Robert Novak

Novak was born on February 26, 1931, in Joliet, Illinois, the son of Jane Sanders and Maurice Novak, a chemical engineer. His paternal grandparents immigrated from Ukraine, and his mother's family was from Lithuania. Novak's parents were secular Jews who had little interaction with their local Jewish community and rarely attended religious services. Novak suffered from chronic bronchitis through his early childhood, which led his mother to drive him to and from school instead of letting him walk. Because of the constant family attention, his cousins mockingly called him "Baby Jesus". Novak also loved to tease, offend, and shock his family from an early age, and he later compared himself to French rebel Bertran de Born. He continued gaining journalism experience as a sports writer for the Daily Illini (DI), the college's student newspaper. Novak wrote how his disappointment about not being named the paper's main sports editor for the 1951–52 school year led him to skip his senior classes and to work full time for the Champaign-Urbana Courier. After four years at the University, Novak left it to become a full-time journalist without a degree, even though he was only one course short of the requirements. In 1993 a college Dean determined that four mandatory physical education classes that Novak had gone through for no credit should constitute enough credit hours, and Novak received his bachelor's degree. Novak later described his academic achievements as "very uneven." He spoke at the university's May 1998 commencement, and in his speech he credited the college for bringing him up from working class immigrant status into the American middle class. During the Korean War, Novak served in the U.S. Army, and he reached the rank of lieutenant. He later stated that he had fully expected to die in the service. ==Career==

in 1975 in 1981 and Christopher Cox in 2003 '' in 2005 on September 13, 2007. After serving from 1952 to 1954, Novak rejoined his fledgling journalism career, joining the Associated Press (AP) as a political correspondent in Omaha, Nebraska. He was transferred to Lincoln, Nebraska, and then to Indianapolis, Indiana, covering the two state legislatures in his reporting. In 1967 Evans and Novak set up a biweekly political newsletter called the Evans–Novak Political Report (ENPR). They took a more broad approach in this series compared to their column, focusing on forecast elections and predicting socio-political trends rather than on breaking stories. Regnery Publishing eventually bought ENPR from Novak, but it left editorial control and hiring decisions in Novak's hands. In 2006, Timothy P. Carney of Regnery became Novak's partner in the newsletter. On February 4, 2009, Novak announced he was ending ENPR's publication. This last issue described the implications of Barack Obama's election as President, which the authors labeled a political 'paradigm shift'. Conservative writers such as John Fund, who later worked for The Wall Street Journal, Tim Carney (author of "The Big Ripoff," "Obamanomics"), and David Freddoso, who later worked for National Review Online, started off as contributors to the ENPR. Novak became a regular panel member of the syndicated show The McLaughlin Group in 1982, starring alongside McLaughlin as well as Novak's friend Jack Germond. Novak sparred frequently with McLaughlin despite the fact that they both held similar political views. Novak appeared on CNN on its opening week in 1980. His status as a well-known print reporter brought a sense of credibility to the fledgling new network, and Novak soon created a weekly interview show that Evans co-hosted. He established a public image as a combative debater on the program. Novak later became the executive producer of Capital Gang on CNN, which also featured him as a panelist on the show and included his friends Al Hunt and Mark Shields. after Carville remarked that Novak had "to show these right-wingers that he's got a backbone." As anchor Ed Henry was asking Carville a question, Novak threw off his microphone and stormed off the set. Critics later charged that Novak had done so to avoid discussing recent developments in the Valerie Plame affair on-air. In response to the incident, CNN suspended Novak for one day and apologized to its viewers, calling the outburst "inexcusable and unacceptable." Novak retired from CNN after 25 years on December 23, 2005, stating that his relationship with the network lasted "longer than most marriages." Novak also said he had "no complaints" about CNN. Fox News had confirmed one week earlier that Novak had signed a contract to do unspecified work for the network. Novak stated that he still would have left CNN even if he had not been suspended in the August incident and did not go to Fox News because the network was more friendly to his point of view. Novak said: His memoirs, entitled Prince of Darkness: Fifty Years Reporting in Washington, were published in July 2007 by Crown Forum, a division of Random House. "Prince of Darkness" was a nickname given to Novak by his friend reporter John Lindsay, because Lindsay "thought for a young man I took a very dim view of the prospects for our civilization," Novak said in an interview. Novak loved the nickname. He once dressed up as Darth Vader to a dinner with the Gridiron Club, and he then sang a song about Dick Cheney as the character. At his height, Novak was one of the five most read columnists in the U.S. He served as a longtime CNN television personality, and he appeared intermittently on Fox News after his August 2005 departure from CNN. Recognition Novak received an Alumni Achievement Award from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1997. Novak frequently visited his alma mater and interacted with students, establishing a scholarship in his name to support English and rhetoric majors in 1992. He spoke at the college's May 1998 commencement, urging graduates to use their education as a "bulwark against tyranny." Novak also served as a Radford Visiting Professor of Journalism for Baylor University in 1987. He was the 2001 winner of the National Press Club's 'Fourth Estate Award' for lifetime achievement in journalism as well. Novak appears in the 2008 award-winning documentary on political strategist Lee Atwater, Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story. In the film, Novak says "He tried to get me to write about Governor Dukakis having psychiatric problems but it really was a slander. He thought my weakness was that if I could get an exclusive story, I would jump at it, bite at it and not be as careful as I should be. That may be true, but I was careful enough not to get involved in that one." Robert Novak was inducted as a Laureate of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois and awarded the Order of Lincoln (the State's highest honor) by the governor of Illinois in 1999 in the area of communications. Notable events Nixon administration Novak pursued a continuous attack upon Richard Nixon's key aide H. R. Haldeman. He later wrote in his autobiography, "Bob Haldeman was treated more harshly because he refused any connection with me. He made himself more of a target than he had to be by refusing to be a source." When they had started the column, Novak paid a 'courtesy call' to Nixon, who took the opportunity to admonish them to give Republicans a break. According to Novak and Evans, the documents showed that Letelier was in constant contact with the leadership of the Unidad Popular exiled in East Berlin and supported by the East German Government. The FBI suspected that these leaders had been recruited by the Stasi. According to Novak, Evans and Anderson, documents in the briefcase showed that Letelier had maintained contact with Salvador Allende's daughter, Beatriz Allende, wife of Cuban DGI station chief Luis Fernandez Ona. According to Novak and Evans, Letelier was able to receive funding of $5,000 a month from the Cuban government and under the supervision of Beatriz Allende, he used his contacts within the Institute for Policy Studies and western human rights groups to organize a campaign within the United Nations as well as the U.S. Congress to isolate Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship. Fellow IPS member and friend Saul Landau described Evans and Novak as part of an "organized right wing attack". In 1980, Letelier's widow, Isabel, wrote in The New York Times that the money sent to her late husband from Cuba was from western sources, and that Cuba had simply acted as an intermediary. Reporter John Nichols has written in The Nation that observers should "have a hard time forgiving" Novak for his role in the incident. CIA leak scandal In 2003, he identified Valerie Plame as a CIA "operative" in his column of July 14. In doing so, he indirectly disclosed the organizational name of the company she used as cover, Brewster Jennings & Associates, the other operatives who worked for Brewster Jennings, and the informants who met with them. Although it is illegal for anyone, government official or otherwise, to knowingly distribute classified information (under US Code, Title 18, Section 793, Paragraph e), Novak was never charged with this crime because there was no evidence that Novak knew that Ms. Plame was a covert agent. Novak reported the information was provided to him by two "senior administration officials." These were eventually revealed to be Richard Armitage, who e-mailed him using the pseudonym "Wildford," with Novak assuming Karl Rove's comments as confirmation. During 2005, there were questions in the press regarding the apparent absence of focus on Novak by the special prosecutor Fitzgerald and the grand jury, specifically questions suggesting he may have already testified about his sources despite insisting publicly that he would not do so. On July 12, 2006, Novak published a column at Human Events stating: When Richard Armitage admitted to being a source, Novak wrote an op-ed column describing Armitage's self-disclosure as "deceptive." In 2008, however, an unrepentant Novak said in an interview with Barbara Matusow from the Nation Ledger: In a New York Times article in 2010, Valerie Plame said that the disclosure "destroyed (her husband's) international consulting business, wrecked her espionage career and nearly took down their marriage". In the same interview, Novak also stated: After Novak's death, David Frum commented that the whole episode had been ironic given that Richard Armitage, Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame, and Novak all had exactly the same opinions against a potential war in Iraq. Novak praised former president Jimmy Carter for likening Israeli policy toward the Palestinians to apartheid in Israel. The executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, Ira Forman, has called Novak's columns on Israel "awful." Reporter John Nichols, writing for The Nation, has praised Novak's views on Israel specifically and on foreign policy in general. Nichols remarked, "Novak maintained a healthy, and very American, disdain for military adventurism." Activist group Churches for Middle East Peace has also praised Novak's stance. Amnesty, abortion, and acid On April 25, 1972, George McGovern won the Massachusetts primary and Novak phoned Democratic politicians around the country, who agreed with his assessment that traditional blue collar Democratic voters were unaware of McGovern's true beliefs. Novak was accused of manufacturing the quote. "Oh, he had to run for re-election", said Novak. "The McGovernites would kill him if they knew he had said that," Novak added. On July 15, 2007, Novak disclosed on Meet the Press that the unnamed senator was Thomas Eagleton. Eagleton went on to become the Democratic vice presidential nominee and McGovern's running mate briefly in the 1972 election, before it was revealed that he suffered from bouts of depression throughout his life, resulting in several hospitalizations, which when revealed, humiliated the McGovern campaign and resulted in Eagleton being forced to quit the race. Political analyst Bob Shrum says that Eagleton would never have been selected as McGovern's running mate if it had been known at the time that Eagleton was the source of the quote. Shrum said: Eagleton died on March 4, 2007, "relieving me of the need to conceal his identity," Novak wrote. Some of Eagleton's former aides were reportedly angry that Eagleton's name was attached to a quote that made him appear duplicitous. Asked about the story, Novak acknowledged that disclosing Eagleton's identity was "a judgment on my part." If there is any disagreement, Eagleton could settle it with him in heaven "or wherever we end up," Novak added. ==Political views==

Novak was a registered Democrat, despite his conservative political views. He held more centrist views in his early career, and he supported the Democratic presidential candidacies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, of whom he was a friend. In later years, he said that he maintained his registered Democratic status so he could vote in District of Columbia Democratic primaries where victory would be tantamount to election. He was also close friends with Everett Dirksen. Novak later stated that reading Whittaker Chambers' book Witness changed his views from moderate-to-liberal to a strident anticommunism. Novak strongly supported wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Grenada, but he took an anti-interventionist stance after that. He was a hard-line social conservative as well, holding anti-abortion and anti-divorce views. For this reason he has been called a paleoconservative, although this label has been disputed. Novak's political column once stated that he considered every single president in his lifetime to be a failure, with the lone exception of Reagan. In the same year, and shortly after the summer publication of Novak's memoirs, he was interviewed by former columnist Bill Steigerwald. Asked of the future of the country, Novak said: David Frum, writing for National Review, essentially dismissed Novak as a contributor to the modern conservative movement in March 2003. ==Religious views==

Raised in secular Jewish culture, Novak lived seven decades as an agnostic. He briefly attended Unitarian and then Methodist services at the behest of his first and second wives, but he was not interested in either faith. He particularly disliked the Methodists' anti-Vietnam War position. Novak was introduced to Catholic Christianity in the early 1980s when his friend Jeffrey Bell, a Republican political consultant and former Reagan aide, gave him some books on the Catholic faith. At that time, Novak had nearly died from spinal meningitis. Geraldine was already a Catholic. Al Hunt, Judy Woodruff, Fred Barnes, Margaret Carlson, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Henry Hyde, and Rick Santorum attended Novak's baptism. Novak felt that his new faith did not influence his personal behavior or his political views, saying, "I'm a Christian now, but I still have some bad traits." ==Final years==

On July 23, 2008, Novak received a police citation for failing to yield a right of way to an 86-year-old pedestrian, Don Clifford Liljenquist, who was struck by Novak in slow-moving traffic and taken to a hospital, where he was treated for minor injuries. Novak left the scene of the crash, driving approximately one block from the scene before being flagged down by a cyclist who had witnessed the collision and then called police. He said that he was unaware that a collision had occurred until being informed by eyewitnesses. This is likely to be accurate, as it is typical in patients with nondominant (usually right-sided) brain tumors that cause left-sided visual problems (including visual neglect), which Novak had ("I have lost not only left peripheral vision but nearly all my left vision"). The pedestrian was taken to George Washington University Hospital and treated for a dislocated shoulder. There were numerous reports from D.C.-area residents that Novak was prone to road rage and had a habit of flipping off motorists; however, he denied that these complaints were true. "I'm 77 years old. I'm not an aggressive driver anymore." he said shortly after the July 23 incident. When asked about his Corvette, Novak replied, "I've been driving them since 1961." On July 27, 2008, four days after the car accident, Novak was admitted to Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, where he was diagnosed with brain cancer. In a written statement given to his publisher, Novak said: "Doctors will soon begin appropriate treatment. I will be suspending my journalistic work for an indefinite but, God willing, not too lengthy period." Physicians often check for brain tumors in patients who did not realize they struck something in a car accident, as this can be a focal neurologic sign. Novak tendered his resignation from his column on August 4, 2008, after revealing that the prognosis on his tumor was considered "dire". Later that month, he began writing new opinion columns for Creators Syndicate. On February 4, 2009, Novak announced in his newsletter, the Evans-Novak Political Report, that the biweekly newsletter would be coming to an end due to his illness. The newsletter, started four years after the column, had been published continuously since 1967. ==Personal life==

Novak's first wife was Rosanna Hall; they divorced. In 1962, he married Geraldine Williams, who was a secretary for President Lyndon B. Johnson. Their daughter, Zelda, worked for Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign and for Vice President Dan Quayle. They have a son, Alex, who works as an editor at Regnery Publishing. Although friends with social commentator Michael Novak, Robert Novak was not related. Novak converted to Catholicism in May 1998 after his wife, Geraldine, did so. He had two children, a daughter and a son. In his later life, Novak drove a 2002 black Corvette and he had his license suspended several times for speeding. He also participated in a charity car race in Sebring, Florida, which he won. Washingtonian magazine labeled him a "speed freak." Wolf Blitzer remarked in August 2009, "I always used to see him ... Redskins games, Wizards games, always there." He is interred at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Silver Spring, Maryland. ==Publications==