Cliff. there’s a whole lot of weird stuff in that piece. It says categorically that the CIA’s chief spokesman Bill Harlow did NOT tell Novak that Plame was an undercover (or NOC) operative: “He did not tell Novak directly that she was undercover because that was classified.”

So what did he do: “He said he warned Novak, in the strongest terms he was permitted to use without revealing classified information, that Wilson’s wife had not authorized the mission and that if he did write about it, her name should not be revealed. Harlow said that after Novak’s call, he checked Plame’s status and confirmed that she was an undercover operative. He said he called Novak back to repeat that the story Novak had related to him was wrong and that Plame’s name should not be used.”

This surely sounded to Novak like a CIA CYA. He thought he was onto something, an explanation of the bizarre choice of Joseph Wilson to serve as Dick Cheney’s source of information on Saddam’s hijinks in Niger. (Remember that, at this time, the world believed Cheney was in on Wilson’s trip because Wilson had told Nick Kristof of the New York Times exactly that.)

Flaks try to silence journalists all the time with weird hints and winks, and most of the time, those weird hints and winks are basically lies, as Novak surely knows. When flaks tell you not to say something without saying something like, “It would be a crime to do so,” a veteran of flack spin like Novak might have thought this was an a-ha moment — the revelation of the truth he needed, rather than the direction not to name Valerie Plame Harlow thought (or says he thought) he was delivering.