocked by the response to his casual mention of a CIA operative long since identified and removed from the field. The benefit of hindsight, however, may reveal the true nerve touched. That lay in how what should have been an essential mission of the highest interest to national security ended up, seemingly, in the hands of an inexperienced diplomat with James Bond fantasies recommended by none other than his loving wife.
Novak’s memoir, and more telling, the casual way that he treated a gross breach of ethics and conflict of interest issues, shows that this was everyday practice then. Today, the reports of the Department of Government Efficiency illustrating the chains of money, power, and influence from the federal government, through the non profit/NGO community throughout the world show a disturbing depth of corruption, but likely not even close to its full extent.
The aristocracy, or philiaocracy if one prefers, is being afflicted by the Trump Administration. Both parties, like the Credit Mobilier scandal of the 1870s, have their feet in the muck, which has resulted in a powerful pushback.
The people elected the President to address this issue. It’s only natural for the aristocracy and its fellow travelers to try to divide and conquer its biggest adversaries.
