Robert Novak died today of brain cancer.

Novak will perhaps be best remembered -- if at all -- as one of the most compulsive professional liars to have wormed his way inside the Beltway, and that's saying something. And when it came to the interference he ran to protect the Bush-Cheney administration -- culminating in his central role in the Valerie Plame affair -- and his resulting efforts to cover his tracks, it even had historic proportions. Novak himself had constantly lied about this role, and was fond of accusing the people uncovering his tracks of lying. (See Marcy's authoritative work on Novak for more.)

Unsurprisingly, his friends are now eager to make us all forget this. explained: "Mid-level officials in CPD [The CIA’s Directorate of Operations Counterproliferation Division] decided on their own initiative to [ask Joe Wilson to look into the Niger issue because] he'd helped them on a project once before, and he'd be easy to contact because his wife worked in CPD.")

And since when has it "turned out" that "Bush was right" about the Niger yellowcake? Not only was the report on which he based the claim he made in the State of the Union built from set of hoax documents, but the White House ignored warnings that this was likely the case. Moreover, there has been no subsequent evidence to suggest that Saddam indeed sought yellowcake from Niger.

Ah, but such things as facts and truthfulness matter little to people like Robert Novak and Fred Barnes. All they care about is covering their tracks. Lying is what they do, right up to their final breaths.