John Hawkins: Now in 1977, during the Carter administration, you seem to have implied in the book that Bill Sullivan, a FBI source of yours, was murdered. In fact, you said that he told you if he was killed in an "accidental shooting," not to believe it. (Later), he was mistaken for a deer and shot to death. You think he was murdered and if so, by whom?
Robert Novak: ….That was in his retirement. He was fired by Hoover and he had an awful lot of enemies both on the Left and Right. He was the number three man in the FBI and a great source of mine.
I don’t know, I just tell the story as it is. He told me the last time I saw him — he had lunch at my house — he had been fired by Hoover and he was going into retirement — he said that, "Someday you will read that I have been killed in an accident, but don’t believe it, I’ve been murdered," which was a shocking thing to say.
…Some years later, I read in the paper that he was out at dawn hunting in New Hampshire and a young man, a fellow hunter, with a long range rifle, killed him. He shot him in the neck, mistook him for a deer. The story was that the police investigated, said it was an accident, and Mr. Sullivan’s family, and the man who was ghostwriting his memoirs, accepted that.
I just tell you the story straight out. There’s a lot of strange things in the world that we never know the answer to.
Interesting. Novak is an original. Kudos to John for scoring the interview. Read the whole thing here. Sounds like the book id definitely worth a read.