February 12, 2004 11:56 AM

Murray Waas at the American Prospect is reporting that "two government officials" told the FBI that they asked Bob Novak not to publish Valerie Plame's name in his column that outed her as a CIA operative. He did not publish her name, but it was later identified. This is in direct contradiction of Novak's claim that he was led to believe she was an analyst, and didn't realize the seriousness of outing her.

The two officials say Novak was told, as one source put it, that Plame's work for the CIA "went much further than her being an analyst," and that publishing her name would be "hurtful" and could stymie ongoing intelligence operations and jeopardize her overseas sources.

"When [Novak] says that he was not told that he was 'endangering' someone, that statement might be technically true," this source says. "Nobody directly told him that she was going to be physically hurt. But that was implicit in that he was told what she did for a living."

"At best, he is parsing words," said the other official. "At worst, he is lying to his readers and the public. Journalists should not lie, I would think."

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