WASHINGTON (AFP) — Conservative US columnist Robert Novak, whose unmasking of a covert CIA agent sparked a political and legal firestorm, said Monday he was retiring after being diagnosed with a brain tumor.
Novak, who announced he was suffering from the tumor late last month, said the medical prognosis had become "dire" and so he was immediately calling time on a storied media career stretching back more than four decades.
"The details are being worked out with the doctors this week, but the tentative plan is for radiation and chemotherapy," said the influential journalist, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, his home paper.
Novak's retirement was announced just over a week after he was cited by police for running over a pedestrian in Washington and failing to stop his car.
In July 2003, Novak outed Valerie Plame as a CIA operative and said she had suggested a mission to Niger by her husband Joseph Wilson, who had concluded US claims about Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's nuclear program were overblown.
Plame and Wilson have accused President George W. Bush's administration of maliciously leaking her cover to Novak. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, was convicted of lying over the affair.
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