Columnist Novak is diagnosed with brain tumor

Conservative columnist Robert Novak, a fixture on the Washington scene since the administration of John F. Kennedy, announced Monday that he has a brain tumor and will begin treatment soon.

In the meantime, he said, “I will be suspending my journalistic work for an indefinite but, God willing, not too lengthy period.”

Novak, 77, became ill Sunday while he and his wife were visiting their daughter on Cape Cod. He was rushed to Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, where the tumor was discovered. An aide said she expected to announce results of a biopsy today.

The syndicated columnist made the news last week when he struck a homeless pedestrian with his Corvette and kept driving. Novak said he had no idea he had hit the man until a bicyclist stopped him. He was cited for failing to yield to a pedestrian and fined $50.

Novak is perhaps best-known for exposing Valerie Plame, whose position as a CIA operative was leaked to several reporters by Bush administration officials seeking to discredit her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador and a vocal critic of the Iraq war.

The leak sparked an investigation that led to the conviction of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, for lying to prosecutors. President Bush’s top political strategist, Karl Rove, was also questioned in the probe and acknowledged that he had talked to other reporters who did not use the information.

Plame and Wilson sued Cheney and other top administration officials, saying they had violated the couple’s privacy and ruined her career. The lawsuit was thrown out by a federal judge who said that although the administration’s actions “may have been highly unsavory,” the administration was within its rights to speak to reporters in hope of rebutting public criticism by Wilson, who had written an opinion essay for the New York Times countering White House claims that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein had sought to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger.

For his part, Novak was unapologetic.

“I broke no law and endangered no intelligence operation,” he wrote in his 2007 memoir, “The Prince of Darkness,” contending that he inferred from what he was told by a CIA spokesman that Plame was “not now and never would be again” a covert operative. If given the chance, he said, he would print her name again.

After the investigation, and with his sources’ permission, Novak disclosed that Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage had first informed him of Plame’s identity and that Rove had confirmed it. He said he “learned much later” that Plame had already been unmasked by a Soviet spy, which Novak said “had ended her career as a covert agent” long before he wrote about her.

Novak and journalist Rowland Evans began their syndicated column in May 1963. After Evans retired in 1993, Novak kept writing. He also was a commentator on CNN for 25 years before moving to Fox News Channel three years ago.

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johanna.neuman@latimes.com