Defunct Newspapers Journals TV channels Websites Other Congressional caucuses Economics Gun rights Identity politics Nativist Religion Watchdog groups Youth/student groups Miscellaneous Other Robert David Sanders Novak[a] (February 26, 1931 – August 18, 2009) was an American syndicated columnist, journalist, television personality, author, and conservative political commentator.

He teamed up with Rowland Evans in 1963 to start Inside Report,[1][2] which became the longest running syndicated political column in U.S. history and ran in hundreds of papers.

Novak also loved to tease, offend, and shock his family from an early age, and he later compared himself to French rebel Bertran de Born.

[5] Novak's journalism career began when he was in high school as a student-writer for the Joliet Herald-News, his hometown newspaper, and he received ten cents per inch.

[9] Novak wrote how his disappointment about not being named the paper's main sports editor for the 1951–52 school year led him to skip his senior classes and to work full time for the Champaign-Urbana Courier.

[5] After serving from 1952 to 1954, Novak rejoined his fledgling journalism career, joining the Associated Press (AP) as a political correspondent in Omaha, Nebraska.

Novak's colleagues at The Wall Street Journal later said that he absorbed himself in his work so completely that he often forgot to shave, left his shoes untied, and even started accidentally placing burning cigarettes into his pockets.

[5] In 1963 Novak teamed up with Rowland Evans, a former Congressional correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, to create the Inside Report, a newspaper column published six times a week.

His status as a well-known print reporter brought a sense of credibility to the fledgling new network, and Novak soon created a weekly interview show that Evans co-hosted.

Novak later became the executive producer of Capital Gang on CNN, which also featured him as a panelist on the show and included his friends Al Hunt and Mark Shields.

[citation needed] On August 4, 2005, Novak walked off the set during a live broadcast of the show Inside Politics, on which he appeared along with Democratic strategist and analyst James Carville.

Novak stated that he still would have left CNN even if he had not been suspended in the August incident and did not go to Fox News because the network was more friendly to his point of view.

[17]His memoirs, entitled Prince of Darkness: Fifty Years Reporting in Washington, were published in July 2007 by Crown Forum, a division of Random House.

Novak frequently visited his alma mater and interacted with students, establishing a scholarship in his name to support English and rhetoric majors in 1992.

[11] Novak, along with collaborator Rowland Evans, learned in 1976 that a high-ranking Ford administration official had privately said that the current Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe was preferable to the radical nationalism that could otherwise have come about.

[27][29] According to Novak and Evans, Letelier was able to receive funding of $5,000 a month from the Cuban government and under the supervision of Beatriz Allende, he used his contacts within the Institute for Policy Studies and western human rights groups to organize a campaign within the United Nations as well as the U.S. Congress to isolate Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship.

[28][30] Fellow IPS member and friend Saul Landau described Evans and Novak as part of an "organized right wing attack".

[32] During the Clinton years, Novak published accusations against administration members including Attorney General Janet Reno using sources such as unnamed FBI agents.

On July 12, 2006, Novak published a column at Human Events stating:[39] Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has informed my attorneys that, after two and one-half years, his investigation of the CIA leak case concerning matters directly relating to me has been concluded.

"[41] In 2008, however, an unrepentant Novak said in an interview with Barbara Matusow from the Nation Ledger: From a personal point of view, I said in the book I probably should have ignored what I'd been told about Mrs. Wilson.

I'd go full speed ahead because of the hateful and beastly way in which my left-wing critics in the press and Congress tried to make a political affair out of it and tried to ruin me.

[42]In a New York Times article in 2010, Valerie Plame said that the disclosure "destroyed (her husband's) international consulting business, wrecked her espionage career and nearly took down their marriage".

[43] In the same interview, Novak also stated: Journalistically, I thought it was an important story because it explained why the CIA would send Joe Wilson—a former Clinton White House aide with no track record in intelligence and no experience in Niger—on a fact-finding mission to Africa.

"[23] In a November 2001 episode of Capital Gang, Novak said, "I am always amazed how American conservatives can get involved in this absolutely mindless support of the transigent [sic] Israeli policy."

"[44][45] The executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, Ira Forman, has called Novak's columns on Israel "awful.

"[23] The Jewish Telegraphic Agency has stated that Novak "ran a running battle with pro-Israel groups, claiming they were unduly influential in Washington" and that he "excoriated Jews in public service who were not shy about their faith.

"[25] Reporter John Nichols, writing for The Nation, has praised Novak's views on Israel specifically and on foreign policy in general.

He held more centrist views in his early career, and he supported the Democratic presidential candidacies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, of whom he was a friend.

[57]David Frum, writing for National Review, essentially dismissed Novak as a contributor to the modern conservative movement in March 2003.

Al Hunt, Judy Woodruff, Fred Barnes, Margaret Carlson, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Henry Hyde, and Rick Santorum attended Novak's baptism.