The Times and the Post are publicizing Rove's version of events. But is his story true?

By Murray Waas/American Prospect
Web Exclusive: 07.15.05

A federal criminal investigation into the leak of CIA officer Valerie Plame's name has in large part focused on the truthfulness of statements made to investigators by White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, and whether he worked with others to devise a cover story to conceal his role, according to government officials familiar with the probe.

Columnist Robert Novak, who first disclosed Plame's identity in a July 14, 2003, newspaper column, has also been cooperating with investigators for some time, according to the same sources, as I first reported in my blog earlier in the week. But federal investigators have been highly skeptical of Novak's account -- as they have been of Rove's -- and were concerned that the key participants might have devised a cover story in the days shortly after it became known that a criminal investigation had been commenced.

Novak and Rove have claimed that they discussed Plame during a July 8, 2003, telephone conversation, only days before Novak's column appeared revealing Plame's status. According to Novak's account, it was he, not Rove, who first broached the issue of Plame, and Rove simply said that he, too, had heard the same information. Rove's version of events, which was told today in The New York Times and The Washington Post, closely matches Novak's.

Rove, through his attorney, Robert Luskin, has denied that he knew of Plame's covert status with the CIA when he told Novak and a second reporter, Time magazine’s Matthew Cooper, that Plame worked for the CIA. Investigators have noted Novak's description of Plame in his original column as an "agency operative"; Novak has since said that the use of the phrase was a formulation of his own, and not of his sources.

The distinction as to whether Rove specifically knew whether Plame was a covert CIA operative has been central to the grand-jury investigation of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who has been conducting the probe because, under the law, a government official can only be prosecuted if that official knew the person's covert status and "that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent."

Novak, through his attorney and assistant, refused to answer inquiries for this article. Luskin did not return phone calls today. On Thursday, President Bush said he would have no comment about anything to do with the criminal investigation until it was completed.

Three days after the July 8, 2003, conversation with Novak, Rove spoke with Cooper. On Wednesday, Cooper testified to the federal grand jury convened to hear evidence in the Plame case. In an internal Time e-mail already made public, Cooper said Rove told Cooper that "Wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on [weapons of mass destruction] issues" was behind the selection of Wilson to go overseas to investigate allegations that Saddam Hussein was attempting to buy material to construct a nuclear weapon.

On Tuesday night, as I was completing a blogging post that disclosed that Novak had been cooperating with federal authorities, I spoke to Luskin and told him that I was preparing a lengthier story detailing Rove's contacts with Novak and others. Luskin asked me to delay publication for a day or two, before deciding on what he wanted to say for the article. He said he would comment for the record regarding what he understood transpired between Rove and Novak. The conversation on Tuesday with Luskin was on the record as well.

Early Friday morning, both the Times and the Post published their accounts of what may have transpired between Novak and Rove, articles that were largely exculpatory to Rove.

The Post account largely relied on a single source, whom it identified as "a lawyer involved in the case." The newspaper also described the lawyer as having "firsthand knowledge of the conversations between Rove and prosecutors."

The unnamed lawyer asserted that Rove had told investigators that he had first learned of Plame from a journalist, but claimed he could not recall the reporter's name. "I don't think that he has a clear recollection," the lawyer was quoted as saying. "He's told them that he believes he may have heard it from a journalist." Asked to name the journalist, the attorney said, "I don't think he's able to identify that, or to identify precisely when he may have heard it."

The unnamed lawyer also told both the Times and the Post that it was Novak who first broached the subject of Plame with Rove, with Novak saying that he had heard that Plame worked for the CIA. Both newspapers quoted the attorney as saying that Rove responded, "I heard that, too."

The coverage underscores the secrecy surrounding Fitzgerald's grand-jury investigation. The few leaks that constitute public knowledge of the investigation's progress have largely come from one side: the defense attorneys'. And what they have to say is oftentimes self-serving, misleading, and in some cases untrue. Their all-too-willing collaborators have been the nation's leading newspapers.

In the meantime, however, what has propelled the investigation -- and led to the extraordinary jailing of the Times’ Judith Miller -- has been the strong belief by federal investigators that Rove, Novak, and others may have misled them and the public, and that one or more of the participants may have devised a cover story with others to avoid public or legal culpability.

Rove E-Mailed Security Official About Talk

By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writer

After mentioning a CIA operative to a reporter, Bush confidant Karl Rove alerted the president's No. 2 security adviser about the interview and said he tried to steer the journalist away from allegations the operative's husband was making about faulty Iraq intelligence.

The July 11, 2003, e-mail between Rove and then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley is the first showing an intelligence official knew Rove had talked to Matthew Cooper just days before the Time magazine reporter divulged CIA officer Valerie Plame's secret identity.

"I didn't take the bait," Rove wrote in an e-mail obtained by The Associated Press, recounting how Cooper tried to question him about whether President Bush had been hurt by the new allegations.

The White House turned the e-mail over to prosecutors, and Rove testified to a grand jury about it last year.

Earlier in the week before the e-mail, Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, had written a newspaper opinion piece accusing the Bush administration of twisting prewar intelligence, including a "highly doubtful" report that Iraq bought nuclear materials from Niger.

"Matt Cooper called to give me a heads-up that he's got a welfare reform story coming," Rove wrote in the e-mail to Hadley.

"When he finished his brief heads-up he immediately launched into Niger. Isn't this damaging? Hasn't the president been hurt? I didn't take the bait, but I said if I were him I wouldn't get Time far out in front on this."

Hadley, now Bush's national security adviser, didn't immediately return a call seeking comment Friday. Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, said his client answered all the questions prosecutors asked during three grand jury appearances, never invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination or the president's executive privilege guaranteeing confidential advice from aides.

Rove, Bush's closest adviser, turned over the e-mail as soon as prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into who leaked Plame's covert work for the CIA.

He later told a grand jury the e-mail was consistent with his recollection that his intention in talking with Cooper that Friday in July 2003 wasn't to divulge Plame's identity but to caution Cooper against certain allegations Plame's husband was making, according to legal professionals familiar with Rove's testimony.

They spoke only on condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of the grand jury investigation.

Rove sent the e-mail shortly before leaving the White House early for a family vacation that weekend, already aware that another journalist he had talked with, syndicated columnist Robert Novak, was planning an article about Plame and Wilson.

Rove also knew that then-CIA Director George Tenet planned later that same day to issue a dramatic statement that took responsibility for some bad Iraq intelligence but that also called into question some of Wilson's assertions, the legal sources said.

The AP reported Thursday that Rove acknowledged to the grand jury that he talked about Plame with both Cooper and Novak before they published their stories but that he originally learned about the operative's identity from the news media, not government sources.

Republicans cheered the latest revelations Friday, saying they showed Rove wasn't trying to hurt Plame but instead was trying to informally warn reporters to be cautious about some of Wilson's claims.

"What it says is, Karl Rove wasn't the leaker, he was actually the recipient of the information not the provider," Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman said on Fox News. "So there are probably a lot of folks in Washington who have prejudged this, who have rushed to judgment who are trying to smear Karl Rove."

Democrats, however, said that even if Rove wasn't the leaker, someone still divulged Plame's identity and possibly violated the law.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and other party leaders asked Speaker Dennis Hastert on Friday to let Congress hold hearings into the controversy regardless of the criminal probe now under way.

"In previous Republican Congresses the fact that a criminal investigation was under way did not prevent extensive hearings from being held on other, much less significant matters," Pelosi wrote.

Federal law prohibits government officials from divulging the identity of an undercover intelligence officer. But in order to bring charges, prosecutors must prove the official knew the officer was covert and nonetheless knowingly outed his or her identity.

Rove's conversations with Novak and Cooper took place just days after Wilson suggested in his opinion piece in The New York Times that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was used to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.

Summarizing a trip he made to Africa on behalf of the CIA, Wilson wrote that he'd concluded it was highly doubtful the nation of Niger had sold uranium yellowcake to Iraq. Tenet issued a lengthy statement five days later saying that he never should have allowed Bush to use the Niger information in his State of the Union address but that Wilson's report did not resolve whether Iraq was seeking uranium from abroad.

Source: Rove says reporters told him of Plame

Bush aide reportedly testifies that he learned agent’s name from press

MSNBC News Services
Updated: 8:49 p.m. ET July 15, 2005


WASHINGTON - Chief presidential adviser Karl Rove testified to a grand jury that he talked with two journalists before they divulged the identity of an undercover CIA officer but that he originally learned about the operative from the news media and not government sources, according to a person briefed on the testimony.

The person, who works in the legal profession and spoke only on condition of anonymity because of grand jury secrecy, told The Associated Press that Rove testified last year that he remembers specifically being told by columnist Robert Novak that Valerie Plame, the wife of a harsh Iraq war critic, worked for the CIA.

Rove testified that Novak originally called him the Tuesday before Plame’s identity was revealed in July 2003 to discuss another story.

The conversation eventually turned to Plame’s husband, Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador who was strongly criticizing the Bush administration’s use of faulty intelligence to justify the war in Iraq, the person said.

Rove testified that Novak told him he planned to report in a weekend column that Plame had worked for the CIA, and the circumstances on how her husband traveled to Africa to check bogus claims that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear materials in Niger, according to the source.

Column triggers probe
Novak’s column, citing two Bush administration officials, appeared six days later, touching off a political firestorm and leading to a federal criminal investigation into who leaked Plame’s undercover identity. That probe has ensnared presidential aides and reporters in a two-year legal battle.

Rove told the grand jury that by the time Novak had called him, he believes he had similar information about Wilson’s wife from another member of the news media but he could not recall which reporter had told him about it first, the person said.

When Novak inquired about Wilson’s wife working for the CIA, Rove indicated he had heard something like that, according to the source’s recounting of the grand jury testimony.


Rove told the grand jury that three days later, he had a phone conversation with Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper and — in an effort to discredit some of Wilson’s allegations — informally told Cooper that he believed Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA, though he never used her name, the source said.

An e-mail Cooper recently provided the grand jury shows Cooper reported to his magazine bosses that Rove had described Wilson’s wife in a confidential conversation as someone who “apparently works” at the CIA.

Robert Luskin, Rove’s attorney, said Thursday his client truthfully testified to the grand jury and expected to be exonerated.

“Karl provided all pertinent information to prosecutors a long time ago,” Luskin said. “And prosecutors confirmed when he testified most recently in October 2004 that he is not a target of the investigation.”

Wilson clarifies comments about wife
In an interview on CNN earlier Thursday before the latest revelation, Wilson kept up his criticism of the White House, saying Rove’s conduct was an “outrageous abuse of power ... certainly worthy of frog-marching out of the White House.”

Wilson also said “my wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity.”

In an interview Friday, Wilson said his comment was meant to reflect that his wife lost her ability to be a covert agent because of the leak, not that she had stopped working for the CIA beforehand.

His wife’s “ability to do the job she’s been doing for close to 20 years ceased from the minute Novak’s article appeared; she ceased being a clandestine officer,” he said.


Blowing cover illegal
Federal law prohibits government officials from divulging the identity of an undercover intelligence officer. But in order to bring charges, prosecutors must prove the official knew the officer was covert and nonetheless knowingly outed his or her identity.

Rove’s conversations with Novak and Cooper took place just days after Wilson suggested in a New York Times opinion piece that some of the intelligence related to Iraq’s nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.

Democrats continued to sharpen their attacks, accusing Rove of compromising a CIA operative’s identity just to discredit the political criticism of her husband. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and other leaders asked Friday that Congress hold hearings regardless of the ongoing criminal probe.

Push to strip Rove of clearance
“In previous Republican Congresses the fact that a criminal investigation was under way did not prevent extensive hearings from being held on other, much less significant matters,” Pelosi and the other Democratic leaders wrote Speaker Dennis Hastert.

On Thursday, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada pressed for legislation to strip Rove of his clearance for classified information, which he said President Bush should have done already. Instead, Reid said, the Bush administration has attacked its critics: “This is what is known as a cover-up. This is an abuse of power.”

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said Democrats were resorting to “partisan war chants.”

Pressed to explain its statements of two years ago that Rove wasn’t involved in the leak, the White House refused to do so this week.

“If I were to get into discussing this, I would be getting into discussing an investigation that continues and could be prejudging the outcome of the investigation,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

The Associated Press and NBC’s “Today” show contributed to this report.
© 2005 MSNBC.com

Rove Scandal: Who's Lying Now?

David Corn
1 hour, 40 minutes ago



The Nation -- Who's lying?

That's the question to ask after both The New York Times and The Washington Post published front-page articles that reported that Karl Rove did speak to conservative columnist Bob Novak before Novak wrote an article revealing the CIA identity of Valerie Wilson and that Rove had confirmed to Novak that Valerie Wilson worked at the CIA.

Each account is attributed to a single unnamed source. The Times identifies its sourced as "someone who has been officially briefed on the matter." The Post cited "a lawyer involved in the case." And the account provided is one that apparently would help Rove fend off a criminal charge. Both newspapers say that Novak called Rove on July 8, 2003 (six days before Novak published the piece that outed Valerie Wilson), that Novak said he had learned that Valerie Wilson worked at the CIA (he referred to her by her maiden name, Valerie Plame), and that Rove confirmed that he had heard that, too. Each story says its source claimed that Rove had learned about Valerie Wilson's CIA position from other journalists.

The point here is to show that Rove was not peddling the information, that he had not received it from a classified source, and that he did not have reason to know that Valerie Wilson was working at the CIA under cover. Under the relevant law--the Intelligence Identities Protection Act--it is only a crime for a government official to disclose identifying information about a covert US intelligence officer if the government official received that information from a classified source and is aware that the officer is a clandestine employee of the CIA. Consequently, Rove defenders can cite the account planted in the Times and the Post and claim that he did not violate the law because he had heard about Valerie Wilson from a journalist (not a classified source) and because there is no indication he knew of her covert status.

This might work. But, of course, it is up to special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to determine if Rove or anyone else (remember Novak cited two sources) broke the law or engaged in perjury or obstruction of justice. And there is no telling if this account is indeed accurate. But this new disclosure does lead to an obvious conclusion: somebody has lied.

A week after Novak wrote this column, he told Newsday that his sources came to him with the information: "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me," he said. "They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it." Was Novak lying when said that? And before the infamous Matt Cooper email was revealed by Newsweek days ago, Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, told Newsweek that Rove "did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA." Now, the official pro-Rove line is that he confirmed for Novak that Valerie Wilson worked for the CIA. Was Rove's lawyer lying when he said that?

******

Don't forget about DAVID CORN's BLOG at www.davidcorn.com. Read recent postings on Rove and the Plame/CIA leak and other in-the-news subjects.

*******

But the more significant question is, who lied at the White House? As has been much noted, in 2003, press secretary Scott McClellan repeatedly said that Karl Rove was not involved in the leak. Confirming the leak for Novak would certainly count as involvement (as would passing it on to Cooper three days later but when this classified information was still not public).

So who didn't tell the truth at 1600 Pennsylvania? Did McClellan know of Rove's involvement and knowingly peddle a false story? McClellan has claimed he talked to Rove before publicly clearing him of involvement. Does that mean that Rove lied to McClellan? Perhaps. McClellan is not considered to be a true member of the White House's inner circle. But who else did Rove talk to about this in the White House? If anyone else knew of his involvement, then that aide stood silent while McClellan misled the public. Moreover, did Rove tell George W. Bush? If so, Bush then allowed McClellan to lie for Rove. If not, then Rove disregarded Bush when Bush said he wanted to know what had happened.

Here's the bottom line (based on the Rove-friendly leaks): Rove permitted the White House to lie for him. What's unknown is who else in the White House realized the Rove-was-not-involved line was a lie. And the latest accounts also show that Rove did share classified information--Valerie Wilson's employment status with the CIA was classified--with two reporters. Bush has previously said he would fire anyone who leaked classified information. Rove has practically admitted leaking classified information. What Bush will do about that?

This story put on Friday may help Rove avoid a criminal charge. But it still causes (or should cause) serious problems for him and the White House. It indicates that both misconduct and a cover-up of unknown size did occur. Rove or his legal team must have concluded he was in a rather bad spot if they needed to pass this account to the media, for it supports a hard-to-deny conclusion: Rove leaked and then hid behind a lie.

******

Now I'm Smeared as the Leaker: To see how I was sideswiped by an absurd and stupid conservative attack (meant to defend Novak and Rove), visit www.davidcorn.com. You won't believe how low a rightwinger will sink.

*******************

Rove Learned CIA Agent's Name From Novak

By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writer

Chief presidential adviser Karl Rove testified to a grand jury that he talked with two journalists before they divulged the identity of an undercover CIA officer but that he originally learned about the operative from the news media and not government sources, according to a person briefed on the testimony.

The person, who works in the legal profession and spoke only on condition of anonymity because of grand jury secrecy, told The Associated Press that Rove testified last year that he remembers specifically being told by columnist Robert Novak that Valerie Plame, the wife of a harsh Iraq war critic, worked for the CIA.

Rove testified that Novak originally called him the Tuesday before Plame's identity was revealed in July 2003 to discuss another story.

The conversation eventually turned to Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador who was strongly criticizing the Bush administration's use of faulty intelligence to justify the war in Iraq, the person said.

Rove testified that Novak told him he planned to report in a weekend column that Plame had worked for the CIA, and the circumstances on how her husband traveled to Africa to check bogus claims that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear materials in Niger, according to the source.

Novak's column, citing two Bush administration officials, appeared six days later, touching off a political firestorm and leading to a federal criminal investigation into who leaked Plame's undercover identity. That probe has ensnared presidential aides and reporters in a two-year legal battle.

Rove told the grand jury that by the time Novak had called him, he believes he had similar information about Wilson's wife from another member of the news media but he could not recall which reporter had told him about it first, the person said.

When Novak inquired about Wilson's wife working for the CIA, Rove indicated he had heard something like that, according to the source's recounting of the grand jury testimony.

Rove told the grand jury that three days later, he had a phone conversation with Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper and — in an effort to discredit some of Wilson's allegations — informally told Cooper that he believed Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, though he never used her name, the source said.

An e-mail Cooper recently provided the grand jury shows Cooper reported to his magazine bosses that Rove had described Wilson's wife in a confidential conversation as someone who "apparently works" at the CIA.

Robert Luskin, Rove's attorney, said Thursday his client truthfully testified to the grand jury and expected to be exonerated.

"Karl provided all pertinent information to prosecutors a long time ago," Luskin said. "And prosecutors confirmed when he testified most recently in October 2004 that he is not a target of the investigation."

In an interview on CNN earlier Thursday before the latest revelation, Wilson kept up his criticism of the White House, saying Rove's conduct was an "outrageous abuse of power ... certainly worthy of frog-marching out of the White House."

But at the same time, Wilson acknowledged his wife was no longer in an undercover job at the time Novak's column first identified her. "My wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity," he said.

Federal law prohibits government officials from divulging the identity of an undercover intelligence officer. But in order to bring charges, prosecutors must prove the official knew the officer was covert and nonetheless knowingly outed his or her identity.

Rove's conversations with Novak and Cooper took place just days after Wilson suggested in a New York Times opinion piece that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.

Democrats continued this week to sharpen their attacks, accusing Rove of compromising a CIA operative's identity just to discredit the political criticism of her husband.

On Thursday, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada pressed for legislation to strip Rove of his clearance for classified information, which he said President Bush should have done already. Instead, Reid said, the Bush administration has attacked its critics: "This is what is known as a cover-up. This is an abuse of power."

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said Democrats were resorting to "partisan war chants."

Across the Capitol, Rep. Rush Holt (news, bio, voting record), D-N.J., introduced legislation for an investigation that would compel senior administration officials to turn over records relating to the Plame disclosure.

Pressed to explain its statements of two years ago that Rove wasn't involved in the leak, the White House refused to do so this week.

"If I were to get into discussing this, I would be getting into discussing an investigation that continues and could be prejudging the outcome of the investigation," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

Rove Confirmed Plame Indirectly, Lawyer Says

Bush Aide Said Columnist Told Him Name

By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 15, 2005; A01



White House senior adviser Karl Rove indirectly confirmed the CIA affiliation of an administration critic's wife for Robert D. Novak the week before the columnist named her and revealed her position, a lawyer involved in the case said last night.

The operative, Valerie Plame, is the wife of Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador who had publicly disputed the White House's contention that Saddam Hussein had sought to buy uranium from Niger for possible use in a nuclear weapon.

The lawyer, who has knowledge of the conversations between Rove and prosecutors, said President Bush's deputy chief of staff has told investigators that he first learned about the operative from a journalist and that he later learned her name from Novak.

Rove has said he does not recall who the journalist was who first told him that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, or when the conversation occurred, the lawyer said.

The New York Times reported the conversation between Rove and Novak in its Friday editions. The lawyer confirmed that account and elaborated on it. The account suggests that Rove could not have been Novak's original source but may have been a secondary source. Novak has refused to comment about his sources or to say whether he has cooperated with prosecutors.

The lawyer said that Novak showed up on a White House call log as having telephoned Rove in the week before the publication of the July 2003 column, which has touched off a two-year federal investigation and led to the jailing of New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who has refused to testify about her conversation with a source involved in the case.

The White House turned over call logs relating to the case, along with stacks of printed e-mails, at the request of federal investigators.

Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has been investigating the leak of Plame's name, which could be a felony under certain circumstances, such as if the person who leaked her name did so knowing that the government was working to keep her identity a secret.

The new account means that Rove talked to both of the journalists who are known to have published original accounts about Plame. Rove's representatives have said that he mentioned the issue in the most general terms and did not name Plame. Democrats say he was trying to fuel stories that would punish an administration critic.

The lawyer said Novak had telephoned Rove to discuss another column, about Frances Fragos Townsend, who had been named deputy national security adviser for terrorism in May 2003. That column ran in Novak's home paper, the Chicago Sun-Times, on July 10, 2003, under the headline "Bush sets himself up for another embarrassment."

At the end of that 15- or 20-minute call, according to the lawyer, Novak said he had learned that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA.

"I heard that, too," Rove replied, according to the lawyer, confirming the Times account.

In accounts of both conversations that have been made public, Rove does not give Plame's name and discusses the matter only at the end of an interview on an unrelated topic. Rove has said he did not know Plame's name and did not know she was undercover. If that is the case, it is unlikely that the disclosure is a crime.

The other original account about Plame, besides Novak's column, was on Time magazine's Web site. Rove was identified as a source for that article in an internal Time e-mail that was turned over to prosecutors July 1 after the magazine battled to the Supreme Court to try to preserve the privacy of the material.

Matthew Cooper, a White House correspondent for Time who talked to Rove for the article, testified Wednesday before a federal grand jury investigating the case. The e-mail said Rove talked to Cooper only on what the correspondent referred to as "double super secret background," meaning that the information could not be attributed to the White House.

Rove's representatives have said that Cooper brought up the issue at the end of another conversation. Cooper has not given his account publicly.

Republican lawyers working with Rove say he was not pushing a story about Plame but was trying to steer Cooper away from giving too much credence to Wilson.

The conversation occurred July 8 or 9, 2003, the lawyer said. The column that named Plame ran in the Sun-Times on July 14, 2003.

It said: "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me his wife suggested sending Wilson to Niger to investigate the Italian report."

Sources who have reviewed some of the testimony before the grand jury say there is significant evidence that reporters were in some cases alerting officials about Plame's identity and relationship to Wilson -- not the other way around.

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, has also testified before the grand jury, saying he was alerted by someone in the media to Plame's identity, according to a source familiar with his account. Cooper has previously testified that he brought up the subject of Plame with Libby and that Libby responded that he had heard about her from someone else in the media, according to sources knowledgeable about Cooper's testimony.

Rove, who moved from Texas to Washington with Bush and was the architect of both his presidential campaigns, has the title of senior adviser to the president and in the second term received the additional title of White House deputy chief of staff.

Staff writer Carol Leonnig contributed to this report.

Senate rejects bid to restrict Rove access

By Rick Klein, Globe Staff | July 15, 2005

WASHINGTON -- The Senate yesterday turned back a Democratic-led attempt to deny White House aide Karl Rove access to classified documents, as the dispute over the revelation that President Bush's top political adviser spread information about a covert CIA agent reached a new level of bitter partisan sniping.

The Democratic bill aimed at revoking Rove's security clearance was part of the party's growing campaign to highlight the disclosure that Rove gave information about the covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson to Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper. Wilson's husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, came to the Capitol yesterday at the invitation of Democrats to call on Bush to fire Rove. ''Karl Rove made his bones doing political dirty tricks," Wilson said, noting that his wife now must work in a different capacity at the CIA because her cover has been blown.

Rove, the architect of George W. Bush's rise to the presidency, exercises virtually unprecedented control over Republican Party politics, and his fall from power would leave an enormous void in the GOP. The White House and Republicans in Congress are trying to ride out the furor.

After Democrats introduced their bill seeking to revoke Rove's credentials, GOP leaders countered with a bill to bar Senate minority leader Harry Reid from security clearance because he once mentioned a classified FBI report on the Senate floor.

Republicans closed ranks to defeat, 53 to 44, the attempt to have Rove's security clearance revoked. The bill aimed at Reid failed by a larger margin, with many Republicans voting with the Democrats.

Rove's attorney has acknowledged that his client told Cooper that Wilson's wife was a CIA agent. The attorney, Robert Luskin, has contended that Rove was trying to warn Cooper about a possible agenda behind Wilson's criticism of the Bush administration, and said Rove only identified the agent as Wilson's wife, not by her name.

But Democrats argue that singling out Wilson's wife as an agent amounts to a disclosure of her identity because their marriage is a matter of public record. Rove's conversation with Cooper took place three days before syndicated columnist Robert Novak cited two administration sources in identifying Plame Wilson as a spy -- the public airing of her identity that led to the current federal investigation. Knowingly divulging the name of an undercover agent is a federal crime.

Rove spoke with Novak on July 8, 2003 -- six days before Novak's syndicated column on Plame appeared -- The New York Times reported today, citing an unnamed individual who has been officially briefed on the matter. The Times report indicates that Rove told investigators he learned of Plame's name from Novak, who had initiated the call. Novak discussed Plame and her husband's trip to Africa to investigate possible uranium sales to Iraq, and Rove responded, ''I heard that, too," according to the Times report, which attributed the information to the unnamed person briefed on the matter.

Rove, whose title is deputy chief of staff, continues to have access to sensitive documents. The decision to revoke a security clearance rests with the president, barring congressional intervention.

Democrats say revoking the security clearance of anyone found to leak information is necessary to ensure the protection of secret agents, said Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

''When you expose the name of a covert agent, people die," said Rockefeller, Democrat of West Virginia. ''Someone calculated that our national security was less important than scoring points in the press with regard to the administration's policy on Iraq. The act was deplorable."

A similar bill stripping Rove of clearance was filed yesterday in the House by Representative Martin T. Meehan, a Lowell Democrat, though GOP leaders are unlikely to allow a vote on the measure.

In addition to the federal law against divulging an undercover agent's identity, an executive order issued by President Clinton in 1995 makes federal employees who ''knowingly and willfully grant eligibility for, or allow access to, classified information" subject to ''appropriate sanctions." Those sanctions are determined by the president; Bush has indicated that he would fire anyone found to have leaked an agent's identity but has so far refused to restrict Rove's access to classified information.

The White House yesterday continued its silence on the Rove allegations, although the president was seen in public with Rove in a friendly setting. The two longtime friends were seen amiably chatting on their way to the presidential helicopter, as they prepared for a trip to Indiana.

Senator Norm Coleman, Republican of Minnesota, asserted that Rove was only trying to warn a reporter away from a bad story.

''Let the special counsel do his work, stop the partisan attacks, let's get away from the gotcha politics of Washington today," Coleman said. But Coleman later joined Senate majority leader Bill Frist in proposing the retaliatory bill aimed at Reid and Senate minority whip Richard J. Durbin, an Illinois Democrat who last month was forced to apologize after reading an FBI report on prisoner treatment at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and comparing it to the treatment by Nazis, Pol Pot, and Soviet gulags.

The counterattack drew bitter charges of a Republican-organized coverup to protect Rove. It failed in a 64-to-33 vote.

Rove Reportedly Held Phone Talk on C.I.A. Officer

By DAVID JOHNSTON and RICHARD W. STEVENSON
WASHINGTON, July 14 - Karl Rove, the White House senior adviser, spoke with the columnist Robert D. Novak as he was preparing an article in July 2003 that identified a C.I.A. officer who was undercover, someone who has been officially briefed on the matter said.

Mr. Rove has told investigators that he learned from the columnist the name of the C.I.A. officer, who was referred to by her maiden name, Valerie Plame, and the circumstances in which her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, traveled to Africa to investigate possible uranium sales to Iraq, the person said.

After hearing Mr. Novak's account, the person who has been briefed on the matter said, Mr. Rove told the columnist: "I heard that, too."

The previously undisclosed telephone conversation, which took place on July 8, 2003, was initiated by Mr. Novak, the person who has been briefed on the matter said.

Six days later, Mr. Novak's syndicated column reported that two senior administration officials had told him that Mr. Wilson's "wife had suggested sending him" to Africa. That column was the first instance in which Ms. Wilson was publicly identified as a C.I.A. operative.

The column provoked angry demands for an investigation into who disclosed Ms. Wilson's name to Mr. Novak. The Justice Department appointed Patrick J. Fitzgerald, a top federal prosecutor in Chicago, to lead the inquiry. Mr. Rove said in an interview with CNN last year that he did not know the C.I.A. officer's name and did not leak it.

The person who provided the information about Mr. Rove's conversation with Mr. Novak declined to be identified, citing requests by Mr. Fitzgerald that no one discuss the case. The person discussed the matter in the belief that Mr. Rove was truthful in saying that he had not disclosed Ms. Wilson's identity.

On Oct. 1, 2003, Mr. Novak wrote another column in which he described calling two officials who were his sources for the earlier column. The first source, whose identity has not been revealed, provided the outlines of the story and was described by Mr. Novak as "no partisan gunslinger." Mr. Novak wrote that when he called a second official for confirmation, the source said, "Oh, you know about it."

That second source was Mr. Rove, the person briefed on the matter said. Mr. Rove's account to investigators about what he told Mr. Novak was similar in its message although the White House adviser's recollection of the exact words was slightly different. Asked by investigators how he knew enough to leave Mr. Novak with the impression that his information was accurate, Mr. Rove said he had heard parts of the story from other journalists but had not heard Ms. Wilson's name.

Robert D. Luskin, Mr. Rove's lawyer, said Thursday, "Any pertinent information has been provided to the prosecutor." Mr. Luskin has previously said prosecutors have advised Mr. Rove that he is not a target in the case, which means he is not likely to be charged with a crime.

In a brief conversation on Thursday, Mr. Novak declined to discuss the matter. It is unclear if Mr. Novak has testified to the grand jury, and if he has whether his account is consistent with Mr. Rove's.

The conversation between Mr. Novak and Mr. Rove seemed almost certain to intensify the question about whether one of Mr. Bush's closest political advisers played a role in what appeared to be an effort to undermine Mr. Wilson's credibility after he challenged the veracity of a key point in Mr. Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech, saying Saddam Hussein had sought nuclear fuel in Africa.

The conversation with Mr. Novak took place three days before Mr. Rove spoke with Matthew Cooper, a Time magazine reporter, whose e-mail message about their brief talk reignited the issue. In the message, whose contents were reported by Newsweek this week, Mr. Cooper told his bureau chief that Mr. Rove had talked about Ms. Wilson, although not by name.

After saying in 2003 that it was "ridiculous" to suggest that Mr. Rove had any role in the disclosure of Ms. Wilson's name, Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, has refused in recent days to discuss any specifics of the case. But he has suggested that President Bush continues to support Mr. Rove. On Thursday Mr. Rove was at Mr. Bush's side on a trip to Indianapolis.

As the political debate about Mr. Rove grows more heated, Mr. Fitzgerald is in what he has said are the final stages of his investigation into whether anyone at the White House violated a criminal statute that under certain circumstances makes it a crime for a government official to disclose the names of covert operatives like Ms. Wilson.

The law requires that the official knowingly identify an officer serving in a covert position. The person who has been briefed on the matter said Mr. Rove neither knew Ms. Wilson's name nor that she was a covert officer.

Mr. Fitzgerald has questioned a number of high-level administration officials. Mr. Rove has testified three times to the grand jury. I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, has also testified. So has former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. The prosecutor also interviewed Mr. Bush, in his White House office, and Mr. Cheney, but they were not under oath.

The disclosure of Mr. Rove's conversation with Mr. Novak raises a question the White House has never addressed: whether Mr. Rove ever discussed that conversation, or his exchange with Mr. Cooper, with the president. Mr. Bush has said several times that he wants all members of the White House staff to cooperate fully with Mr. Fitzgerald's investigation.

In June 2004, at Sea Island, Ga., soon after Mr. Cheney met with investigators in the case, Mr. Bush was asked at a news conference whether "you stand by your pledge to fire anyone found" to have leaked the agent's name.

"Yes," Mr. Bush said. "And that's up to the U.S. attorney to find the facts."

Mr. Novak began his conversation with Mr. Rove by asking about the promotion of Frances Fragos Townsend, who had been a close aide to Janet Reno when she was attorney general, to a senior counterterrorism job at the White House, the person who was briefed on the matter said.

Mr. Novak then turned to the subject of Ms. Wilson, identifying her by name, the person said. In an Op-Ed article for The New York Times on July 6, 2003, Mr. Wilson suggested that he had been sent to Niger because of Mr. Cheney's interest in the matter. But Mr. Novak told Mr. Rove he knew that Mr. Wilson had been sent at the urging of Ms. Wilson, the person who had been briefed on the matter said.

Mr. Rove's allies have said that he did not call reporters with information about the case, rebutting the theory that the White House was actively seeking to intimidate or punish Mr. Wilson by harming his wife's career. They have also emphasized that Mr. Rove appeared not to know anything about Ms. Wilson other than that she worked at the C.I.A. and was married to Mr. Wilson.

This is not the first time Mr. Rove has been linked to a leak reported by Mr. Novak. In 1992, Mr. Rove was fired from the Texas campaign to re-elect the first President Bush because of suspicions that he had leaked information to Mr. Novak about shortfalls in the Texas organization's fund-raising. Both Mr. Rove and Mr. Novak have denied that Mr. Rove had been the source.

Mr. Novak's July 14, 2003, column was published against a backdrop in which White House officials were clearly agitated by Mr. Wilson's assertion, in his Op-Ed article, that the administration had "twisted" intelligence about the threat from Iraq.

But the White House was also deeply concerned about Mr. Wilson's suggestion that he had gone to Africa to carry out a mission that originated with Mr. Cheney. At the time, Mr. Cheney's earlier statements about Iraq's banned weapons were coming under fire as it became clearer that the United States would find no stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons and that Mr. Hussein's nuclear program was not far advanced.

Mr. Novak wrote that the decision to send Mr. Wilson "was made at a routinely low level" and was based on what later turned out to be fake documents that had come to the United States through Italy.

Many aspects of Mr. Fitzgerald's investigation remain shrouded in secrecy. It is unclear who Mr. Novak's other source might be or how that source learned of Ms. Wilson's role as a C.I.A. official. By itself, the disclosure that Mr. Rove had spoken to a second journalist about Ms. Wilson may not necessarily have a bearing on his exposure to any criminal charge in the case.

But it seems certain to add substantially to the political maelstrom that has engulfed the White House this week after the reports that Mr. Rove had discussed the matter with Mr. Cooper, the Time reporter.

Mr. Cooper's e-mail message to his editors, in which he described his discussion with Mr. Rove, was among documents that were turned over by Time executives recently to comply with a subpoena from Mr. Fitzgerald. A reporter for The New York Times, Judith Miller, who never wrote about the Wilson case, refused to cooperate with the investigation and was jailed last week for contempt of court. In addition to focusing new attention on Mr. Rove and whether he can survive the political fallout, it is sure to create new partisan pressure on Mr. Bush. Already, Democrats have been pressing the president either to live up to his promises to rid his administration of anyone found to have leaked the name of a covert operative or to explain why he does not believe Mr. Rove's actions subject him to dismissal.

The Rove-Novak exchange also leaves Mr. McClellan, the White House spokesman, in an increasingly awkward situation. Two years ago he repeatedly assured reporters that neither Mr. Rove nor several other administration officials were responsible for the leak.

The case has also threatened to become a distraction as Mr. Bush struggles to keep his second-term agenda on track and as he prepares for one of the most pivotal battles of his presidency, over the confirmation of a Supreme Court justice.

As Democrats have been demanding that Mr. Rove resign or provide a public explanation, the political machine that Mr. Rove built to bolster Mr. Bush and advance his agenda has cranked up to defend its creator. The Republican National Committee has mounted an aggressive campaign to cast Mr. Rove as blameless and to paint the matter as a partisan dispute driven not by legality, ethics or national security concerns, but by a penchant among Democrats to resort to harsh personal attacks.

But Mr. Bush said Wednesday that he would not prejudge Mr. Rove's role, and Mr. Rove was seated conspicuously just behind the president at a cabinet meeting, an image of business as usual. On Thursday, on the trip with Mr. Bush to Indiana, Mr. Rove grinned his way through a brief encounter with reporters after getting off Air Force One.

Mr. Bush's White House has been characterized by loyalty and long tenures, but no one has been at Mr. Bush's side in his journey through politics longer than Mr. Rove, who has been his strategist, enforcer, policy guru, ambassador to social and religious conservatives and friend since they met in Washington in the early 1970's. People who know Mr. Bush said it was unlikely, if not unthinkable, that he would seek Mr. Rove's departure barring a criminal indictment.

David E. Sanger contributed reporting for this article.

Source: Rove Got CIA Agent ID From Media

By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writer


Presidential confidant Karl Rove testified to a grand jury that he learned the identity of a CIA operative originally from journalists, then informally discussed the information with a Time magazine reporter days before the story broke, according to a person briefed on the testimony.

The person, who works in the legal profession and spoke only on condition of anonymity because of the secrecy of grand jury proceedings, told The Associated Press that Rove testified last year that he remembers specifically being told by columnist Robert Novak that Valerie Plame, the wife of a harsh Iraq war critic, worked for the CIA.

Rove testified that Novak originally called him the Tuesday before Plame's identity was revealed in July 2003 to discuss another story. The conversation eventually turned to former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who was strongly criticizing the Bush administration's Iraq war policy and the intelligence it used to justify the war, the source said.

The person said Rove testified that Novak told him he had learned and planned to report in a weekend column that Wilson's wife, Plame, had worked for the CIA, and the circumstances on how her husband traveled to Africa to check bogus claims of alleged nuclear material sales to Iraq.

Novak's column, citing two Bush administration officials, appeared six days later, touching off a political firestorm and leading to a federal criminal investigation into who leaked Plame's undercover identity. That probe has ensnared presidential aides and reporters in a two-year legal battle.

On Thursday, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada pressed for legislation to strip Rove of his clearance for classified information, which he said President Bush should already have done. Instead, Reid said, the Bush administration has attacked its critics: "This is what is known as a cover-up. This is an abuse of power."

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said Democrats were resorting to "partisan war chants."

Across the Capitol, Rep. Rush Holt (news, bio, voting record), D-N.J., introduced legislation for an investigation that would compel senior administration officials to turn over records relating to the Plame disclosure.

Rove told the grand jury that by the time Novak had called him, he believes he had similar information about Wilson's wife from another reporter but had no recollection of which reporter had told him about it first, the source said.

When Novak inquired about Wilson's wife working for the CIA, Rove indicated he had heard something like that, according to the source's recounting of the grand jury testimony.

Rove told the grand jury that four days later, he had a phone conversation with Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper and — in an effort to discredit some of Wilson's allegations — told Cooper that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, though he never used her name.

An e-mail Cooper recently provided the grand jury shows Cooper reported to his magazine bosses that Rove had described Wilson's wife in a confidential conversation as someone who "apparently works" at the CIA.

Robert Luskin, Rove's attorney, said Thursday his client truthfully testified to the grand jury and expected to be exonerated.

"Karl provided all pertinent information to prosecutors a long time ago," Luskin said. "And prosecutors confirmed when he testified most recently in October 2004 that he is not a target of the investigation."

In an interview on CNN Thursday before the latest revelation, Wilson kept up his criticism of the White House, saying Rove's conduct was an "outrageous abuse of power ... certainly worthy of frog-marching out of the White House."

But at the same time, Wilson acknowledged his wife was no longer in an undercover job at the time Novak's column first identified her. "My wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity," he said.

Federal law prohobits goverment officials from divulging the identity of an undercover intelligence officer. But in order to bring charges, prosecutors must prove the official knew the officer was covert and nonetheless outed his or her identity.

Rove's conversation with Cooper took place five days after Wilson suggested in a New York Times opinion piece that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat. Novak's column identifying Wilson's wife as a CIA employee and Cooper's magazine piece came out a few days later.

Pressed to explain its statements of two years ago that Rove wasn't involved in the leak, the White House refused to do so this week.

"If I were to get into discussing this, I would be getting into discussing an investigation that continues and could be prejudging the outcome of the investigation," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

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Associated Press special correspondent David Espo contributed to this story.