Blaming Media in Leak Case Not Working - Yahoo! News

By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer




The evidence prosecutors have assembled in the CIA leak case suggests Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff sought out reporters in the weeks before an undercover operative's identity was compromised in the news media, casting doubt on one of the White House's main lines of defense.

For months, the White House and its supporters have argued top presidential aides did not knowingly expose Valerie Plame, the wife of administration critic Joseph Wilson, as a CIA operative.

At most, the aides passed on information about her that entered the White House from reporters, the supporters argued.

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald now knows that Cheney aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby met three times with a New York Times reporter before the leak of Plame's identity, initiated a call to NBC's Tim Russert and was a confirming source about Wilson's wife for a Time magazine reporter.

And in a new twist, presidential political adviser Karl Rove has testified that it's possible Libby was his source before Rove talked to two reporters about the CIA operative.

In light of all the disclosures, "it's going to be as difficult for the defense to prove the theory that the White House got the information from reporters as it is for Fitzgerald to prove that the White House leaked the information about Wilson's wife," said Washington-based white-collar defense attorney James D. Wareham.

Where Libby first heard the information still isn't publicly known, but a full three weeks before Plame's name first showed up in print, Libby was telling New York Times reporter Judith Miller that he thought Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, according to Miller's testimony.

While Libby maintains that he didn't know Plame's name until it was published in the news media, the now-public evidence suggests Libby at least was aware that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and that he spread the information.

Prosecutors must determine whether it was part of an effort to undermine the credibility of Plame's husband who was criticizing the White House.

Until this week, "the news media did it" was a standard defense among Republicans trying to protect the Bush administration from the political fallout of Fitzgerald's criminal investigation. Loyalists said that even if White House aides had passed on information, they didn't get it from classified sources and were simply repeating what they heard from journalists.

As new evidence accumulates on the public record, Libby's original source of information and how he passed the information on are becoming crucial unanswered questions. The public still doesn't know much about what the vice president and his top aide talked about, either.

In grand jury testimony shown to Rove, Libby said he had told Rove about information he had gotten about Wilson's wife from Russert, according to a person directly familiar with the information.

Prosecutors, however, have a different account from Russert. The TV network has said Russert told authorities he did not know about Wilson's wife's identity until it was published and therefore could not have told Libby about it. Russert also says that it was Libby who initiated the contact with him.

In Miller's case, the reporter was interviewing Libby on June 23, 2003, for a story on the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when the vice president's chief of staff suggested a CIA tie for Wilson's wife, Miller has said.

"This was the first time I had been told that Mr. Wilson's wife might work for the CIA," Miller wrote in a first-person account over the weekend. Miller said this week that she never wrote a story about Wilson's wife because "it wasn't that important to me. I was focused on the main question: Was our WMD intelligence slanted?"

NATIONAL JOURNAL: Secret Service Records Prompted Miller's Testimony on Key Meeting (10/20/05)

By Murray Waas, special to National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Thursday, Oct. 20, 2005

New York Times reporter Judith Miller told the federal grand jury in the CIA leak case that she might have met with I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby on June 23, 2003 only after prosecutors showed her Secret Service logs that indicated she and Libby had indeed met that day in the Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House, according to attorneys familiar with her testimony.

When a prosecutor first questioned Miller during her initial grand jury appearance on September 30, 2005 sources said, she did not bring up the June 23 meeting in recounting her various contacts with Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Cheney. Pressed by prosecutors who then brought up the specific date of the meeting, Miller testified that she still could not recall the June meeting with Libby, in which they discussed a controversial CIA-sponsored mission to Africa by former Ambassador Joe Wilson, or the fact that his wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA.

When a prosecutor presented Miller with copies of the White House-complex visitation logs, she said such a meeting was possible.

Shortly after her September 30 testimony, Miller discovered her notes from the June 23 meeting, and returned on October 12 for a second round of grand jury testimony. In this second appearance, Miller recounted details from her June 23 meeting with Libby, with the assistance of her notes.

Bob Bennett, an attorney for Miller, confirmed in an interview that Miller's October 12 testimony "corrected" her earlier statements to the grand jury regarding the June 23 meeting. Bennett declined to provide specifics of anything Miller said during either of her grand jury appearances, except to say: "We went back on the second occasion to provide those additional notes that were found, and correct the grand jury testimony reflecting on the June 23 meeting."

Bennett said that Miller's testimony is now "correct, complete, and accurate."

Miller's grand jury testimony is considered to be central to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the leak that led to the disclosure of Plame as a covert CIA operative. Libby's testimony is at odds on key points with that of Miller and other witnesses, according to sources close to the investigation and attorneys for individuals enmeshed in the probe.

Stan Brand, a respected Washington defense attorney who often represents political figures in high-profile investigations, including those by special prosecutors, said in an interview that he did not know the particulars regarding Miller's testimony. But, speaking in general, he said: "What you tell your client when they go before the grand jury, is that they should be truthful, be thorough, and not hold anything back. You don't want to hide anything or not disclose things to expose you to charges or even the perception by the government that you haven't been forthcoming."

Regarding Miller specifically, Brand said that even if Fitzgerald were to conclude that Miller had "a feigned memory loss," the special prosecutor was unlikely to "make an issue out of this because he got what he wanted from her," and might still be dependant upon her as a witness during a potential trial.

Miller was unavailable for comment for this article. Earlier in the week, she returned a reporter's phone call and left a voice mail saying, "I can say that I read you in prison" and that she was eager to talk and tell more of her side of the story beyond what she had written in a first-person account of her grand jury testimony that was published on October 16 in The Times. But Miller did not return several phone calls later in the week.

Miller's personal account of her testimony appeared in The Times on the same day as a long staff-written "examination of Ms. Miller's decision not to testify, and then to-do so" that, the paper said, included "information about her role in the [Plame] investigation and how The New York Times turned her case into a cause."

Miller's first-person account, as well as the staff-written piece by Times reporters, disclosed details on the June 23 Miller-Libby meeting, a second meeting between Miller and Libby on July 8, 2003, and two conversations that Miller and Libby had on July 12, 2003. Both accounts also reported details on her two grand jury appearances.

In her personal account in The Times, Miller said only that she discovered the notes on the June 23 meeting between her first and second grand jury appearances. But neither her personal account nor the staff-written article reported that Miller initially failed to disclose the meeting in her testimony or that she was shown the Secret Service visitation logs.

Miller devoted two sentences to the circumstances surrounding her grand jury testimony on the June 23 meeting and notes. "I testified in Washington twice," she wrote, "most recently last Wednesday after finding a notebook in my office at the Times that contained my first interview with Mr. Libby. Mr. Fitzgerald told the grand jury that I was testifying as a witness and not as a subject or target of his inquiry."

The staff-written account, meanwhile, contained one sentence on the matter: "She testified before the grand jury for a second time... about notes from her meeting with Mr. Libby."

The staff-written account also said that Miller largely declined to provide assistance to the three reporters who wrote it. "In two interviews," the story said, "Ms. Miller generally would not discuss her interactions with editors, elaborate on the written account of her grand jury testimony, or allow reporters to review her notes."

The June 23, 2003, Miller-Libby meeting took place in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, formerly called the Old Executive Office Building. Libby and Miller discussed Wilson's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger in which he was looking into an allegation that Saddam Hussein sought to buy uranium in order to build a bomb.

Fitzgerald has been investigating whether Libby, Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove, or other Bush administration officials leaked classified information on Plame's CIA employment in an effort to undermine the credibility of her husband, Wilson, who had alleged publicly that the White House misrepresented his findings to bolster the case to go to war with Iraq.

Both Libby and Rove had told the federal grand jury that they indeed had conversations with reporters regarding Plame in which they suggested that Wilson was not credible because he was sent on the mission at his wife's suggestion.

But both men have denied that they knew that Plame was a covert CIA operative when they spoke about her, or that they learned about her CIA employment through classified information. Libby has reportedly told the grand jury that he first learned of the information about Plame through discussions with journalists. Rove testified that he was told the information about Plame by Libby and journalists he spoke with as well.

The special prosecutor's probe was later broadened to examine whether officials engaged in making false statements to investigators, perjury, or obstruction of justice, when they denied or potentially covered up the original source of their information.

Miller testified in her second grand jury appearance that it was during this June 23 meeting that she and Libby first discussed Plame's CIA employment. Miller's notes of that meeting contained the notation, regarding Wilson, "Wife works in bureau?"

As National Journal reported on October 11, Libby also did not disclose the June 23 meeting to investigators and the grand jury until he was pressed on the issue.

In her account in The Times, Miller wrote: "I told Mr. Fitzgerald that I believed this was the first time I had been told that Mr. Wilson's wife might work for the CIA. The prosecutor asked me whether the word 'bureau' might not mean the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Yes, I told him, normally. But Mr. Libby had been discussing the CIA, and therefore my impression was that he had been speaking about a particular bureau within the agency that dealt with the spread of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. As to the question mark, I said I wasn't sure what it meant.... Maybe Mr. Libby was not certain whether Mr. Wilson's wife actually worked there."

Another crucial contradiction between Miller and Libby involves their second meeting on July 8, 2003, during which the two discussed Wilson and Plame. The two met for a two-hour breakfast at the St. Regis hotel in Washington.

According to attorneys familiar with his testimony, Libby told the grand jury that at the meeting he told Miller that Plame had something to do with Wilson being sent on a controversial CIA-sponsored mission to Africa, but that he did not know that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA or anything else about her.

However, Miller testified and turned over notes from the July 8 conversation to the grand jury that showed that Libby had told her that Plame worked for the CIA's Weapons, Intelligence, Non-Proliferation, and Arms Control office.

Libby has told federal investigators, according to legal sources familiar with his testimony, that he told Miller at the meeting that he had heard that Wilson's wife had played a role in Wilson being selected for the Niger assignment. But Libby testified regarding both the June 23 and July 8 meeting that he had never named Plame nor told Miller that she worked for the CIA, because either he did not know that at the time, or, if he had heard Plame was a CIA employee, he did not know whether it was true.

Miller's grand jury testimony as well her notes on the July 8 meeting contradict Libby's version. Miller's notes indicate that Libby did indeed tell her that Plame worked for the CIA. Her notes said, according to Miller: "Wife works at Winpac." Asked for an explanation by the grand jury, Miller has said she testified she knew that Winpac meant Weapons Intelligence, Non-Proliferation, and Arms Control, a CIA unit.

Ironically, the information supplied by Libby turned out to be incorrect. Instead of working for the analytic unit of the CIA, Plame actually worked for the agency's covert side, the directorate of operations.

Miller also testified about telephone conversations she had with Libby regarding Plame and Wilson on July 12, 2003. In her Times article she wrote of a single phone call from Libby that day.

But telephone records presented to Miller during her grand jury testimony indicate that she twice spoke with Libby on July 12, although one conversation was brief, according to attorneys familiar with her grand jury testimony.

The first phone call lasted three minutes, the phone record indicated. Miller testified that she believed she might have taken the call on her cellphone in a cab, and told Libby she would soon talk to him after she arrived home, although she was unsure of this, according to the sources familiar with her grand jury testimony.

The second telephone conversation between Libby and Miller lasted for 37 minutes, according to telephone records examined by attorneys familiar with her grand jury testimony. Miller told the grand jury that she believed that telephone conversation took place after she had arrived at her home in Sag Harbor, N.Y., although she was not entirely sure.

That conversation took place two days before Robert Novak published his column on July 14, 2003, saying that Plame was a "CIA operative" and that she had been responsible for sending Wilson to Niger.

Miller wrote in The Times that "before this call, I might have called others about Ms. Wilson's wife. In my notebook I had written the words 'Victoria Wilson' with a box around it, another apparent reference to Ms. Plame, who is also known as Valerie Wilson.

"I also told Mr. Fitzgerald that I was not sure whether Mr. Libby had used the name or whether I just made a mistake in writing in my own. Another possibility, I said, is that I gave Mr. Libby the wrong name on purpose to see whether he would correct me and confirm her identity."

"I also told the grand jury I thought it was odd that I had written 'Wilson,' because my memory is that I had heard her referred to only as Plame. Mr. Fitzgerald asked whether this suggested that Mr. Libby had given me the name Wilson. I told him I didn't know, and didn't want to guess."

If Libby had in fact provided Miller with Wilson's name, that would have proved to be significant to the federal grand jury probe, because Libby himself had testified that he never provided Miller with her name, according to attorneys familiar with his testimony.

Blaming Media in Leak Case Not Working - Yahoo! News

By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer


The evidence prosecutors have assembled in the CIA leak case suggests Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff sought out reporters in the weeks before an undercover operative's identity was compromised in the news media, casting doubt on one of the White House's main lines of defense.

For months, the White House and its supporters have argued top presidential aides did not knowingly expose Valerie Plame, the wife of administration critic Joseph Wilson, as a CIA operative.

At most, the aides passed on information about her that entered the White House from reporters, the supporters argued.

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald now knows that Cheney aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby met three times with a New York Times reporter before the leak of Plame's identity, initiated a call to NBC's Tim Russert and was a confirming source about Wilson's wife for a Time magazine reporter.

And in a new twist, presidential political adviser Karl Rove has testified that it's possible Libby was his source before Rove talked to two reporters about the CIA operative.

In light of all the disclosures, "it's going to be as difficult for the defense to prove the theory that the White House got the information from reporters as it is for Fitzgerald to prove that the White House leaked the information about Wilson's wife," said Washington-based white-collar defense attorney James D. Wareham.

Where Libby first heard the information still isn't publicly known, but a full three weeks before Plame's name first showed up in print, Libby was telling New York Times reporter Judith Miller that he thought Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, according to Miller's testimony.

While Libby maintains that he didn't know Plame's name until it was published in the news media, the now-public evidence suggests Libby at least was aware that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and that he spread the information.

Prosecutors must determine whether it was part of an effort to undermine the credibility of Plame's husband who was criticizing the White House.

Until this week, "the news media did it" was a standard defense among Republicans trying to protect the Bush administration from the political fallout of Fitzgerald's criminal investigation. Loyalists said that even if White House aides had passed on information, they didn't get it from classified sources and were simply repeating what they heard from journalists.

As new evidence accumulates on the public record, Libby's original source of information and how he passed the information on are becoming crucial unanswered questions. The public still doesn't know much about what the vice president and his top aide talked about, either.

In grand jury testimony shown to Rove, Libby said he had told Rove about information he had gotten about Wilson's wife from Russert, according to a person directly familiar with the information.

Prosecutors, however, have a different account from Russert. The TV network has said Russert told authorities he did not know about Wilson's wife's identity until it was published and therefore could not have told Libby about it. Russert also says that it was Libby who initiated the contact with him.

In Miller's case, the reporter was interviewing Libby on June 23, 2003, for a story on the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when the vice president's chief of staff suggested a CIA tie for Wilson's wife, Miller has said.

"This was the first time I had been told that Mr. Wilson's wife might work for the CIA," Miller wrote in a first-person account over the weekend. Miller said this week that she never wrote a story about Wilson's wife because "it wasn't that important to me. I was focused on the main question: Was our WMD intelligence slanted?"

ABC News: Bush Calls Recent Woes 'Background Noise'

Bush Vows Not to Be Distracted by 'Background Noise' of Political Problems, Investigations of Aides
By TERENCE HUNT
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - President Bush vowed Thursday to avoid the "background noise" of investigations and political problems to focus on the nation's needs.

"The American people expect me to do my job, and I'm going to," he said.

With his political stock falling and several allies under investigation, Bush tried to keep focus on the nation's business at a Rose Garden news conference with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.

He said that prospects for Palestinians were gaining steam and noted that there have been elections and Israeli land withdrawals since Abbas' last White House visit. "It's been an eventful year," Bush said.

Abbas criticized Israel's security wall and urged the nation to lift curbs on Palestinian travel on the West Bank. "Peace requires a departure from the policies of occupation," he said.

New York Daily News - World & National Report - Fess up on leak, Chuck prods Bush

BY JAMES GORDON MEEK and KENNETH R. BAZINET
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON - Sen. Chuck Schumer yesterday urged President Bush to come clean on what and when he knew about political guru Karl Rove's involvement in the outing of CIA spy Valerie Plame.
Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, meanwhile, is combing over testimony by John Hannah and David Wurmser, national security aides to Vice President Cheney who sources questioned under oath say may be the key to the probe.

Citing yesterday's Daily News story detailing Bush's angry 2003 outburst, Schumer requested particulars of that heated discussion about Rove's role in the CIA leaks. "It seems you may have been angry that White House officials were caught, not that they had compromised national security," Schumer wrote in a letter to Bush. Schumer also questioned why Bush didn't suspend Rove's top secret security clearance if he was aware his senior aide had a role in the Plame affair.

Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said he wasn't aware of the letter, but he still lashed out. "The last thing that we need to do is politicize an ongoing investigation," he said.

Schumer's letter was sent as Democrats elsewhere jumped all over Bush, perhaps suspecting the President knows more about the leak than he or Rove may have told Fitzgerald.

"We're looking at the time line," said a top Senate Democratic strategist. "The same month Bush reprimands Rove, he tells the American people he doesn't know whether anybody in the White House was involved, and now we learn otherwise."

On Sept. 30, 2003 - the same month Bush rebuked Rove - the President said, "I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information."

McClellan originally questioned the accuracy of The News' story but later said he couldn't comment because the leak probe is ongoing.

Meanwhile, Plame and her husband, Joseph Wilson, are considering a civil suit that could force Bush, Rove and Cheney to testify. Wilson asserts that his wife was outed to get back at him for debunking claims that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was shopping for nuclear materials in Niger.

Rove Told Jury Libby May Have Been His Source In Leak Case

Top Aides Talked Before Plame's Name Was Public

By Jim VandeHei and Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, October 20, 2005; A01



White House adviser Karl Rove told the grand jury in the CIA leak case that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, may have told him that CIA operative Valerie Plame worked for the intelligence agency before her identity was revealed, a source familiar with Rove's account said yesterday.

In a talk that took place in the days before Plame's CIA employment was revealed in 2003, Rove and Libby discussed conversations they had had with reporters in which Plame and her marriage to Iraq war critic Joseph C. Wilson IV were raised, the source said. Rove told the grand jury the talk was confined to information the two men heard from reporters, the source said.

Rove has also testified that he also heard about Plame from someone else outside the White House, but could not recall who.

The account is the first time a person familiar with Rove's testimony has provided clues about where the deputy chief of staff learned about Plame, and confirmed that Rove and Libby were involved in a conversation about her before her identity became public. The disclosure seemed to further undermine the White House's contention early in the case that neither man was in any way involved in unmasking Plame.

But it leaves unanswered the central question of the more than two-year-old case: Did anyone commit a crime in leaking information about Plame to the media?

Libby's lawyer, Joseph Tate, did not return calls for comment last night. Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, declined to comment. The development was first reported last night by the Associated Press.

Lawyers in the case have said Rove and Libby are the central focus of Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald's 22-month investigation, which is scheduled to end by the time the grand jury expires Oct. 28. But they are not the only officials worried about the uncertain conclusion to the case.

John Hannah, an aide to Cheney and one of two dozen people questioned in the CIA leak case, has told friends in recent months he is worried he may be implicated by the investigation, according to two U.S. officials.

It is not clear whether Hannah had any role in unmasking Plame, or why he should fear Fitzgerald's probe. But the eleventh-hour emergence of another possible target shows how Fitzgerald has cast his net so widely over the past two years that it is impossible to know who, if anyone, it might ensnare.

Fitzgerald and his team have interviewed or taken before the grand jury at least two dozen officials or staffers from the White House, the vice president's office, the State Department and the CIA, according to people involved in the case.

Fitzgerald has dug into the deepest corners of the administration, pressing for information about everything from the mechanics of a secretive group of officials tasked with selling the Iraq war, to the State Department officials who assembled information on Wilson, the diplomat-turned-Iraq war critic, according to people familiar with the case. The focus has been on who leaked Plame's name, and who else knew about it.

But many unknowns remain. What role did Hannah play? What, if any, role was played by former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer? Who was the second source for Robert D. Novak, the columnist who first disclosed Plame's name and role in July 2003? Who was the White House official who leaked word about Wilson's wife to The Washington Post's Walter Pincus, who has never publicly revealed his source?

It is possible the public will never learn the answers to these and other questions because Fitzgerald is not required to produce a report and could complete the investigation without charging anyone with a crime.

But White House officials and lawyers are prepared for Fitzgerald to charge at least one official, and maybe more.

Fitzgerald began the probe seeking to determine whether any government official illegally leaked Plame's identity to the media in retaliation for Wilson's criticism that the administration had twisted intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq. Wilson, who had traveled on a CIA-sponsored mission to Niger, had questioned President Bush's assertion that Baghdad had tried to obtain uranium in Africa for a nuclear weapons program.

The new information about Hannah signals how broadly the prosecutor has probed for answers. As Cheney's deputy national security adviser, he was intimately involved in Iraq policy.

Hannah is one of at least five people in the Cheney operation who have been interviewed by federal investigators.

Fitzgerald's interest in the vice president's office became clearer as the case continued: Cheney was central to building the case that then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein sought nuclear weapons-grade material in Niger and Libby helped discredit Wilson in part by talking about his wife, according to lawyers in the case.

Fitzgerald talked to Cheney personally near the beginning of the investigation, though according to a person familiar with the case, he has not questioned him since. Fitzgerald and his investigative team interviewed Mary Matalin, a former top Cheney adviser; Catherine Martin, his former communications adviser; and Jennifer Millerwise, his former spokeswoman.

Among the media, most of the focus has been on New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who spent 85 days in jail before agreeing to testify about her conversations with Libby, and Time magazine's Matt Cooper, the other reporter whom Fitzgerald threatened to jail if he did not reveal his sources.

Cooper, after receiving permission from sources, testified before the grand jury and later said publicly that Rove and Libby had talked to him about Plame. But other reporters were contacted by other White House officials about Plame during the crucial week in July 2003 after Wilson's views became public, according to government officials and people involved in the case.

This leaves open the possibility of a broader leak campaign. In September of 2003, a senior administration official told The Post that at least six journalists were contacted about Plame by two top White House officials.

One of the longest-running mysteries of the case is the identity of Novak's second source. Rove has testified that he discussed Plame in passing with Novak, but it is not clear who else did. Novak has provided scant information about the person's identity. It is unknown whether Novak has cooperated with Fitzgerald, but many familiar with the case believe he has because he did not face the same contempt of court charges levied against Miller and Cooper.

A member of the staff of James Hamilton, Novak's lawyer, said he had no comment.

Pincus, who spoke with Fitzgerald early in the case after his source said he could, has never revealed who told him that Wilson's wife helped arrange the trip to Niger. Pincus has said the source was not Libby, and has described the person as a "White House official" who called him. The source came forward to the prosecutor and released Pincus to discuss their conversation with Fitzgerald but not with the public.

Many White House officials have been called before the grand jury, including spokesman Scott McClellan, senior adviser Dan Bartlett, former communications aide Adam Levine and Fleischer, among others. Bush spoke personally with Fitzgerald early in the probe.

One reason Fitzgerald expressed interest in Fleischer, administration officials said, is his presence on a July 2003 presidential trip to Africa. On that flight aboard Air Force One, then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell had a memo that mentioned Wilson's wife, in a section marked "S" for secret, according to some administration officials. But Powell said on CNN this week the memo he saw did not mention Plame.

According to people involved in the case, prosecutors believe a printout of that memo was in the front of Air Force One during the July 7-12 trip Bush took to Africa, but investigators are unsure who saw it. The prosecutor has also examined the role of Stephen J. Hadley, Bush's national security adviser. In an e-mail that surfaced earlier this year, Rove told Hadley, then deputy national security adviser, about his conversation with Cooper, saying he waved the reporter off Wilson's allegations. The e-mail was not turned over until long after the probe began.

One person in the probe said Fitzgerald showed considerable early interest in the White House Iraq Group, a task force created by Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. in August 2002 and charged with "marketing" the war in Iraq to the public.

The group met weekly in the Situation Room. Its regular participants were Rove, Libby, Hadley, then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, adviser Karen Hughes, Matalin, and White House director of legislative affairs Nicholas Calio.

The special prosecutor has talked to a number of Foggy Bottom officials about the State Department memo, drafted about a month before Plame's identity was disclosed. Fitzgerald has questioned Powell about his knowledge of the document, according to people familiar with the case.

Former CIA director George J. Tenet and ex-deputy director John E. McLaughlin, were both interviewed by prosecutors. Bill Harlow, CIA public affairs director, went before the grand jury and was questioned about a conversation he had with Novak before Novak's column appeared. Sources said he was contacted by Novak about the Plame information and told him not to publish her name or information about her.

Staff writer Dafna Linzner contributed to this report.