Robert Novak, the longtime syndicated columnist and television commentator who was at the center of a furor late in his career as the first journalist to disclose the identity of CIA operative Valerie Wilson, died Tuesday. He was 78. Mr. Novak died at his home in Washington after battling brain cancer, said his wife, Geraldine. He had been diagnosed with a brain tumor in July 2008. Mr. Novak's column for July 14, 2003, set off one of those perfect Washington storms, in which White House officials, famous journalists and CIA sources became part of a courtroom spectacle that played out in the world's media. Before it was over, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, had been convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice, and the controversy had exposed journalists' coziness with official sources and tarnished the reputations of two key administration figures - political guru Karl Rove and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage - who confessed to leaking Wilson's identity to reporters. Even more telling, the controversy exposed the president's men as so preoccupied with selling the war in Iraq that they were willing to compromise Wilson's position at the CIA in an effort to discredit her husband, Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. envoy to Baghdad who had become a critic of the war. (She also has been referred to by her birth name, Valerie Plame.) Eventually Wilson left her job at the CIA, and she and her husband settled in Santa Fe, N.M. As for Mr. Novak, he kept on writing the column he had started with partner Rowland Evans in 1963. Robert David Sanders Novak was born Feb. 26, 1931, in Joliet, Ill. He later attended the University of Illinois. Hooking up with the Associated Press in Nebraska and Indiana after college, Mr. Novak first covered sports, then switched to news. Taking assignments that more senior reporters disdained, Mr. Novak gained notice. And when the AP in Washington needed a replacement on its Midwest regional desk, he got the call. That was in 1957. Soon came a gig at the Wall Street Journal. And then, a few years later he formed a partnership with Evans, a fellow journalist who was as patrician as Mr. Novak was hardscrabble, as much a part of the Washington establishment as Mr. Novak was not. Evans, then 41, played the gentleman reporter with Mr. Novak, 32, the scruffy rookie. In their first column in 1963, they predicted that Barry Goldwater, then considered a longshot, would win the Republican nomination the next year. They worked a yin-and-yang combination that eventually won them syndication in many major newspapers and prominence as a good source of information on the cable television talk shows just beginning to turn political discourse into shouting matches. They began with CNN when the network launched in 1980, hosting "Evans and Novak." Derided by liberal critics as "Errors and No Facts," Evans and Mr. Novak were actually more reporters than commentators and had their share of scoops over the years. After Evans retired in 1993, Mr. Novak continued the column and was a regular on several CNN shows. He kept the column going online even after he officially retired last summer, shortly after his diagnosis. Evans died in 2001. Besides his wife, Mr. Novak is survived by their son, Alexander; daughter, Zelda Caldwell; and eight grandchildren.