2 Aides to Rove Testify in C.I.A. Leak Inquiry

By David Johnston / New York Times
WASHINGTON - Two aides to Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, testified last Friday before a federal grand jury investigating whether government officials illegally disclosed the identity of an undercover C.I.A. operative, according to a person who has been officially briefed on the case.
The aides, Susan B. Ralston and Israel Hernandez, were asked about grand jury testimony given on July 13 by Matthew Cooper, a reporter for Time magazine, the person who was briefed said. Mr. Cooper has said that he testified about a July 11, 2003, conversation with Mr. Rove in which the C.I.A. officer was discussed.
The aides' grand jury appearances were first reported by ABC News and provided the first sign that the prosecutor in the case was interested in following up on Mr. Cooper's testimony with more questions for the White House about Mr. Rove. A person sympathetic to Mr. Rove said that the questions seemed typical of those posed by a prosecutor wrapping up the loose ends of an inquiry.
That person and the one who has been briefed spoke only on the condition of anonymity because the prosecutor has warned people not to discuss the case.
At one point, the aides were asked why Mr. Cooper's call to Mr. Rove was not entered in Mr. Rove's office telephone logs. There was no record of the call, the person who has been briefed said, because Mr. Cooper did not call Mr. Rove directly, but was transferred to his office from a White House switchboard.
The aides have worked closely with Mr. Rove, screening his calls and coordinating his activities with other White House officials. Mr. Hernandez had been an aide to President Bush since his successful campaign for governor of Texas in 1994, and Ms. Ralston is known as one of Mr. Rove's most trusted associates.
Ms. Ralston still works with Mr. Rove, while Mr. Hernandez has moved to the Commerce Department. Telephone calls to their offices on Tuesday were not returned.
The telephone conversation between Mr. Rove and Mr. Cooper is one of two conversations in a one-week period in July 2003 that the prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, has focused on. The second was between Mr. Rove and Robert D. Novak, the syndicated columnist, as Mr. Novak was preparing a column in which he named the C.I.A. officer.
Mr. Fitzgerald has focused on whether in the identification of the officer, Valerie Wilson, there was a deliberate effort to retaliate against her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, for his criticism of the Bush administration's policy on Iraq. In an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on July 6, 2003, Mr. Wilson, a former diplomat, wrote that when he traveled to Niger in 2002 as a government emissary, he found little evidence to support a claim made by Mr. Bush a year later that Iraq had tried to acquire nuclear fuel there.
On July 14, 2003, Mr. Novak wrote that Mr. Wilson had been sent to Africa by his wife, who worked for the Central Intelligence Agency. Mr. Fitzgerald is examining whether anyone in the government violated a law making it a crime to disclose the name of a covert officer deliberately.
In an article in Time last month about his grand jury appearance, Mr. Cooper wrote that he had telephoned the White House and been transferred to Mr. Rove's office.
"I believe a woman answered the phone and said words to the effect that Rove wasn't there," Mr. Cooper wrote, "or was busy before going on vacation. But then I recall she said something like 'hang on,' and I was transferred to him."
Mr. Cooper wrote that Mr. Rove told him that Ms. Wilson had worked at the C.I.A. and had been responsible for sending her husband to Africa. But Mr. Cooper added that Mr. Rove did not identify Ms. Wilson by name or suggest that he knew of her status as a covert officer.