The Silence Surrounding Novak’s Testimony

This post follows on my wildarsed guess that one of the things that appears in the two-page gap is discussion of Libby’s and Novak’s super-secret July 9 meeting. I’d like to point out–and speculate on–several weird bits in Novak’s trial testimony. Full credit: Jeff Lomonaco identified several of these in a conversation with me, but I happen to know he’s at an undisclosed location with crappy Toobz access, so I’m going to run with it and he’ll just have to call in any comments!! Jeff and I have discussed some of these at some length, but I think they make more sense if, indeed, the Libby-Novak meeting is mentioned in the two-page gap.

To make it up to Jeff, here’s a link to his book, from which I’m transcribing these bits.

Fitzgerald Objects

The first weird bit is a successful objection Fitzgerald makes when Wells tries to get Novak to say he testified–before the grand jury–that Libby hadn’t told Libby anything about Plame. Ted Wells is trying to establish that Novak testified willingly at alltimes, including about his conversation with Libby. Novak has just laidout how he agreed to discuss Armitage, Rove, and Harlow in an interviewafter the prosecutors brought waivers from those three people. ThenWells moves to Rove’s grand jury testimony:

Wells: I’ll show you a copy of your Grand Jury testimony, dated February 25–

Fitzgerald: We’ll stipulate to the date, February 25, 2004.

Walton: Very well.

Now, reading this with some distance, it appears that Fitzgerald istrying to prevent Wells from handing Novak his grand jury testimony. Iseem to recall, though, that this exchange was a response to Novak’searlier (in his discussion of the interviews with Fitzgerald) claim tohave forgotten dates, so it may be entirely innocuous.